It is a common belief that engagement and motivation are crucial factors in learning and especially in language learning. In particular, increasing motivation can lead to the mobilization of students' personal, cognitive, emotional and behavioral resources and, consequently to better learning results. As digital technology has become more…

With the recent emergence of the interactive TV, the iTV starts to gain ground as a learning social media forgotten in the last decades due to previously existing applications (smart phones, tablets, laptops) that surpassed it. The TV has always been used as a means of transmission and family conciliatory, but, at the same time, the necessary…

This paper reports a design case for a story-driven language learning game called "Arena." "Arena" was developed in the design science tradition, where purpose-built artifacts are used as a springboard for scientific inquiry. As such, "Arena" is a vehicle for designers and researchers to study the effectiveness of…

Our interaction with digital resources is becoming increasingly based on touch, gestures, and now also eye movement. Many everyday consumer electronics products already include touch-based interfaces, from e-book readers to tablets, and from the last personal computers to the GPS system in your car. What implications do these new forms of…

This paper addresses additional language learning as rooted in participation in the social activity of collaborative game-play. Building on a social-interactional view of learning, it analyses some of the detailed practices through which players attend to a video game as the material and semiotic structure that shapes play and creates affordances…

The essay is a conceptual analysis from an instructional design perspective exploring the feasibility of using three-dimensional digital game-based learning (3D-DGBL) environments to assist in second language acquisition (SLA). It examines the shared characteristics of narrative within theories of situated cognition, context-based approaches to…

The term serious game is often used to refer to "games used for training, advertising, simulation, or education." In this article, the authors use the term computer game in its broadest sense, believing it to encompass the broad spectrum of what is usually referred to now as all digital gaming (video games, console games, online games, etc.). They…

This paper develops the argument that new literacies constitute an indispensable foundation for developing school discourse among 1.5 and newcomer urban adolescents. A mother and literacy educator presents insights learned from indirectly participating in co-constructing Standard English discourse with her newcomer adolescent son through video…

This article reports the potential of online role-playing games to be a powerful tool for English as a second language (ESL) learning. When Professor Edd Schneider and game designer Kai Zheng suggested to attendees gathered in San Francisco last spring for the annual Game Developers Conference that massively multiplayer online role-playing games,…