A large number of today’s educational games in contrast to current commercial computer games do not engage learners as they suffer from distractive and incoherent learning and gaming experience, low interactivity, linear learning paths, poor storytelling, poor graphics and weak adaptivity.
Modern computer games let their players enter the virtual worlds by offering a high degree of interactivity and realism. They turn the user into the active protagonist and hero, who can act by using more and more complex game features. The “gamer” is embedded in a fascinating universe with its own rules and residents to be discovered. By his own actions and the involvement of the player into the framework stories the game becomes important and meaningful to him.
Digital learning environments can benefit from the wide experience of modern computer games by providing holistic learning experience – since pure information does not become knowledge until it is imparted within a context and can therewith be experienced. However, the mystery of these games is closely related to learning: it is essential to meet a challenge and a task, to solve problems, to improve and of course to be awarded. One plays a game in order to win. This is precisely how the human brain can be motivated to learn: We want to understand ourselves, explore and understand the world around us and raise the challenge – if we succeed, we obtain comprehension and self-confidence. And we want to discover and know even more.
Entertaining computer games offer to the gamer a parallel universe and provide to him alternative views of the world. In addition, they have become more and more complex. At the same time computer simulations have become a crucial instrument for scientific research and the discovery of new research findings. However, ELEKTRA tries to narrow the remaining gap between entertaining games and the scientific use of computers in our knowledge society.
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