Games-to-Teach Research

“From an educator’s perspective, games may be the most fully realized educational technology produced to date. Tom Malone (1981) showed how games use challenge, fantasy, player control, and curiosity invoking designs to create intrinsically motivating environments. More recently, Lloyd Rieber (1996) has argued that digital games engage players in productive play — learning that occurs through building microworlds, manipulating simulations, and playing games. Rieber argues that historically, educational games have relied heavily on exogenuous game formulas, meaning that content is inserted into a generic gaming template, like hangman, rather than seamlessly integrated with gaming mechanisms as in SimCity .(He calls this endogenuous game design).” Kurt Squire —Games-to-Teach ResearchMIT)

The artificial world of the college campus is, itself, a kind of simulation of real life. Via thinking with my fingers.