Tutorial

In Step 2 we aim to create a connection between the games you choose and learning. We will provide a number of sources for you to identify the right games for your classroom. These sources are from actual projects about game based learning and from specialists in the field. But there are also sources from games culture itself, websites, forums, content creators who can help finding the right games. We open up the gates to a fascinating world that can offer the right game for everyone and gives ample opportunity for discovery, immersion and controversial topics for discussion.

2-1 Choosing a game

Useful resources

The first and most important step in bringing games to your classroom is identifying the right game for your specific project. You need ideas and examples to navigate through the enormous amount of possible games, so that you are able to find the right game for your project. But there is help to do so and it comes in different forms. Besides a checklist we already mentioned before, to check on everything relevant about a game for teaching, you need sources to tell you which games might work for you. There are websites and sources for teachers like

Games for Change, Common Sense Media, Spieleratgeber NRW, spielbar.de or bupp.at

to identify games. But there are also more resources explicitly created for helping you to do so.

Resources for teachers to bring games to the classroom are plentiful, ranging from a wide variety of sources from American institutions and companies like “How to Teach with Games” from Filament Games, a provider of quality learning games, to KQED’s Mindshift - Guide to Digital Games + Learning”. Both are valuable sources to understand the basics of teaching with games and give some recommendations for games as well.

In European projects game based learning manuals were created like “Games in Schools - Using educational games in the classroom: guidelines for successful learning outcomes. A handbook for teachers” or “Game-Based Learning for Teachers. A Journey Through a World of New Ideas” . They go one step further and present a manual that shows and explains the main aspects of using games in class.

And there are also guides and manuals from National initiatives and institutions like from Luxemburg “Digital spielend lernen” from SCRIPT (Service de Coordination de la Recherche et de l’Innovation pédagogiques et technologiques), the national institute for development and innovation in education, or “Game Based Learning im Unterricht. Wie man digitale Spiele im Unterricht einsetzen kann” from several partners in an Austrian project like Donau Universität Krems and bupp.at, a government website that presents games and their potential for use in learning.

You can also have a look at more academic literature like the three book series Learning, Education & Games edited by Karen Schrier that collects articles on the topic of Game Based Learning presenting specific projects and relevant aspects about games in learning and in Volume 3 compiles a list of more than 100 games interesting for classroom use.

Of course, you can find a game in a completely different way, too. A game does not need to be part of the lists mentioned above to be a valuable tool for teaching in your classroom. Maybe you have heard of a promising game from friends or colleagues or there is this one game your students keep talking about all the time and it might be the right choice to bring it to your classroom. The game might also be already available in your school library, though this might probably be only the case for some board or card game titles. It does not matter where you heard from the game, the first and foremost reason to choose a game to find more about for teaching reasons is because you are interested in it.

Selecting a game

It is important to consider, if the learning that is going to happen in your project is in- or outside of the game. If it is outside of the game, you might be more flexible when it comes to the integration and the technical aspects of your project. The model of how to use games for classroom learning by Tom Hildgen (presented in Step 3) shows other possibilities to integrate games in your teaching beyond playing them with your whole class.

Another consideration is the size of the game. Size is an expression that sounds a little fuzzy and we do not really mean the size of the program on a harddrive, though this often corresponds. We are talking about the total length of the game, the length and number of gameplay sessions in your project and the complexity of presentation. Smaller games with shorter playtime are easier to learn and enable players to play the game pretty quickly. The mobile games market actually has this as a foundational principle. Do not waste any time and make the player enjoy the game as quickly as possible, as the free-to-play market sees users install a game and, if they are not hooked by the gameplay, leave the game behind within a few minutes and proceed to the next game. This is a consideration that speaks for using mobile games, but there are other aspects like monetization or the use and abuse of personal user data that present additional challenges for using mobile games.

Besides that, the learning principles by James Paul Gee (p. 56) that can be found in good games are developed on the basis of longer and more complex games. If a game is singleplayer, short and small, it does not enable creating an identity through gameplay, customizing the gameplay experience, playing cooperatively or enabling systemic understanding. But larger games like Minecraft, Cities: Skylines or Kerbal Space Program are much more demanding to be integrated into a project. If your school doesn’t offer the equipment for using these games, the only way to approach them might be by showing gameplay, discussing and reflecting on it. If you haven’t worked with games yet, we do not recommend starting out with such a big game. You might miss out on some especially interesting aspects of game based learning in the project, but you need to get used to this new approach and this is easier done through using a game with less requirements and less complexity in playing and preparing it for class.

Fitting a game into your teaching

It might still be a little early to consider how to fit a game into your lessons. But we still like to remind you that the size and complexity of a game can be a valid reason for not bringing it to your classroom. If the game play sessions are just too long for class or the interface is way too complex for your students, then this game might not be applicable in your classroom. As you will later see, these considerations actually led to the decision by many of the teachers in the project to start out with a solution that seemed easier to apply and therefore decided to use analog games or even ‘only’ game-like playful tools instead of ‘proper’ digital games.

There is a lot more to keep in mind when bringing a game as a tool for learning to your classroom, but we will come back to that later. For now, when choosing a game and starting to play it, be aware that your experience with the game (especially in the beginning) might be similar to that of your students. If you find a game hard to approach, if there are general difficulties with game play or the interfaces, keep that in mind when deciding if this game fits into your teaching.

The joy in playing a game might only be achieved after a few hours of gameplay or maybe by finding help from others or even only after you have mastered a set of completely new controls. So, it is also necessary to be aware of the experience with games the students bring to your classroom. If your students do not play digital games on a regular basis, they might be as challenged as you are or even more when starting out with the game. If they are gamers, then it might be easy for them to understand the control scheme and the (visual) language the game uses to present relevant information. You might even use the help of your students to approach a game, especially if you choose one the students know well. There might also be the opportunity to learn from your students, if they know the hardware and the game and can help with the gameplay or even the preparation of your project.

2-2 Playing a game

Starting out with a game

You finally made it. Now, it is time to really start playing. Depending on the game, you might be welcomed in completely different ways. A mobile game tries to convince you of its core game mechanic and the gameplay within the first sixty to ninety seconds. That is about the amount of time (all proven scientifically) a typical user gives the game, until he or she decides to move on, uninstall and install the next free-to-play game. With games on other platforms and especially following other monetization models, you will be welcomed completely differently. You have bought a copy of the game and what now? Some games are more simple in gameplay, others are much more complex. Some games offer you explanations for how to play and guide you through this process by presenting a tutorial, a more or less separate portion of the game that is specifically designed to teach you how to play. But even if a game is complex and challenging, it might still avoid active teaching and send you on a journey of experimentation and finding out on your own. If you are new to the medium, if the interface is far from clear or you enter an open world with seemingly endless possibilities, you will feel lost pretty soon. There is just too much to take in, to understand and to choose from. This feeling is nothing specific for you as a newcomer. Also more experienced players are faced with these challenges. And you might have guessed it already, help is just around the corner.

For most players it is common sense by now that you use other sources around the game, mostly created by its community. We will come back to the concept of prosumers (see Guidebook p. 65 later) and offered for free on the internet. Gamers have abundant sources to communicate and learn from each other. YouTube is full of Let’s Play videos, guides and reviews. There are also forums and websites to find the information you are looking for. Gamers share their knowledge and experience with other gamers. These sites are first and foremost valuable sources of information, especially for you as a newcomer to find out more and learn the basics. But they are also an invitation to actively contribute to the development of knowledge within a game’s community. This offers great opportunities to be integrated into your project. But for now, it might be the help you need to start enjoying a game like Stardew Valley, Epistory: Typing Chronicles, Planet Coaster or The Sims 4.

In contrast to a movie or even a shorter book, games are long and extensive experiences. Do not expect to understand and master a game within a few hours. There are of course shorter games that only ask for this amount of your time. But especially more complex and challenging games like the ones mentioned before will ask for many hours of gameplay. Do not shy away from this investment, it might seem too much for you to play a game for thirty or fifty hours to really appreciate its content and its potential for game based learning, but it is worth it. You don’t need to play every game you would like to evaluate for your teaching this thoroughly to be able to decide if it is worth the effort. All the sources around games mentioned above and below help you with this decision and watching a review or part of a Let’s Play is much easier and less work than extensive gameplay.

Using additional sources to find out

To learn more about games and their culture you can use a number of sources. YouTube channels, podcasts, websites and wikis are a great way to understand the topic and its many facets. A few good sources for learning might be:

Adam Millard - The Architect of Games (YouTube Channel)
Errant Signal (YouTube Channel)
Extra Credits (YouTube Channel)
Game Maker’s ToolKit (YouTube Channel)
Games as Literature (YouTube Channel)
Joseph Anderson (YouTube Channel)
Luke Stephens (YouTube Channel)
Noclip - Video Game Documentaries (YouTube Channel)
Razbuten (YouTube Channel)
The Psychology of Video Games (Podcast)
What’s Good Games (Podcast)
Waypoint Radio (Website, Podcast)
Rock, Paper, Shotgun (Website)
Kotaku (Website)

Beyond that, many more possibilities exist. We talked about Let’s Play channels, but you need to be careful, especially when using them in the classroom. They might present content that is not appropriate for school use or other behaviour that is problematic. These creators are mostly not journalists or educators and they quite often do not follow standards that we are used to from official media outlets or academic work. The ones we mentioned above are, at least in our experience, suitable for classroom use and can be recommended for an educational context. But games culture offers many more possible sources for research and information about games.

Fan fiction, guides, wikis and Let’s Plays exist around every single more or less successful game. To give a very popular example, Minecraft offers a huge number of sources and to mention a few:

Other games offer a similar amount of information around the game, i.e. wikis, forums, and guides. Maybe games like Surviving Mars, Anno 1800 (and the other games in that series), or Age of Empires II can serve as good examples here. We will come back to the topic of content creators and Let’s Play videos in Step 5.

Let’s Play - Presentation of our work/material/videos

Video James Paul Gee - Games and Education Scholar James Paul Gee on Video Games, Learning, and Literacy

Video James Paul Gee - James Paul Gee on Learning with Video Games

Videos teachers

Maria Storm-Holm from VUC in Denmark describes her experience when using games in her classroom.

Lillan Hallangen from FØNIX AS talks about her experience when working with games in her classroom.

Ilias Batzogiannis from Platon School Katerini describes his work with games in the classroom.

Louisa Picirillo-Kadri from CityLit London speaks about her experience using games in the classroom.

Achievement - Exercises following the topic

Describe your research for finding a game to play for class. What were the sources you used? What were the titles you identified and why were they interesting to you?

2 Watch the videos by James Paul Gee and describe what you took away from them? What did you learn about games from the videos?

3 Choose one of the teacher videos and compare the teacher’s approach to what you are planning to do with the game you choose.