7 Ways Video Games Enhance Learning

If anything, video gaming provides researchers and cognitive scientists with a huge repository of raw data on the dynamics of learning. Watching and analyzing how people play games reveal a great deal on the process of learning. More than that, even the internal mechanisms of games and the way they are designed can also tell a lot about how learning works. In his classic book “What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy”, James Gee talks about a wide range of learning principles incorporated in video games which make these games  a real hit when they come out to the public. Gee argues that  in order for a game to sell well especially within a  highly competitive gaming market, game designers are forced to conceptualize innovative and creative ways to make their games more engaging and compelling.

Along similar lines , gaming theorist, Tom Hatfield (author of the popular book/; Why Gaming Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century) contends that successful video games include 7 learning principles that we can extract and apply in other sectors such as business and education. These principle are :

1- Experiencing bars measuring progress
2- Multiple long and short term aims
3- Rewards for effort
4- Rapid, frequent and clear feedback
5- An element of uncertainty
6- Windows of enhanced attention
7- Other people ( collective and collaborative work)

Watch the TED talk below to learn more about each of these learning principles. Enjoy