Welcome to The Claims of Games: A Comprehensive Survey and Directions for Future Research in Games and Learning

Hello, I'm Aroutis Foster and I have been surveying the games literature for claims made about games for learning as well as other non-learning ones in order to have a comprehensive list of game claims. I would like to welcome you to this games for learning community. The aim of this Wiki-site is to create a database for The Claims Of Games and help those interested in promoting systematic and rigorous research (esp. assessment) in games for learning to have a source where they can contribute to the growing lists of claims and literature as well as find hypothesis to examine. Each claim is a hypothesis waiting to be studied and replicated (and expanded). There is an assumption that this will validate some existing claims and lead to substantiated claims that are specific to game genres, content, age groups, and learning styles. The goal is to contribute to better design and development of learning games through research (research into practice).

the papers were presented at AERA 2007, SITE 2007 and DLAC-II. They are related to the work I am doing about the claims of games for learning. The AERA paper is mostly about what is learning based on the survey and how learning is defined by the claims of games, while the SITE paper (won an outsstanding paper at SITE 2007) is focused on categorizing and reviewing the claims of games not only for learning, but examining the two types of claims that have emerged from the survey: psychological and physiological claims. See the attached file on The Claims Of Games page for the poster from FuturePlay 2006. It depicts the work and categorization of the claims that is being done. DLAC-II paper depicts the current directions of my work on the claims of games in establishing a framework/approach for assessment of learning in games (see paper in Attachments). Also see the following Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) to get an understanding of how the framework combines with TPCK to help assessing in game.-

Future & Current Work

Handbook Chapter in the Handbook of Research on EffectiveElectronic Gaming in Education on the claims of games for learning as outline in the DLAC-II paper.

Dissertation that uses the approach described in the DLAC-II paper.

See attachment for papers

Papers

Foster, A. N., & Mishra, P. (2009). Games, claims, genres & learning. In R. E. Ferdig (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in Education: Information Science Reference.

Foster, A. N. (2008). Games and motivation to learn science: Personal identity, applicability, relevance and meaningfulness. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 19(4), 597-614.

Mishra, P., & Foster, A. N. (2007). The claims of games: A comprehensive review and future directions. Paper presented to the 2007 18th International Conference for the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education (SITE), San Antonio, TX.

Mishra, P., & Foster, A. N.(2007). What is learning from games? A critical review and directions for future research. Paper presented at the 2007 American Education Research Assocation (AERA) Annual Meeting, Chicago, Il.

Foster, A.N. & Mishra, P. (2007). Games, claims and genres: Zooming in on content and genres. Paper presented at Distributed Learning and Collaboration-II Symposium at the Learning Science Laboratory, Nanyang Technological University, Sinagpore. (see attachement for paper)

Read Me

Please see the Read Me page to get a basic introduction about the layout of this site and appropriate web browers.