Flickr: Brad Flickinger

In the past few years, educators have been closely watching the evolution of digital games used for learning. With a huge influx of products — whether they’re individual apps for tablets or an entire suite of software — the market is already big and continues to grow, with entire game-based schools cropping up across the country.

There’s no question students are interested in digital games – 97 percent of kids play them — but what educators and industry watchers want to know is whether playing those games can actually improve student achievement.

A new SRI study released today suggests they do — at least in the subjects of science, math, engineering, and technology. According to the report, which is an analysis of 77 peer-reviewed journal articles of students K-16 studying STEM subjects, “when digital games were compared to other instruction conditions without digital games, there was a moderate to strong effect in favor of digital games in terms of broad cognitive competencies.”

More specifically, “students at the median in the control group (no games) could have been raised 12 percent in cognitive learning outcomes if they had received the digital game.”

Another way to explain it: “For a student sitting in the median who doesn’t have a game, his or her learning achievement would have increased by 12 percent if he or she had that game,” said Ed Dieterle,  Senior Program Officer for Research, Measurement, and Evaluation for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which funded the SRI report.

Simulations have an even bigger impact, according to this analysis. When considering simulations — taking a phenomena, process, or behavior and coding it into something that can be manipulated and studied — improvement index jumped to 25 percent, meaning students who used simulations could have increased their learning outcomes by that amount.

Which begs the question, how do we define learning outcomes? According to Stacey Childress, deputy director of education at the Gates Foundation, learning outcomes can be defined in a few ways: progress toward mastery of a particular set of content and skill objectives in areas such as math and literacy; demonstration of complex skills like collaboration and critical thinking; and improvement in what researchers call “non-cognitive” skills such as persistence and grit.

“With learning games, it’s important to understand which kinds of outcomes they are designed to improve and whether or not students are actually making progress on those dimensions,” Childress said.

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The Gates Foundation has made huge investments in the educational gaming world. Last year, the foundation launched the Games Learning and Assessment Lab (GlassLab), which was tasked with prototyping and developing games and formative assessments. The work is being conducted by the Institute of Play, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), Pearson, Inc., Electronic Arts (EA), and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). GlassLab recently released, SimCityEdu, which integrates assessments aligned with Common Core State Standards. The educational version uses the same code as the commercial game, but with the addition of using students’ choices during challenges as a method of assessment, though not all education experts agree that assessment should be built into games.

The foundation has also invested in The Center for Game Science and the Radix Endeavor at MIT with the intent to develop games that embed valid assessment measures.

For this analysis, SRI considered reports from a gamut of sources in those 77 studies — going as far back as a 1992 study from The Journal of Educational Research looking at the effects of computer simulations and problem-solving approaches on high school students, to a 2006 study in the journal Interactive Learning Environments using just-in-time information to support scientific discovery learning in a computer-based simulation.

Other studies examined include one from 2011 that compares different versions of a game in terms of the degree to which the learning mechanics and goals are integrated directly into the central game mechanics (intrinsic design) versus separating the learning mechanics and goals from the central game mechanic (extrinsic design); and another from 2012 that compares different approaches to socially organizing players within a game in terms of collaboration and competition to maximize learning. The games within each study were developed specifically for research purposes, and thus are not as elaborate as some commercial titles like SimCity, but are solid examples of learning games, according to Dieterle.*

“This is the first big study to hit the pause button for a second and reach back in time and extract everything we could from what previous researchers have done with the intent of using that information to inform us about the field going forward,” Dieterle said.

FUTURE OF GAMES IN CLASSROOMS IS NOW

If digital games were rare in the past, that’s no longer the case. According to a recent teacher survey conducted by PBS, 43 percent of classroom computing goes to playing educational digital games. And in one study undertaken last year by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, surveying 505 teachers, the majority of teachers reported that games increase motivation and make it easier to personalize learning.

But experiences and perceptions around games are still very much a mixed bag, depending on whom you ask. Some educators are skeptical that digital games are the answer. They question whether games provide enough context and depth that come from hands-on experiences.

“Imagine the difference between a student who’s playing an online math video game and a student who’s sitting in a small group with a teacher, working out problems and receiving immediate, individualized feedback and guidance,” said St. Louis-based fifth-grade teacher Jenny Kavanaugh in a recent interview. “There is no comparison.”

But Childress points out that the issue is more nuanced.

“The games and learning space is still in an exploratory, R&D phase. We shouldn’t frame games, or any other instructional support, as ‘the answer,’” she said. “All of us working in education should be skeptical about any innovation that doesn’t aim to produce evidence of its effectiveness. The SRI results are a strong start in the direction of solid evidence.”

And Childress does not see the use of digital games as an either/or scenario — either teachers or digital games.

“We should be careful not to view learning technologies as a replacement for deep teacher and student interactions. We see effective technology supports as enabling the opposite,” she said.

Digital games can be a part of a holistic plan that challenges students with things like “quests” and “missions,” when paired with tactics like spending targeted time with students in small groups or individually to help them address areas where they need help, she said.

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For educators who aren’t sure where to start, or how to find ways to integrate digital games into the current model, Childress said teachers’ own network can be a great resource.  For instance, one of the Gates-funded organizations launched a national Teacher Gaming Network focused on creating a national network that offers teachers workshops on using games in the classroom.

For their part, game developers should incorporate ways to help educators do their jobs better, as is the case with other industries that have embraced technologies. “The best product developers deeply understand who they are designing for and the use case they are targeting, and offer the kind of implementation supports professionals need to integrate new tools into their daily work,” Childress said.

If Quest to Learn, the entirely game-based schools in New York and Chicago, are any indication of whether games can be successful learning tools, the potential seems bright. According to CNN, the school’s New York test scores, “an admittedly conventional metric, show the Quest kids have outperformed peers in the New York City school system in each of the last three years, in both English Language Arts and Math, according to data provided by the school,” with the only exception being the 2010 math scores.

But not every school can be a Quest to Learn, with dedicated funding for games. Finding the funds to finance digital games is one of the main obstacles, in fact. In the Cooney Center survey, 51 percent of teachers said that cost of digital games was the primary obstacle to integrating them into class, and only 17 percent of those surveyed said the school spent $100 or more on games.

To that end, Childress said there are a number of free resources available on the web, and that the foundation has funded 17 game development projects over the last three years, a number of which are free or available at reduced cost to districts serving students in low-income neighborhoods.

*The updated version of the article includes information about the studies from 2011 and 2012.

Katrina Schwartz

It’s a common refrain that there aren’t enough women in jobs that require math and science skills like engineering and computer science. Though more programs are cropping up geared towards girls involved in science through camps, rocketry clubs or with more focused courses on STEM subjects, the gender imbalance is still striking.

The discrepancy became all-too apparent to Debbie Sterling, a budding inventor who was one of the only girls in her engineering courses at Stanford. So she came up with an idea to encourage more girls in  is why she’s spent the last several years developing GoldieBlox, a toy focused on developing spatial skills in girls.

“I just think there need to be more options, more role models, more career paths for girls to see and that’s what I’m trying to do with GoldieBlox,” Sterling said.

Sterling discovered her interest in engineering almost by accident — a math teacher suggested she take a course when she got to college — and she wonders if girls would choose science careers if they were exposed to basic engineering and physics concepts earlier in life.

Research shows that building toys like Legos or Erector Sets are good for building spatial skills, but those typically fall under the stereotype of toys for boys. After visiting the toy store and experiencing what she called “the pink explosion isle for girls” Sterling decided she needed to build an engineering toy that would appeal to girls.

GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine is a construction kit with pieces that clip into a board to make a simple belt drive. The set comes with a story that tells of a girl engineer named Goldie who wants to build a spinning machine so all her friends can spin together. She takes apart a jewelry box to learn about the spinning mechanism and then builds her own.

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“My ‘ah ha’ moment was that instead of a construction toy only, which is spatial skills and object play, I would combine spatial skills with verbal, so I would have the construction toy plus the book,” Sterling said. “By introducing the story of Goldie and these characters, and building for a reason, it gave girls the context they were craving and the narrative behind the play that was meaningful to them.”

She came up with the idea of her hybrid story-building toy by observing that girls prefer narrative-based play. She hoped she could draw girls in with a story and after directing them to follow along with Goldie as she builds, they’d get comfortable tinkering with the construction kit. Once they’re comfortable with the parts and how they work, the hope is that they begin to design their own machines.

“Some modeling of a cool, young girl engineer could be useful if the girl playing can see a path from where she is to where the cool, functioning engineer is,” said Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She said the connection between the toy and engineering needs to be clear and that the hands on-skills girls learn at young ages need to be continual reinforcement for the effects to last.

Goldie can be a role model to younger girls, while the inventor herself can model what a successful female engineer looks like to older girls. “She’s not the kid genius,” Sterling said describing Goldie. “She’s well liked; she’s fun; she’s quirky; she’s a little messy. I guess that is a bit like me.”

Sterling said in its early days the toy has been very popular with engineering parents. “It touched my heart that it was a mechanical toy that was targeted towards young girls,” said Martin Miller, an engineer who pre-ordered GoldieBlox for his six-year-old daughter Kaitlin when the toy appeared on Kickstarter. “That’s unusual and I felt that was perfect for my little daughter.” Kaitlin has two older brothers and Miller considers a tomboy, so he thought she’d like a building toy. She has also already begun to play with the characters off the board, imagining scenes for Goldie and her friends.

Sterling hoped her toy would inspire creative play and was also aware of research like Carol Dweck’s that shows kids need to learn to struggle with difficult concepts so they know how to tackle setbacks in the future.

“From a very young age I would start stressing the fun and interestingness of difficult tasks,” Dweck said. “When something is easy I’d say, ‘oh that’s boring, that’s a waste of time.’”

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In the first draft of the story, Sterling had Goldie build a machine that didn’t work. But when Sterling tested the story line, girls and their parents got so frustrated that the machine didn’t work that they refused to turn the page and continue. So Sterling softened the failure.

“I have a moment where Goldie is perplexed,” she said. “So I don’t set anyone up for failure, but I show that she’s confused and she doesn’t know the answers and she goes through a series of funny moments where she tries a bunch of things until she finally works it out.”

That strategy is in line with Dweck’s research on how to keep kids striving for challenging tasks. “If you have little failures along the way and have them understand that’s part of learning, part of building and that you can actually derive useful information about what to do next — that’s really useful,” Dweck said.

Some specialty toy stores are already stocking GoldieBlox after the Kickstarter campaign Sterling launched to fund manufacturing went viral and more than doubled its goal. “From the very beginning I knew I wanted this girl character sitting on the shelf next to Bob the Builder and Thomas the Train,” Sterling said.

The game costs $29.99 and the three additional story lines and accompanying kits that Sterling is working on will likely have similar price tags.

Sterling wants the toy to be inclusive, unlike her experiences in engineering classes at Stanford, where most of her professors were men and she often felt her ideas were discounted. “I want everybody to get to have fun with engineering and I think that by doing it in this very accessible way that no one has to feel like they don’t belong,” she said.

Flickr: Brad Flickinger

By Holly Korbey

When St. Louis fifth-grade teacher Jenny Kavanaugh teaches history, she uses her laptop to look at a map, or to give kids a virtual tour of the historical landmarks they’re studying. “Students can interact with history in very cool ways online,” she said.

But when it’s time for math, she puts the computer away. Even though Kavanaugh thinks technology is a great tool to enhance and deepen certain lessons, for drill and practice of key concepts in class, she finds one-on-one practice to be much more effective than its technological equivalent – digital practice games.

“The goal is that a student can do division problems with speed and accuracy, and can also describe to me exactly what division is,” she said. “I have found that my advanced students can move past division of fractions in the online game, indicating mastery, but when I ask for a verbal description of what it is they are really doing – what is the division of fractions, or when would you use that in the real world? – they have no idea. I think that the rote practice is wasted time if the student does not have that conceptual understanding first. Many online games do not teach that part of math as well.”

While experts like Gary Stager, founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge Summer Institute, recommend that computers be used to add “deep and meaningful experiences” to teachers’ lessons, much of what the 91percent of teachers with access to computers are doing may be just the opposite.

According to a recent teacher survey conducted by PBS, 43 percent of classroom computing goes to playing educational digital games, while a Joan Ganz Cooney study showed that nearly 50 percent of teachers use digital games in class. But with nearly half of all classroom computer time dedicated to games — many of which are played to reinforce basic skills like phonics, spelling or multiplication tables — some teachers are wondering if games really are innovative techniques used to enhance student learning. Or are they just flashy, colorful ways of dishing out more of the same?

While Kavanaugh encourages online games for students’ home practice, especially for math, in the classroom she thinks that old-fashioned interaction between humans makes for deeper understanding. She says, in her experience, kids are learning more math from hands-on activities than computers. “What they truly love is to get out of their desks and act things out,” she said. “I think many technological learning tools seem to bring out…how do I say this?…a backseat way of thinking from my students. Part of their brains seem to disconnect.”

Kavanaugh observes that when her students are up doing an activity or engaging in serious problem-solving, they’re much more proactive and aggressive with their learning, and with the things they produce. “Imagine the difference between a student who’s playing an online math video game and a student who’s sitting in a small group with a teacher, working out problems and receiving immediate, individualized feedback and guidance,” she said. “There is no comparison.”

When comparing digital learning games to teacher instruction, the first thing to realize, said Marc Prensky, author of Teaching Digital Natives, is that not all games are created equally. “Games, like teachers, come in a wide variety of ‘goodness.’ Unfortunately, most games are not good. In fact, most are bad, often drill in disguise.” The second, Prensky pointed out, is that teachers may not necessarily know how to use games in classrooms most effectively. “There are many ways to do this [use games effectively], but letting kids sit and play games individually is not one of them. The best, complex games require specialized teacher knowledge, interest and skills to use effectively.”

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Prensky said another question teachers need to ask when looking at using online games in class is what they want students to get good at. For teaching curriculum, he said, there are very few games that do it well. “This is partly because games lend themselves to skills rather than stuff, and the curriculum is mostly about stuff. In games, ‘stuff’ is learned—as it is in life outside school— mostly incidentally, as background to achieving goals. So, for example, l know that the capital of Sri Lanka is Colombo because I chased Carmen Sandiego there.”

DIFFERENCE IN QUALITY

One game that holds the promise of achieving all the complex goals educators is SimCityEDU, the learning version of the popular city-management game due to be released in the fall of this year. Michael John, Game Director for GlassLab, the nonprofit creating the game, said that, in reality, most practice games are not that fun or interesting for kids. “I would say that most of the drill-type games I have seen and played have fallen very far toward the Tetris end of the spectrum. They’re repetitive, self-similar, and to be honest, pretty dull.”

Flickr: Brad Flickinger

But as a learning game, SimCityEDU wants to offer much more than drill — student players will be assessing data, interpreting information, taking documentation, and like many complex games, will have the ability to level-up when certain skills are mastered. The game has the ability to make formative assessments along the way that are also aligned with Common Core State Standards; teachers can use an online tool to see whether children have mastered the necessary skills.

It’s the ability to gather such specific data, says Nashville elementary educator and ed tech writer Dan Nemes, that makes online learning games so helpful, even the drill-and-practice kind. As far as being innovative on the learning front, Nemes questions whether a computer game can really replace a great teacher, but acknowledges that not all children have access to a great teacher.

“That question of environment is the real kicker,” Nemes said. “Ed Tech provides access. That can’t be argued. Many of the folks who are developing programs to help children learn are, in my view, saying, ‘The offline world has failed a large number of children. Children don’t have the space and time and tools they need to learn, so I’ve created a virtual world in which they can learn.’ They want to leverage data and ready-made lessons (some of them made by great teachers) to lessen the inequality so many children face.”

Michael John is quick to point out that SimCityEDU, or any learning game, no matter how challenging and complex, is in no way out to replace individual attention given by real teachers, and called the idea “folly.” He said the game “should work in tandem with a human teacher, and we are investing a lot of creative and technological energy in creating views for the teacher into the students’ activity and even giving them some control over that activity – the ideal learning environment is assumed to be in the presence of a human teacher. So the audience for our formative assessment data, even if it works perfectly, is the teacher every bit as much as the student.”

MORE RESEARCH NEEDED

As we are just entering the era of digital games and learning, research is still scant. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center recently released an in-depth analysis of how schools are using games for learning, and other organizations are starting to tackle this broad, complicated subject. Williams College sophomore Mpaza Kapembwa is part of an education class that received a Verizon grant to write a fourth-grade science curriculum for low-income students using iPads, recording whether or not students are more engaged when using the iPad versus non-digital methods. The most effective use of the iPad so far, Mpaza said, is not digital games, but more hands-on techniques, like using apps that build presentations or take video and slow it down to demonstrate a particular physics concept.

But this summer, Mpaza’s research will focus on turning all physical worksheets into practice on the iPad, and will inevitably turn part of the curriculum toward digital games. “We are very cautious not to replace one with the other, it’s very challenging because when they’ve got the iPad in front of them, they just want to play,” he said. “We do let them play in the very beginning, but then try to get them used to the fact that this is not a toy. This is work.”

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Dan Nemes agrees that, when kids are playing games on iPads or other digital gadgets, it can be hard for them to remember that they are working — a different but important kind of “backseat thinking.”

“Even at its most active, swiping and clicking are passive approaches to learning,” he said. “Using a pencil — the smell of the wood and lead, the indentation on your pointer, the sound of the scratch on the page — gives a child the sense of doing hard work. And learning is hard work. The tools children use to manipulate and change the world and their own neural pathways should reflect the profundity of that phenomenon; we should have some blisters, form calluses, break a sweat. Computer games don’t demand that from children.”

The feeling of work, Michael John said, is important to kids when playing a digital learning game, too, something they found out when testing SimCityEDU on middle schoolers. And that work feeling may be what helps kids distinguish between entertainment games and ones that are for learning. “If they understand that their role is to learn, and to think in the context of school, they seem to be almost primed with an expectation of a higher workload.”

Even as he innovates new ways of using digital games expressly designed for student learning, John’s overall comments on learning and gaming seemed to reflect a feeling that computer games, whether drill-and-practice or complex, are meant to enhance, not replace, other more human learning experiences. He doesn’t seem at all concerned that drill-and-practice digital games will replace hands-on teacher-led techniques. Nemes’ comment about the sensory experience of holding a pencil was quite personal to him, and John called it “poignant.”

“As an old-school game designer, I am accustomed to doing my work on graph paper and using mechanical pencils.” While John has come to accept that all of his games are now programmed using spreadsheets and vector drawing software, he also understands the value of hands-on. “I do still value the tactile sense of the pencil however, and keep a pad of graph paper on my desk at all times, and I hope that at least for me, that never goes away.”

World of Warcraft

Students’ passions can be a powerful driver for deeper and more creative learning. With this knowledge, some educators are using popular commercial games like World of Warcraft (WoW) to create curriculum around the game. And they say they’re seeing success, especially with learners who have had trouble in traditional classrooms.

World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplay (MMOR) game, where players take on the identity of characters in a narrative-rich plot, working together to overcome challenges.

“In my estimation, a well-designed video game is pure, scaffolded, constructivist learning at its best,” said Peggy Sheehy, one of the designers of WoW in Schools, an elective English Language Arts curriculum built around the game. “Mastery of content opens up new content and offers unlimited opportunity for success.” And that’s what learning should be like, she says: interesting, engaging and collaborative. Research on gaming in an educational context corroborates Sheehy’s viewpoint that games demonstrate mastery learning because a player cannot move on until he or she has completed a set of tasks.

Sheehy designs “quests” with particular learning objectives in mind that the students or — “heroes” as they’re called in class — must complete. Quests might include components of comparative writing or characterization exercises. For example, Sheehy had her students read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit as they progressed through the course, and for one assignment, they had to pick a character from the book and categorize that character within World of Warcraft. They were asked to defend their choices in writing, supporting their argument with the text.

“When I bring these to their other teachers, I am consistently told, ‘I don’t get anything like this from them,’” Sheehy said in reference to the writing her students produce. They write complex arguments because they are passionate about the game, the storyline, and the class. “When there is no passion you get dutiful, for the grade work,” she said.

One of the benefits of using a multiplayer, collaborative game is that students also work together to accomplish quests. They post their writing in “guilds” within the game and are asked to critique one another’s writing, creating a constructive peer review.

Perhaps one of the most prominent ways that game-based classes are different from traditional ones is how failure fits into the daily experience of learning. “Failure in a game typically means that you tried the challenge in a new way,” Sheehy said. It’s not bad; it’s creative problem-solving, risk-taking, and a natural outcropping of trying something new. But in most classrooms, kids are programmed to understand failure as shameful at early ages. “Game designers get that failure is anticipated and celebrated. It’s a learning opportunity,” Sheehy said.

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Those accustomed to having assessments be part of the learning model may wonder how to measure things like reading comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary.

“Assessment and gaming are so contradictory,” Sheehy said. “Gaming is almost like the scientific method. You get your quest, you form a hypothesis, you try it out, you encounter challenges and you draw conclusions.” She thinks that’s assessment enough and is wary that formally assessing students will take the fun and the passion out of what she considers to be a very effective education tool.

Flickr:flickingerbrad

If it’s true that 97 percent of teens in the U.S. are playing digital games, then the focus on how games can fit into the shifting education system becomes that much more important. Schools, districts, and individual educators are trying to figure out how games and learning can fit into the current complicated landscape.

The newly released report Games for a Digital Age: K-12 Market Map and Investment Analysis, released by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Games and Learning Publishing Council, describes the many different criteria in play in detail, including obstacles from the policy standpoint, lack of teacher development, as well as how the Bring Your Own Device movement is influencing the push towards games and learning.

“Games are more popular than ever with youth today with many students spending hours a day playing them,” said Michael H. Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. “What we don’t know yet is whether and how they can be a key ally in driving pathways to academic success.”

Though it’s well worth reading the report in its entirety, below are excerpts pulled from the report, conducted and written by Dr. John Richards, Leslie Stebbins and Dr. Kurt Moellering.

ON FINDING WAYS TO USE GAMES WITHIN CLASS TIMES

ON DEFINING GAMES: WHAT QUALIFIES AS EDUCATIONAL?

The language of gaming and learning games is still in flux, and there has been little agreement between experts in the field about what falls under the category of “learning game” and what is not a game, but has “game-like” elements. Not surprisingly, the literature of games contains no agreed upon definition of a learning game. When we asked our interviewees what they considered a game, we found no consensus. One extreme cited any “formative assessment based on an adaptive engine,” while the other cited products with aspects of game mechanics such as badges, rewards, and points. Although the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) Codie awards category is for “Games and Simulations” (and researchers are sometimes careful to distinguish between simulations and games), for the purposes of this report we have included simulations in our broad definition of learning games.

JGCC

Such a wide range of products is confusing to the K-12 audience, because “games” can vary from products that are prototypical to ones that only leverage somewhat extraneous game mechanics to engage and to motivate. Confusion among types of games is of particular concern when examining the research evidence of the effectiveness of games in learning. Most university-based research evaluates learning games in environments that engage students for several weeks with immersive, challenging experiences. Thus, when researchers argue that learning games are efficacious, promote critical thinking, and engage 21st century skills, it is not necessarily clear that these conclusions apply to many shorter forms of learning games.

All games have game mechanics that are the central element of the game and, to some degree, are integrated with the learning content. As James Gee argues in his keynote at the 2012 Games for Change conference, the extent to which the mechanics of creating motivation and directing attention is intrinsic to the content of the game can greatly influence learning outcomes.

Gamification is the use of game-based elements or game mechanics to drive user engagement and actions in non-game contexts. In gamification, the game mechanics are divorced from the content being taught and are instead added in the form of some sort of reward element after completion of an activity. For example, a short-form math game that involves answering math questions where correct answers are followed by a badge or the reward of playing a “dunk the clown” game would be called gamification. David Dockterman, Ed.D., Chief Architect, Learning Sciences with Tom Snyder Productions/Scholastic is concerned about this use of game mechanics, stating “Gamification can begin to undermine a kid’s desire to learn” (CS4Ed interview, March, 2012).

ON SELLING GAMES TO SCHOOLS

The systemic barriers to entry include:

• the dominance of a few multi-billion dollar players;
• a long buying cycle, byzantine decision-making process, and narrow sales window;
• locally controlled decision making that creates a fragmented marketplace of individual districts, schools, and teachers;
• frequently changing federal and state government policies and cyclical district resource constraints that impact the availability of funding;
• the demand for curriculum and standards alignment and research-based proof of effectiveness; and
• the requirement for locally delivered professional development.

However, recent trends provide an increasingly positive arena for learning games and other digital products, including:

• the move to one-to-one computing in schools and the rise of a “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) infrastructure for learning;
• the widespread acceptance and purchase of interactive white boards;
• the improvement of school IT infrastructure and access to the Internet;
• the 2010 National Education Technology Plan;
•  a strong focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills, and more broadly, on higher-order thinking skills;
• an increasing move in schools from print to digital materials and from a highly structured to a somewhat flexible textbook adoption process;
• the increasing interest in Personalized Learning Environments (PLEs) and adaptive engines; and
• an expanding base of research that shows the effectiveness of long-form games in learning.