What is game-based learning, and why should writing teachers of all levels give it their attention? Game-based learning (GBL) pedagogy is an interdisciplinary, multimodal pedagogy that utilizes games and the deep learning principles embodied by games to increase student motivation, engagement, and performance. In the past few years, it has received much focus from a curious mainstream and academic media, particularly at the K-8 level where learning through playing with crafts, flash cards, or simulations is common. However, despite an explosion of GBL efficacy studies in higher-ed disciplines that include the liberal arts (Saliés, 2002; Phillips, 2003), very little research has been done on how to teach high school and college writing faculty, especially the Luddites, to actually use this high-powered pedagogy. Not to mention, no one has listed which games are best for writing, and why.
As a game designer, college English professor, and co-founder of the CUNY Games Network in New York City, I’ve studied the principles of good games and found, like James Gee, that they are the same as the principles of good teaching exercises. If you’re a K-8 instructor, you’ve no doubt located countless educational games and activity books, but little theory about the precise learning principles behind these games, and little help as to how you can design your own. If you’re a high school or college teacher, the same theory and design problems subsist, compounded by another barrier—that lists of upper-level educational games are almost non-existent, lost in the theoretical discussion and research studies about computer games.
So I’m going to present both rules and material. First, an overview of game-based learning and how it can help you and your students. Next, my recommended list of commercially-available composition games for all ages such as Apples to Apples. Finally, mechanics for turning any of your lessons into games of your own design. My rules will be valuable to instructors at all levels of composition, although my examples and arguments will favor teachers between high school to college, since this area is particularly unexamined.
Don’t worry, there’s no video games or MMORPGs here, since my main hope is to educate you about GBL enough to motivate you to design your own educational games (yes, using just MS-Word or Powerpoint). I am a firm believer that cheap, low-tech games can really transform the social and academic dynamic of a classroom. Since video games are dependent upon their platforms, a lot of development money, or an overly generous programmer colleague, for flexibility, cost, and lasting reliability there is only one long-term solution for teaching with games: embrace the use of non-digital tabletop games.
Yet before we invite a bunch of noisy games into our classroom, let us first understand how game-based learning is very similar to already established composition theories.
