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The purpose of this article is to introduce the benefits of game‐based learning in the corporate business environment. Corporations and other organizations around the world are recognizing that games promote cognitive reasoning and information retention. These days, games are much more advanced, immersive and engaging.

VIA Learning works with global Fortune 500 companies. The article is based on customer needs and technical expertise of VIA Learning instructional designers.

Game‐based learning is a viable option for global businesses.

The article introduces the benefits of game‐based learning in the corporate business environment.

Game-based learning or simulation-based learning – especially Serious Games – are notions of the contemporary discourse on digitalisation in the higher education sector in Germany. These methods offer a more vivid and motivating learning context and they help to improve important competencies for reaching work-related higher education goals. This explorative study focuses on experts’ experiences with digital and non-digital serious games and their contribution towards developing self, social and management competencies, in the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College in Hamburg (Germany). Whilst there are numerous opportunities for using serious games in higher education, their use creates barriers for addressing social, as well as leadership/management competencies. In the future, game-based learning – and more specifically, digital game-based learning – could challenge the relation between learning as hard work and learn for fun, and between explicit and goal-oriented learning and implicit, incidental and explorative learning.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss an assignment using videogames to demonstrate theories from in-class readings. Game-like learning principles (Gee, 2007), collaborative learning in games (Echeverria et al., 2011) and gamification (Sheldon, 2012) are just a few examples of the discussion areas in videogames and education research. But as Rice (2014) finds, there are few available lesson-plans and examples of everyday classroom use of popular videogames.

In response to this need, this paper discusses classroom use of free popular videogames as cultural artifact examples for course content discussions in a Videogames and Literacies Junior Writing Course offered within an English department.

This paper describes the assignment and learning goals, specifically discussing the first iteration and subsequent changes made to aid students in their presentations and learning. Included in this paper are discussions of technology affordances within the classroom space, student reactions and student successes and failures with games. This assignment asks students to find a videogame example to use as demonstrations of the course material as they lead class discussion.

Asking students to use videogames and game play to engage course content also engages students in higher-order cognitive thinking about play and game mechanics, helps students analyze course material and develops presentation skills using videogames to discuss course material. In examining videogames as more than just entertainment, students see games as learning tools with ways of teaching culture, teaching learning and testing learning.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact a games-based curriculum can have on library and information science (LIS) curriculum.

This is a worked example, using a case study and iterative design approach. Each iteration of this course and the reports are from the respective opinions of the instructors.

The authors found that once students looked past games as being pleasant distractions and were able to see them as both context-rich and well-designed learning environments, they were conducive in bringing games to libraries to spur interest-driven learning. Some students tackled analog and digital game design, while others would play historical games and tie those back to available books, and still others used board and video games to bring parents and their children together through play. While these findings do not dictate that this would work in all situations, presenting games and play as an inclusive practice that spans topics and interests was successful.

This research focuses on an LIS course and its development. Research and best practices in this course better inform future designs on how to take games-based design and interest-driven learning into broader areas to use games to spur interest and learning. The authors do not claim that our individual approaches to this class are the best methods in any course using games-based learning. Yet instructors in other fields can take what the authors learned, and the different approaches used to teaching games-based learning, and augment based on the authors’ experiences.

This worked example demonstrates that a games-based curriculum can help generate interest in informal learning spaces, such as in libraries.

The value of this paper is to emphasize the impact that games and games research can have on other disciplines. Games-based and interest-driven learning are broad enough that their usefulness in other fields is worth consideration. Libraries have been commonly looked at as “old” spaces to acquire knowledge. Combining “old” and “new” technologies to serve a more technologically savvy demographic not only helps the field of games-based learning, but also helps those in LIS how to better service a new generation of learners in collaborative relationships.

This paper (published in two consecutive issues of On the Horizon) aims to contextualize research on games for learning by describing the current drivers of innovation in learning technologies situated within broader trends in open educational publishing.

The paper begins with an overview of changes, driven largely by technology in educational technology and publishing. Using massively open online courseware as an example, it describes how these factors are aligning to challenge the status quo. Next, it provides a brief discussion of changes in higher education more generally, including changes in education as a marketplace, reductions to state funding for education and changes in the research enterprise, particularly the rapid growth of the scientific enterprise and leveling off of federal support.

The paper pivots to describe the most recent chapter of over 15 years of work within the Games + Learning + Society (GLS) Center, which has sought to create innovative models of learning, innovative models for funding and conducting research in light of these challenges, and innovative ways of engaging the public.

The assumption driving GLS (and this paper) is that rather than wait for these changes to happen to us, educational technologists can help drive the future by creating it. A good way to get the kinds of learning systems we want is to go about creating them and seeing what works. During this time, GLS developed and released over a dozen game-based learning titles, raised US$10,000,000s in grants and contracts, graduated over 30 doctoral students and post docs, spun out multiple companies, created materials in use by 10,000s (or more) students across the world, and helped build a nascent field of games and learning.

The paper pivots to describe the most recent chapter of over 15 years of work within the GLS Center, which has sought to create innovative models of learning, innovative models for funding and conducting research in light of these challenges and innovative ways of engaging the public.

This paper aims to address opportunities and tensions when creating game-based learning practices in higher education. By detailing examples from a university in the Southeastern USA and the communities it serves, we suggest game-based research and learning be approached as a unifying influence adaptable across contexts.

We use a working example methodology where someone with expertise “works through” a well-known issue while making the thinking overt. In this manner, we reveal processes, successes and challenges infusing game-based learning in higher education to deepen understanding between fields and encourage research and practice with games across disciplines.

The working example demonstrates that games served as a unifying influence in three primary ways, which included redesigning courses and implementing programmatic changes; using existing programs to promote interdisciplinary teaching and research; and increasing outreach and partnerships. In each example, games served to strengthen or support the initiatives.

This paper extends literature on the value of games to promote research and learning. Significantly, it provides an example for others in game-based learning fields to consider when building similar programs in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to present principles for personalization of both learning content and gameplay in serious games for learning, which are based on a combined model of the student that comprises user, learner and player-related aspects of the student’s profile. Each of the considered user, learner and player sub-models has a static and dynamic group of characteristics. These characteristics assist general approaches for learning mazes game personalization applied to embedded mini-games (designed as information units, learning objects and educational tasks) so that to be adjustable and to enable learners to acquire knowledge more effectively.

A student modelling approach was applied to design the personalization of learning content in the educational maze game and each of them contained mini-games. To evaluate the student’s preferences about the types of mini-games and ways of their personalization depending on individual and group student characteristics, the authors conducted an online survey.

This study presents examples of personalization of four types of mini-games available in maze halls, namely, question, searching, arranging and action games. Next, the research discusses findings from an online survey aiming at the evaluation of the preferred types of mini-games and the way of their personalization. There are analysed results concerning the impact of the student model characteristics on the preferred ways of personalization in educational maze games, together with criteria for personalization of educational resources according to student’s level of knowledge, age, goals and learning style.

A significant limitation of the research is the relatively small number of survey participants and the lack of studying the impact of learning and playing styles over game personalization. Another limitation of the study is the inclusion of only some of the mini-games within the demonstration maze, which respondents play before answering the survey questions.

This paper presents original research on the personalization of educational maze game based on a model of the student profile that comprises both static and dynamic properties reflecting user, learner and player-related aspects of the student character, together with results obtained from an online survey.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the teaching strategies of alternating peer teaching and progressive project-oriented learning, and apply them to the curriculum design of digital animation game production, and conduct teaching experimental research.

This research method under the teaching strategies of alternating peer teaching and progressive project-oriented learning, to the design of digital animation game and use teaching experiment animation game production tool was Game Maker animation game production software to develop the study. The production of learning history data was used in-game projects, to verify the digital animation game design effectiveness was used SPSS statistics method, and was to compare the learning effectiveness of the different teaching modes.

Through experimental design, learners can acquire the knowledge and skills of digital animation game production under the guidance of progressive project-oriented teaching strategies. In terms of the cognition and skills of animation game production, learners have acquired the skills of taking them in animation game design to be able to independently produce and design digital animation games. The research results can be used as a reference for future research on digital animation game teaching and curriculum development.

This study proposed a new approach to develop the teaching strategies of alternating peer teaching and progressive project-oriented learning, to design digital animation games. The research results show that effective teaching strategies guide successful learning, it can be used as a reference for future research on digital animation game teaching and curriculum development.

This paper aims to investigate whether the effects of children's current learning are related to their learning efficiency and behavior when they are exposed to two different gaming media.

In this paper the authors used a quasi-experimental design to determine whether game-based learning can be improved by using mobile devices equipped with augmented reality (AR).

The control group using the card game was careful to find the correct answer, with the intention of “obtaining the maximum score with the highest rate of correctness,” whereas the experimental group using the AR board game played aggressively by “obtaining the maximum score with the highest number.”

Although integrating an AR board game into the curriculum is an effective approach, the need to implement such a game in response to different learning attitudes and behaviors of students should be addressed.

Depending on the learning situation, different teaching methods and aids can be used to help students effectively learn. The recommendations based on this experiment can broaden the teaching field and allow for a wider range of experimental studies.

Learning behavior was observed, and user attention was interpreted using MindWave Mobile.

This study aims to present a meta-analysis of the use of serious educational games in museums. The analysis is based on a critical literature review that maps educational roles of museums against serious educational games used in support of those roles. The meta-analysis focuses on the specific context of informal learning in museums.

The research design presented in this study is based on a meta-analysis research design that consists of a critical literature review, a multi-matrix representation of findings of the literature review and a conceptual visualization of the multidisciplinary area of the usage of serious games in support of educational roles in museums.

Clear and detailed categorizations of educational roles and serious games types for informal learning are presented. These are followed by matching these educational roles with published reports of the use of serious games within museums. The study concludes with observations and a conceptual map of the design of serious games for museums.

This study presents the first meta-analysis of research in this emergent multidisciplinary field. It will help serious game designers, museum educators and educational practitioners to make decisions regarding the choice of game type, customization and content design to support informal learning in the specific context of museum educational activities.