Games+Based+Pedagogy

Games for learning and games based pedagogy. This workshop will use a hands on experience to analyse an on line game in terms of its potential for learning across a range of cognitive domains. It will illustrate how games encourage social interaction, thinking skills and social constructivist pedagogy.

The computer game is here to stay and has become an integral part of the way that people socialise. Increasingly, it is a family pursuit, people play together socially either on line or in real spaces and the advent of computer gaming bridges racial and class divides. There has been considerable interest in the use of computer games for learning mainly due to their ubiquitous nature amongst learners and for their powers of motivation. In 2011 it is generally accepted that computer games not only increasingly engage young people as a leisure pursuit, as outlined previously, but also promote learning. This session will share and attempt to capture game based pedagogy beyond using games in education per se by looking to transfer games based digital pedagogy and learning into activity within classrooms

The workshop will be in three parts. Part 1. A short introduction outlining the range of games available for learning purposes and how they might be used.

Part 2. Participants will play an on line game and analyse the learning processes that it provokes in learners. They will consider how games might be introduced into their own classes.

Part 3. Getting games based pedagogy into learning. Participants will discuss the possibilities for using game based learning pedagogies within school based instruction.

Karl Royle will lead this session. About me. I am currently Principal Lecturer for Curriculum Innovation and Knowledge Transfer at the Centre for Development and Research in Education (CDaRE), University of Wolverhampton where I work as a research project director. I have a background in teacher education, professional development and education management. A former teacher in inner city schooling and manager in post-16 education, I am a teacher educator and advocate of immersive and collaborative learning. I specialise in integrating active and project-based learning, literacy and language development into vocational subjects and latterly video games and digital spaces. My current interests are around the development of thinking skills in game based learning and the skills habits and affordances of ubiquitous technology and its transfer to educational contexts.

I have been working on games and education since around 1999 when I saw the utility for my dyslexic son in improving his reading skills through a computer game. Since that point I have championed the use of computer games for learning. I have written widely on the subject, produced a learning game based on half life two DoomED [|www.desq.co.uk/doomed] and regularly talk on computer games at national and international events. I recently wrote two reports for Becta on the breadth and scope of computer games for learning and the use of computer games for the 14 to 19 cohort. I have convened the research strand of the learning without frontiers game based learning focus for the last two years. [] and am passionate about the area. The session I intend to present here I deliver within teacher education modules at the School of Education and it is intended to ‘turn teachers on ‘ to games in education but also to look at some of the underpinning pedagogical processes that can be used in learning.

Web http://wlv.academia.edu/KarlRoyle []