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What Video Games Can Teach About Teaching

What Video Games Can Teach About Teaching

What Video Games Can Teach About Teaching

December 8, 2021

By JT Torres

Originally Published Here

Summary

In his landmark 2003 book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy James Paul Gee detailed the ways video games do a better job of facilitating literacy learning than education institutions.

Now is the perfect time to revisit the principles of why video games are so good at teaching and learning in ways most virtual classes don't seem to be.

Video games make frequent use of interest-based interaction with knowledge, promoting self-directed mastery.

Very rarely do video games ask players to passively listen to and absorb information-instead, they deliver information in usable chunks.

The low-stakes challenges of video games empower players to try new strategies and discover novel approaches to problem solving.

Good video games invite the players to also shape the story.

Video games have moments when the action pauses and information is directly communicated to the player.

Reference

Torres, J. (2021, December 8). What Video Games Can Teach About Teaching. Retrieved February 07, 2022, from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2021/12/08/faculty-should-study-video-games-improve-their-teaching-opinion