Games And Simulations Effect On Higher Education
As the development of technology is rising by each day, the industry of virtual reality making has grown too. The use of games and simulations keeps increasing every year. More and more kids and students are eager to spend their free time playing video games. Probably, they consider it a great way to escape from reality and all the problems around them. The easiest way to do it is to let yourself into the unknown, imagined world and leave your thoughts aside. This wouldn’t be a problem at all if students use it just for fun. Unfortunately, many get addicted to it and because of it, other things often have to suffer, like school. Anyways, we will be focusing on what are the effects of the games and simulations on higher education and how gamification is used in studying.
Adapting The Old Games For Classroom Use
Gamification of learning is an approach by professionals to motivate students to learn by using something they like, video games. More about this you can find on writepaperforme reviews.
One way of how it can be used in studying is by adapting some old-school games for classroom use. There are many educational video games available for students both online and offline. Maybe you can try to adapt some of those games into the classroom. For example, you can make some quizzes for the students where they will compete and use their knowledge to get the highest score. You can give them further motivation to do it by giving the appropriate grades for those who show the best knowledge. Split the class into 3 groups and give them the same task. They should be working together in groups without cheating. At the end, who comes with the best solution wins. There are many video games related to quizzes so, this way, students will learn more about teamwork which can have quite positive results afterward.
Create A Certain Quest
Research of games and simulations is usually focused on 3 different outcomes of student’s learning (https://wikiedu.org/blog/category/student-learning-outcomes/). They are cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Some of those outcomes can get to the surface if you create a certain quest for the students. The point of such quests may lay in giving the student a possibility of choice. Learning based on choices is an approach of the teacher to bring student’s motivation to its peak.
A lot of teachers used to give students a menu of assignments where they have to select something from already chosen things. It is better to give them the right to choose what assignment they can solve. This will give them a taste of gamification that uses a questline structure because quest lines are used often in video games.
Conceptualization Of Games May Be Helpful
It has been noticed in recent years that the interest in examining game use has raised up quickly. It is often the case that scholars, from time to time, include video games in the interactive exercises. What scholars and educators find it hard to agree on is finding clear definitions and terminology even though there is the exuberance of game types available. However, due to a constant need for shared terminology, game developers, and academics in higher education mostly agree on what types of games students should use.
- Adventures
- Action Games
- Role-playing Games
- Simulations
- Sport Games
- Games That Consist Any Type Of Fighting
- Strategy Games
All of these types of games can provide something useful for the students that they can accept and learn. For instance, adventure-related games require a player to solve certain problems by passing the levels. Strategy related games can provide a recreation of some historical events where students must use their own strategy to achieve their goal. Those types of games can be truly beneficial for students who like spending their time playing them. All of them have their purposes, goals, and even messages for the users. The effects of it can be encouraging for the students who prefer those video games. They can develop some things from it, like making strategic moves at the right moment and organizing the ideas.
Besides, it has to be mentioned that the development of “serious” games increased throughout the past years. The primary purpose of them is not entertainment and having fun. Through these games, students can develop their full potential on things they perhaps thought they never possessed.
Extraction Of Data
Using gamification in learning implies involving numerous aspects like educational context, game elements, learning possible outcomes, so as to gamify the environment. All of these aspects can have an immense impact on a student’s understanding of the gamification process. Evaluating the student’s possibilities of understanding the gamification usually focuses on demonstrating the motivational effects in educational contexts. People, especially students, can get motivation from multiple sources and in many different ways. It depends on the situation they are in at a particular moment.
In order to provide the appropriate support to the students, researchers usually fix their sights on a couple of categories from which they can extract the data: study duration, method of data collection, study sample, and possible outcome. By collecting and extracting the data from those categories, researchers can get additional information about a student’s educational level, learning activity, and so on.
Conclusion
A gamification process is all about increasing the engagement of the students and allowing them to learn by including the materials or elements from the games they play. The first thing that people think of when you mention the video game and a student in the same sentences is probably the word addiction. But we proved that gamification can have totally the opposite effect. If a student is in the right hands and willing to learn how he should apply the methods of gamification learning, only positive things can come out of it. So, if you are a student who is not sure about it, hopefully, our information can make you think twice!
