There is growing interest in the use of digital games as
part of K-12 teachers’ classroom instruction. For example,
in Washington State, legislation1
is being considered to
create a pilot program for integrating games into the
school curriculum. And in the fall of 2014, the White
House and U.S. Department of Education hosted a game
jam2 to encourage and promote the development of
learning games. As with all educational technologies, the
most frequently asked question is, “Do they work?” The
answer — and the question itself — is complex. Work
for what purpose? To help students learn? Learn what?
Core content knowledge or 21st century skills? Or is the
purpose to engage students? In comparison to what?
As with all educational technologies, the real answer to
any of these questions is, “It depends.” It depends on lots
of factors, including the features of the game and, most
importantly, what teachers do with those features as
part of their instruction.
The A-GAMES project (Analyzing Games for
Assessment in Math, ELA/Social Studies, and Science), a
collaboration between the University of Michigan and
New York University, studied how teachers actually
use digital games in their teaching to support formative
assessment. Formative assessment is a set of practices
to gauge student progress toward learning goals, and
to adjust instruction on the basis of that information to
meet students where they are. Formative assessment is
arguably one of the most important parts of a teacher’s
instructional tool kit. When used well, it has been found to
be among the most powerful ways to improve student
learning outcomes, and it may be particularly important
to the success of low-ability students (Black & Wiliam,
1998). But as with any “best practice,” in order to be
effective, formative assessment approaches must
be both useful and used. And that’s where games —
potentially — come into play.
