Play is one of the most effective ways of learning. In fact, you have been “learning by playing” since you were born! Research has shown that students who play games in class learn more, attempt more difficult tasks, and are more motivated to learn. Well-designed instructional games also give relevant, timely feedback and provide students with practice and experience impossible to convey in text alone. Games are usually fun, too!
Three Ways to Do It Better
Game with Intent: Embed the game in your curriculum
To make the most of Game Based Learning in your lessons, the game must be contextualized as a learning tool. Set up learning objectives before playing the game in your classroom. Prime your students with relevant questions, content, and knowledge they will need to think critically about their experience. Use discussion, quizzes, and other feedback methods to ascertain whether or not they have absorbed all the material, and met the objectives. Check out MobLab surveys to learn best practices for running these questions in live lectures and outside the classroom.
Be Spontaneous and Experiment
After all that talk about planning and metrics, don’t be afraid to try adjusting your games to fit questions you may get in class. MobLab economics games have a great feature in that you can run or repeat games almost instantly, adjusting parameters to explain why things happen the way they do and to adapt to classroom situations.
Get Students to Collaborate
Collaboration helps students to learn, but that doesn't mean that they can't challenge each other! Divide your students into small groups or pairs to play against each other, or prompt your students to figure out a solution together after each round. MobLab has multiple online games that have a chat function educators can enable to see how students play and learn when they coordinate their decisions.
Want to learn more about our online economics games or get more tips on Game Based Learning? Get in touch and we would be happy to give you a personalized tour of the MobLab economics games platform.