Why Serious Games? 6 Key Benefits
We’ve heard A LOT about game-based learning lately. Here we bring you an extract from our recent whitepaper, including a run-down of 6 benefits of games in learning, and some clarification around the difference between ‘games’, 'serious games', and ‘gamification’.
Benefit 1: Engagement
With active engagement, serious games lead to discovery, observation, trial and error, and problem-solving, important aspects of learning (Dickey, 2005).
Benefit 2: Flow
Video games promote ‘flow’ when there is a perceived balance between the challenge and skills required - the player knows what to do (has goals) and how successful they are via immediate feedback (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991).
Benefit 3: Sharing
Games typically allow users to share their scores with others and see it displayed on leaderboards, making it competitive, which is a natural driver of human behavior (Squire and Jenkins, (2003). This can support groups of learners, even when geographically distributed, and develop team-based skills, leadership, coordination, and communication skills (de Freitas, 2006).
Benefit 4: Learning by doing
Games provide a learning environment where players discover new rules by interacting and exploring the game, rather than memorizing them, leading to knowledge acquisition (Squire, 2011), and self-motivation, thus becoming more active in their own learning (Michael and Chen, 2006).
Benefit 5: Monitoring progress
The effects of corporate training applications must be measurable; the distinction must be made between ‘performance’ and ‘learning outcomes’. Gameplay often focuses on performance, measuring skills that have already been mastered while discouraging trial and error but may not measure the depth of knowledge gained. Assessment can be quantitative and qualitative and should allow learners to get feedback on the consequences of their actions.
Benefit 6: Risk-free
Simulation allows learners to experience something too costly, risky, or ethically unacceptable in real-life (Corti, 2006). But this approach assumes players can see the similarities/context and may need support transferring the knowledge (Crookall, 2010). Many papers have emphasized how games should be used to enhance training, not replace it (Science Daily, 2010).
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