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Vienne Mari S. Velasco

April 8, 2014

Educational Digital Games: a distraction or a standard learning tool? Digital game based learning has been on the rise of the industry and educational institutions for the past couple of years. This new instructional method has been used to teach students with the goal of engaging and providing them learning opportunities which they can you use in participating in our current technological era. But despite of its upsurge in the industry and educational institutions it also has been receiving a lot of criticism due to a number of existing limitations. Since learning is the result of rich and varied activities, many current e-learning environments propose passive educational models based on storing content that is distributed or consumed rather than learnt and where the current knowledge in the field of pedagogy gets scarce attention. Parents and instructors are concerned that educational digital games will only serve as a distraction to their children or students instead of as a standard learning tool. They are unsure if using these games is worth the end result. According to Dr. Heather Coffey (2009), games may be more distracting than a typical learning tool and that the goals of the games do not necessarily always align with the learning goals of the classroom. There is an impression that students do not learn anything from these games, they are only wasting their time playing rather than being educated. Parents and teachers are distressed that technology can possibly demoralise the learning processes, while at the same time consuming resources and funds allotted for education. Other concerns are that DGBL can dilute learning discipline and teaches students that learning does not require perseverance, critical reading, semiotic connections and collaborative peer learning maybe redundant. In other words, "in addition to teaching the curriculum, technology

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has an unintended effect of discouraging serious learning" (Okan, 2003). Many criticize instructional games, and there is much to criticize. But some of these games dont produce learning. It is not because they are games, or because the concept of game - based learning has its drawbacks. It is because those particular games are badly designed. The real measure of learning is behaviour change - how an individual will intelligently respond to the problems he or she is encountering by applying all the learnings he or she have gained. The proxy that we typically use to measure learning is the test: a series of questions, problems, and hypotheticals that let the learner demonstrate, although in somewhat artificial context, the new behaviours and approaches they have learned. So what people really want to know is: are the tests scores the same as with the other methods of learning? Although there have only been few comparisons between digital game based learning and alternatives conducted this way, the studies that have been done show that learning games that are well designed produce learning while engaging learners. The Lightspan Partnership, now part of Plato Learning, which created PlayStation games for curricular reinforcement in elementary school, measured that when one strips out the recesses, lunch and in-between break times, a typical 9-3 school day actually consists of about three hours of instruction time. If kids get to play their games six hours over a weekend, and the games were only 50 percent educational, they had effectively add a day in a week in their schooling. This would yield, as they hoped, to higher test scores of the students. Lightspan conducted studies in over four hundred individual school districts and performed a meta-analysis of all of them. They found increase in vocabulary and language arts of 24 to 25 percent respectively over the control groups and math problem solving and math procedures and algorithms scores were 51 and 30 percent higher.

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Scientific Learnings Fast ForWord game-based program for retraining kids with reading problems conducted National Field Trials using sixty independent professionals at thirty-five sites across the United States and Canada. Using standardized tests, each of the thirty-five sites concluded the validation of the programs effectiveness, with 90 percent of the children achieving significant gains in or more tested areas. Over and over it is the same simple story. Practice time spent on learning works. People do not like to practice or do not prefer it. Games capture their attention and make it happen. Of course they must be practicing the right things, so design is crucial. To conclude, these educational games cannot be distractive as what the opposing group claims. When properly integrated, though, games can be engaging and effective learning tools, says Brock R. Dubbels, a graduate instructor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Games, by their very nature, assess, measure, and evaluate. When used in the correct way, they can actually increase subject-matter knowledge as well as help students to build higher-order thinking skills (Dubbles, 2010).

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References: Coffey, H.(2009). Digital game-based learning. Retrieved Feb. 25, 2014, from

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4970 Education Week: Digital Directions. (n.d.). Educators Connect Digital Games to Learning. Retrieved April 8, 2014 from

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2010/06/16/03games.h03.html Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II Do they really think Differently? Retrieved April 8, 2104, from http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/PRENSKY%20%20DIGITAL%20NATIVES%20AND%20IMMIGRANTS%202.PDF/30785667/PRENS KY%20-%20DIGITAL%20NATIVES%20AND%20IMMIGRANTS%202.PDF Scientific Learning Corporation.(n.d.). Results of Fast ForWord Training for Children with Language and Reading Problems: National Field Trial Results. Retrieved April 7, 2014 from https://www.scilearn.com/alldocs/rsrch/30319Scienational.pdf Strusinski, M. (2001). Evaluation of LightSpan. Retrieved April 7, 2014 from

http://oer.dadeschools.net/lightspan.pdf