As game-based learning finds its way into the mainstream of teaching modalities, questions about efficacy will naturally start to surface. Fortunately, there’s a significant amount of research available to help drive this conversation in a positive direction, and more research gets generated and highlighted every year. To help you sort through it all, we’ve assembled some key studies below to deepen your understanding of game-based learning and its impact. Let us know if we’ve missed any on our Facebook or Twitter!
This study investigates the behavioral and cognitive impact of high video game usage on children, and found that high video game usage was associated to higher intellectual function and decreases in peer relationship problems.
Researchers in this study found that video games “enhance various aspects of attention, including selective attention over space and time and attention to objects,” which has significant implications for games’ ability to support the act of learning itself.
As described in this study, the Embedded Design approach to designing games is a methodology for game design that delivers prosocial content without reducing players’ receptivity. This study found that “the techniques that emerge from the Embedded Design approach represent concrete, easily implementable design practices with mounting empirical evidence for their efficacy in stimulating transformative prosocial effects on players.”
This study conducted by Vanderbilt University found that games improved multiple-choice factual outcomes, open-response factual outcomes, evidentiary depth, and student engagement outcomes
Highlighting Filament Games’ own Backyard Engineers, Extra Credits walks us through best practices for game-based learning and the research underpinning this important pedagogy.