The increasingly neoliberal course of Higher Education is linked to rises in student anxiety around assessment and increased fear of the consequences of failure. Making mistakes is an inevitable part of any learning process (and of life generally) and managing failure in a productive and positive way is crucial for success and wellbeing beyond…

This article discusses the application of game design thinking as a learning process for scaffolding co-creativity in Higher Education based on the GameChangers initiative (gamify.org.uk) part-funded by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE). Taking into account the relationship between play, technology and learning, the game…

21st Century Standards and the Deeper Learning movement emphasize the ability to think critically and solve complex problems, to work well in teams, and to communicate effectively. While traditional classroom activities can meet these objectives, digital games and simulations provide unique affordances. When designed to incorporate formative…

With technological advances, it is now possible to use games to capture information-rich behaviours that reveal processes by which players interact and solve problems. Recent problem-based games have been designed to assess and record detailed interactions between the problem solver and the game environment, and thereby capture salient solution…

Social media has created new possibilities for digitally native students to engage, interact and collaborate in learning tasks that foster learning processes and the overall learning experience. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this article discusses experiences and challenges of using a social media-enhanced collaborative learning…

In this paper an educational design proposal is presented which combines two well established teaching approaches, that of Game-based Learning (GBL) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The context of the proposal was the design of an educational geography computer game, utilizing QR Codes and Google Earth for teaching English…

For a child to learn through Problem-Solving in Serious games, the game scaffolding mechanism has to be effective. Scaffolding is based on the Vygotzkian Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) concept which refers to the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as…