The paper intends to develop a student-centered and school-based method to incorporate computer game play (GP) and game design (GD) activities into school by discovering students' views about why and how to incorporate. The paper first critiques the current GP and GD activities, which are designer-centric on a touch-and-go basis, falling short of…

As children's digital lives become more relevant to schools and educators, the question of play and learning is being revisited in new and interesting ways. "Children's Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning, and Participation" provides a more reasoned account of children's play engagements in virtual worlds through a number of scholarly…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have begun to develop hybrid systems that balance the learning benefits of ITSs with the motivational benefits of games. iSTART-ME (Motivationally Enhanced) is a new game-based learning environment developed on top of an existing ITS for reading comprehension (iSTART). In an 11 session lab-based study, 40 high…

Objective: To analyse the interrelated processes of identity, participation and knowledge in the context of the health educational Lifecalculator computer game. The analysis focuses on if and how this school-based health promotion initiative communicated relevant health knowledge to adolescents. Further development of the concept of health…

Major advances in multimedia computer technology over the past decades have made sophisticated computer games readily available to the public. This, combined with the observation that most children, including those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), show an affinity to computers, has led researchers to recognize the potential of computer…

Research about emerging best practices in the learning sciences points to the potential of deploying digital games as one possible solution to the twin challenges of weak student engagement and the need for more robust achievement in literacy, science, technology, and math. This chapter reviews key cross-cutting themes in this special volume,…

This paper presents a course design model created in response to the pedagogical challenges inherent in a 'Big Questions' course in the humanities. We conceptualize the model as an Open Dynamic Educational Project (ODEP), namely, a carefully designed learning environment--physical, intellectual, and digital--which comprises "both" a…

In this study, we investigated and compared solitary and collaborative modes of game-based learning in promoting students' science learning and motivation. A total of fifty seventh grade students participated in this study. The results showed that students who played in a solitary or collaborative mode demonstrated improvement in learning…

Digital games have become popular due to great technological improvements in recent years. They have been increasingly transformed from co-located experiences into multi-played, socially oriented platforms (Herodotou, 2009). Multi-User Online Games provide the opportunity to create a social environment for friendships and strengthen the…

In computer gaming situations in kindergartens, the pre-school teacher's function can be viewed in a continuum. At one extreme is the teacher who takes an intervening role and at the other extreme is the teacher who chooses to restrict herself/himself to an organising or distal role. This study shows that both the intervening position and the…

Marine education comprises rich and multifaceted issues. Raising general awareness of marine environments and issues demands the development of new learning materials. This study adapts concepts from digital game-based learning to design an innovative marine learning program integrating augmented reality (AR) technology for lower grade primary…

The study reported here was conducted to investigate the perceptions of high school students on the use of educational games as a tool for teaching the periodic table of elements in a chemistry class in Spain. The 127 students who participated in this study came from six different classes in grade 10 (15-16 years old). The students' perceptions of…

The proliferation of online simulation games across the globe in many different languages offers Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) researchers an opportunity to examine how language learning occurs in such virtual environments. While there has recently been an increase in the number of exploratory studies involving learning experiences of…

It is widely acknowledged that digital games can provide an engaging, motivating and "fun" experience for students. However an entertaining game does not necessarily constitute a meaningful, valuable learning experience. For this reason, experts espouse the importance of underpinning serious games with a sound theoretical framework which…

In order to explore one aspect of the engaging nature of computer games, this study will propose a method that aims at classifying the experience of engagement in video games. Inspired by a literature review, we will focus on the fundamental causes of engagement that motivate a player so much that he or she wants to continue playing. By organizing…