Pedagogical approaches in games

I found an article of Kebritchi and HIrumi in which they describe five different theories of instruction in games. They examined 50 games and discovered five different approaches. Namely: direct, experiential, situated, discovery/inquiry and constructivist approaches to teaching and learning. They describe all these different approaches and some of the approaches even have different kinds. Like discovery learning is split up into discovery learning and guided-discovery and inquiry-based learning. So there are lot of different approaches used in games.

I think this is an interesting article, because it not only describes different pedagogical approaches. It describes approaches that are found in games and I’m interested in games. Now the next question is which approach fits the best in a educational or serious game. Another of my courses is about games, so this way I can combine the different courses.

Kebritchi, M. & Hirumi, A. (2008). Examining the pedagogical foundations of modern educational computer games. Computers & Education, 51, 1729-1743.