KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Gaming for Skills

Games in education or to improve skills has a long history but lately the educational potential of video games has gained some focus. After a wave a pedagogical game in the 1990s, the question is now on the potential usage of video games in the classroom. While many advocate for it, the how is still very nebulous for most teachers it remains complex to set up despite a clear potential

Teachers need guidance to use with video games to teach.

Video games can introduce a concept with which the player can interact and even think back on their own skills. This would be a perfect description for a school lesson, therefore institutions in Europe to advocate for their use in the classroom.

Serious or educational game approach came with challenges: they are often less engaging to students.

Teachers are still at loss as to how to use video games in the classroom because:

they lack practical guidance,
hierarchies and parents have prejudices about video games,
existing guidance can be theoretical or outdated,
existing guidance might only cover one aspect of using a specific game at school, e.g., Assassin’s Creed in history class. But such games could be useful in other subjects or in a cross-curricular setting too,
a lot of serious games have the fun taken out and end up as being yet another lesson or test that the learner has to follow,
to support students’ understanding of how video games work and encourage those who are less tech-savvy to try something just a bit technical, it is valuable to create video games with them.

Thus, we believe there is a need to create guidance material to use video games in pedagogy.

Video games can be great vectors for cross-curricular and innovative pedagogies.

Although competence-based and cross-curricular education are identified as priorities in EU policies since 2006 (recommendation 2006/962/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning), there is little guidance by EU ministries on how to implement these goals. Another Erasmus+ project, “Cross curricular-teaching, explored the state of competence-based and cross-curricular teaching in education across Europe, in policies and in practice. They noted that in absence of official guidance, cross-curricular activities were at best perceived as extra-curricular or optional activities, and that in the end, they depended on the motivation of the pedagogical teams. In August 2019, the partners of this project made 5 recommendations to support the development of such methods at school, to which we think that video games answer in the following ways:

cross-curricular teaching and learning must be integrated explicitly in national curricula: our project will highlight the links between school subjects and video games
curricula should stay flexible enough to keep the autonomy of teachers when they implement cross-curricular teaching: we will link video games and the main subjects
need for resources: we will provide actionable guidance supported by theory
cross-curricular teaching needs appropriate evaluation tools: we will include self-evaluation sheets for students to measure their acquired skills
development of cross-curricular methods should be supported across the community: 1) our outputs will contain factsheets for teachers to communicate with their peers and hierarchy to use video games, 2) one outputs will deal with game creation.

Objectives: for all the reasons above, we will work on developing practical guidance for teachers to use video games in the classroom for cross-curricular teaching, as well as encouraging students to create their own games as learning by doing projects.

NEEDS:

development of key competences in cross-curricular collaboration, creativity & innovative learning
innovative teaching and assessment, to promote competence-based teaching & learning
digital & open pedagogies,
promote access & use of ICT education by underrepresented groups, in particular learners with SLDs or girls

TARGET GROUPS:

Secondary level teachers
European secondary learners in general
Learners with Specific Learning Disorders (SLDs)

This project should be carried our transnationally because:

Cross-curricular and competence-based teaching are still perceived as difficult to implement in Europe despite official recommendations
Video games benefit from a rather positive image in Belgium and France for example, but it is not the case in all other countries: the methodology needs to be validated in different cultures
Learners with SLDs account for 10 to 15% of the EU population, it is essential to spread inclusive teaching practices.

The following OER will be produced during this project:

A booklet on why video games belong in the classroom
A practical on how to use video games in the classroom
4 experience libraries of pedagogical modules: as spectators, as creators, as single players or in groups with 88 experiences and recommendations

Project Duration: 01/11/2020 – 31/10/2022

Project Number: 2020-1-FR01-KA201-93310334

Website: www.gaming4skills.eu

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.