ETEC 544, Digital Games & Learning
Famously, Friedrich Schiller (1794) claimed that persons were ‘most human’ when they were at play. More recently, digital media and learning theorists have suggested that learners may learn best when they are ‘at play’, where serious play and educative/learning action coincide. This course examines play as it is currently developed and popularly imagined in digital games in order to more closely examine what is “learned” and at play in those immersive environments. Although computer gaming represents, for some people, something unfamiliar, potentially subversive and antithetical to education’s intellectual and social goals, play has always been a powerful vehicle for learning. There is little doubt that young people today, who represent computer gaming’s largest and fastest-growing audience, are learning a great deal in and through digital play, but what is it they are learning, and how? The purpose of this course is to give serious attention to and careful analysis of the contemporary digital forms of gameplay.
This course is intended to give an overview of theories of play, including their application in/to digital environments, review the cultural and social aspects of digital game play and the use of digital games for learning and in schooling more generally, and finally, to consider game design strategies and approaches that best suit educational aims and purposes. The primary goal of the course is to consider the scholarship on games, game culture, play, and digital game-based learning within the context of 21st century educational discourses and policies, including the requirement in many educational jurisdictions to provide a code-based curriculum for K-12 learners.
This course will cover, in broad strokes, theories of play, game culture, representation in games, digital game-based learning and thinking through game design. The course is intended to give a balanced overview of the key/pivotal ideas, theories and research in the area. Further, the course is intended to challenge you to think like a game designer who is designing game-based learning environments, while being attentive to the representational and interactional issues present in gameplay culture more broadly.
Learning Objectives
This course and its related assignments, discussion and activities are directed toward the following goals:
- Understand the key theoretical approaches to play
- Describe the approaches to, problematics of, and the key outcomes from game-based learning research
- Critically examine gameplay culture/s and their social and representational implications
- Understand some basic tenets of game design and their application to learning settings
- Gain experience both playing and making digital games
UBC’s Point Grey Campus is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. The land it is situated on has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam people, who for millennia have passed on in their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site.