How Game-Based Learning Prepares Students for the Future

Educators are constantly searching for new tools for online environments. One solutions that they’re turning to more often nowadays is game-based learning. One of the best ways for students to learn is through play – and as 76% of children under 18 already play video games – incorporating video games into their learning seems like a no brainer.

Exposing students to a learning method they are already familiar with helps educators focus on and deliver important lessons. Games can be used to teach students about complex modern world problems. They can also teach students how to be better prepared for the future.

In addition to the importance of play, another benefit to bringing video games into a K-12 classroom is the opportunity to frame lessons around recent, real-life examples. Interacting with the game itself, as well as other students while playing the games, teaches students valuable skills necessary for their future.

“Video games allow for dynamic learning curriculum,” says Stanley Pierre-Louis, President and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association. “When you have a structured curriculum that has a textbook, the changes come slowly over the years. Game makers can write and update games flexibly with respect to current events and learning goals.”

Minecraft: Education Edition is one popular game that educators use to break down complex challenges into easy, digestible lessons for students.

Minecraft has educational editions of their games such as Good Trouble: Lessons in Social Justice and Active Citizen, which teach students about civil rights movements and Nobel Peace Prize laureates, respectively.

These games provide guided lessons that allow students to find their own solutions in the game’s “sandbox mode.” This mode encourages players to find solutions to complex and open-ended problems akin to those they just learned about.

“Once they’re done with the game play, Minecraft allows students to build solutions to problems within the game,” says Arana Shapiro, Managing Director and Chief Learning Officer at Games for Change. “They can try new things in a way that they might not be able to in real life. They’re able to take on different perspectives, do complex problem-solving. They’re able to work collaboratively and think systematically, and all of those things are able to happen in their classroom, playing a game.”

Video games aren’t just a tool to help the educators teach their lessons. Game-based interaction teaches students digital citizenship skills too. They’ll develop skills that will help them succeed in a future that is already moving toward a digital landscape.

“A lot of tech giants are reorganizing their businesses to start inventing the metsaverse,” says Allison Matthews, head of Minecraft Education and Microsoft. “From our perspective, the metaverse already exists in places like Minecraft or in other video games where people are meeting in a virtual space, creating the world they want to live in and having the adventures they want to have.”

As companies look to “the metaverse” as the next step in online social and business platforms, Matthews shares that “creating metaverses means creating many digital spaces where adventures can happen and people can connect or create together.”

One way to prepare students for the future is to introduce them to topics and challenges in a safe digital space. Video games provide a contained learning environment where students learn to interact with other students, as well as the game.

“They’ll probably argue, and they’ll have to figure out how to work that out,” Matthews says. “Getting to have this conflict and figuring out how to communicate and collaborate to build something great together will give students context and skills they can then translate into the real world.”

One of Matthews’ favorite aspects about the students playing games, she says one of her favorite things is when students try to break the game. She loves with the students push the games boundaries of what the game should do, and “look under the hood” at the way the code and AI are working.

“There’s passion, there’s creativity, and they’re using this passion to fuel next-level exploration and thinking, which exactly is the point of having a game like Minecraft in the classroom,” she says.

These behaviors in students while playing the game shows that their curiosity is piqued, allowing them to learn though their attempts to take the game apart. This mindset can lead to students becoming coding experts or game designers themselves. On its most basic level, it teaches them to interact with AI technology and all the ways humans influence the digital world.

All of these skills are necessary to allow students to become good digital citizens in the future. Educators who have yet to bring games into the classroom may be surprised at what they can teach students, and what students can discover within themselves.

Story via EdTech Magazine