Changing the Game: What Happens when Video Games Enter the Classroom? 2005. http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id =81 (accessed February 20

Abstract

Over the past few years, games have gone from social pariahs to the darlings of the media, technology, and now educational industries. E-learning educators in particular stand to learn a lot about building next-generation learning environments from games (Dalesio 2004). While online courses are usually little more than "online course notes, " games offer entire worlds to explore. While educators wonder if it is possible to create good online learning communities, game designers create virtual societies with their own cultures, languages, political systems, and economies (Kolbert 2001; Steinkuehler, forthcoming). While completion rates for online courses barely reach 50%, gamers spend hundreds of hours mastering games, writing lengthy texts, and even setting up their own virtual "universities " to teach others to play games (Squire, forthcoming). In short, while e-learning has a reputation for being dull and ineffective, games have developed a reputation for being fun, engaging, and immersive, requiring deep thinking and complex problem solving (Gee 2003). Given emerging research on how video games and associated pedagogies work in designed settings (Shaffer 2005), it seems the important question is not whether educators can use games to support learning, but how we can use games most effectively as educational tools. The explosion of research initiatives, conferences, books, and software focused on educational games suggests that computer and video games