On Wednesday, I will be speaking at the Children’s Health Education Specialist Symposium in London. I’ve been asked to share some thoughts on how the use of games in the classroom can help with addressing ‘difficult’ topics. I’m excited to be able to share some ideas and to get some feedback on my approach to using serious games.
I’ll be talking about the benefits that serious games can bring - in both offering elements of control that we might not have through other classroom-based pedagogical devices (for example in the discussion of case studies) and through the impact of enjoyment and engagement in delivering meaningful learning. Whilst I don’t use games for the same purposes as the conference attendees - I hope we will be able to learn something from one another about the potential that they offer.
Making games useful - using them to support learning - requires more than just enjoying ourselves in the classroom. Evidence from the evaluations of other applications of serious games suggests two factors are important. Firstly, participants need to ‘engage’ in the game - they need to make realistic decisions and to participate in an experience that they recognise as sufficiently similar to ‘real life’. Secondly, the game must be reinforced with reflection and discussion in which the learning to be taken away from the session is brought out and participants given the chance to place it back within their experience.