Use of Computer and Video Games in the Classroom

This paper examines how commercial, entertainment-oriented computer and video games are used within formal classroom instruction, drawing on informal surveys conducted in 2002 and 2003 that were focused primarily on UK schools but extended to the United States, mainland Europe, and Australia to provide comparative context. The authors deliberately excluded educational "edutainment" titles and concentrated on games designed for PC and console platforms such as Xbox, GameCube, and PlayStation, using search methods including contact networks, school web sites, and mailing list archives to locate examples.

The findings indicate that games were most often used outside the core curriculum, in research pilots, competitions, computer clubs, literacy and critique activities, and as behavioural rewards. Within lessons, strategy and simulation titles such as Sim City and RollerCoaster Tycoon were the most common, valued for their relevance across subject areas and their capacity to engage students. Teachers reported that pupils were often highly engaged and that group discussion and collaboration sometimes increased markedly, but they also described significant obstacles, including limited lesson time, unnecessary content such as full motion video, the absence of save functions, licensing restrictions, hardware demands, and inadequate support materials. Console titles were rarely used in lessons, and controversial titles were largely absent from school use.

The authors stress that their surveys were small, informal, and not methodologically rigorous, and they present their conclusions as tentative. Their overall assessment is ambivalent: games are increasingly used in imaginative ways, yet schools have been slow to adopt them for subject-based learning, partly because of a lack of external recognition of learning achieved through play. The paper calls for more systematic research, a common international survey framework, and funded studies into game design as a learning vehicle.