LEARNING, E-LEARNING AND DIGITAL GAME-BASED LEARNING AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The impacts of a (partially) digitalized culture on education systems and administrative politics also affect the theory and contexts of learning (Aust et al.

2013,261-263;Brown 2013, 13-15), especially within higher education (Gea 2012, 41-42). Following Prensky (2013, 100-124), the learning community and the learners have changed as well. Hence, the framework which has been built up at the beginning of this text, leads to the four main fields of interest this seminar concept

 

2This is not only a characteristic of western culture. This shift can be seen as a worldwide process, as (e.g.) the debates and the impact of the rankings of school or education systems like PISA suggest (Figazollo 2006, 3). 

3 The individual adaption to developments as described above also can be discussed concerning the perspective of long-learning (see Aust et al. 2013, 261-262). For an approach to the critical debate on the emerge of life-long-learning as a policy-making tool for politicians and governmental process see Ioannidou 2013 375-383.

4 The scientific community is debating about what event could be identified as a turning point for these changes and processes. For example as turning points can be seen the concept/development of “Web 2.0” (O’Reilly 2005) or the invention of the smartphone, as it is known today, for the mass market by Apple Inc. in 2007.

evokes from: Relevance of Video Games for Educational Contexts, (E-) Learning, Protection of Minors and Digital Game-Based Learning.

Relevance of Video Games for Educational Contexts

As permanently updated data (collected by Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest⁵) show, playing video games is enormously popular among children and adolescents in Germany. 66 % of all children at the age of six up to thirteen play video games once a week or more often. Only 22 % of the interviewees responded that they had never played any video game (Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest 2013b, n=1220). The results for children at the age of twelve up to nineteen are similar. 62 % of all interviewees play video games once a week or more often (Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest 2013a, n=1200). Due to a rising number of users and also because of the increasing availability of software (apps, video games, websites), which is especially made for children and adolescents or attractive to them, the council of the cultural secretaries of all 16 federal states of Germany passed a resolution that places development of media competence as a major responsibility for all primary and secondary schools in Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz, 8th March 2012) The council defined…

…media education as a part of the educational mandate of schools, because media competence is another cultural technique besides reading, writing and calculating.

(Kultusministerkonferenz, 8th March 2012)⁶

Although, in comparison to a wide range of serious approaches to digital gaming and video games (e.g. Ganguin 2012), 13-14), there are several ‘scientific representatives or experts’ who argue digital media and digital contents have a negative impact on the cognitive development especially for children (Spitzer 2012) or could basically cause violent aggression against people (Mößle et al. 2006).

Although the theoretical and empirical basics of this ‘research’ are often very untransparent and methodologically suspicious (Schmidt et al. 2011; Lampert et al.

2011, 122–133), those and similar voices partially reach public attention (Kegel 2007;

Spiewak 2012) ⁷.

To make future students aware of the popularity (and its origins) of video games as well as of their strong entanglement with everyday life, to discuss opportunities and limits of game-based learning concepts and to enable students to reflect and question unscientific, populist (or general) perspectives on video games, a stronger focus on media education within future teacher training is absolutely necessary.

 

5 Eng.: Media Educational Research Association Southwest.

6 Translation by authors.

7 The authors refer to the German debate on „killer video games“ and „media education“ of the last decade.

(E-) Learning⁸

Several processes concerning matters of a digitalizing culture, lead to several phenomena which can be found under keywords such as “new knowledge”, “web generation“ or „digital natives”⁹ in the literature (Aust 2012,130-131; Melville, D. et al 2009, 6; Ridder and Turecek 2011, 570). Especially new groups such as “digital natives” have evolved from common social experiences, competences and resources, which are closely related to the development of digital media (Freitas 2008, 13; Hughes, 2009, 34; Prensky 2013, 79).The debates about concepts and contexts of e-learning, and sub-contexts such as media literacy and media education and media competences, are antiquated and more or less obsolete (Aust et al. 2013, 261). The question is not if there is any turn in progress, it has already occured (Johnson et al. 2013, 9-10). Moreover, the evident competence for a 21st century-living is the focal point: media education. It is worthwhile to think about how to use these “competences” as part of educational contexts. One interesting question to discuss could be whether competences of how to verify resources and knowledge on how to navigate through structures to access information are more valuable and more important than issue expertise itself ( (Melville, D. et al 2009, 34; Müller et al.

2013, 1-2).

On the other side, the concepts of media literacy and media culture are evolving. The experiences and expectations of learners are changing as well and affect the role of teachers and pedagogues (Aust 2012, 130; Aust et al. 2013, 263; Melville, D. et al 2009, 39). It is evident that teachers and pedagogues have to adapt to ‘new’

competences, such as media literacy and media education and must be able to connect to everyday life experiences of pupils. Hence (and again), it is necessary that media education and media studies are a part of teacher training at university.

Protection of minors from potentially harmful media

Digital media and digital communication within everyday life evoke new discussions about potentially harmful (media) contents¹⁰, especially due to the continuous development of online (computer) games and of online media contents (keywords:

MMORPG, content streaming, in-app purchases, in-games purchases, file-sharing, pornographic material, social networks and social media) there are at least two questions that must be answered. How can knowledge concerning the protection of minors be of any use for teachers? And, are there any special conditions in terms of protection of minors within educational contexts?¹¹

 

8 From the authors perspective it isn’t possible to separate learning within media use or by labelling it with an “e”

for electronic, enhanced or whatever “e” could stand for (or “m” for mobile). The authors follow the assumption that today there is no separation between learning with or without electronic media and devices or digital resources and contents. It is as mandatory as the debate about analogue and digital life.

9 For a critical debate about the label of “digital natives vs. digital naives” see Bennett et al. 2008and Schulmeister 2009.

10 See Livingstone et al. 2013, 198-199; Schultze-Krumbholz and Scheithauer 2009, 224 or Sticca and Perren 2013, 739-740).

11 For further information concerning PoM in Germany see chapter Protection of Minors – Conditions of PoM Concerning Digital Gaming in Germany.

Digital (Game-Based) Learning

One of the most dynamic fields within digitalization of everyday life is that of (digital) games (Adachi und Willoughby 2013, 1041-1042))¹². The hashtag #gamification was one of the most popular within the last few years. That approach changed the way people feel about education and the pedagogical perspective on gaming as a part of learning (Ganguin 2012, 16-17) ¹³ concepts. Also, training concepts within

#gamification were implemented in companies for human resources development (Werbach and Hunter 2012, 9-11.).

The theory of learning through computer games (Prensky 2013) claims that through virtual worlds, knowledge can be gained and experiences can be made, and moreover, new aspects and opportunities of learning and learning contexts become possible (de Freitas 2008, 13; (Ganguin 2012, 16-17).

Emphasizing the achievements from concepts of gaming in relation to cultural-social acceptance in our (western) world, there is a change in the 21st century within that.

Over the last decade, the research on video games extended, parallel to the development of information technologies and the above mentioned digitalization of (everyday) life. (Prensky 2013, 71-124) Gee (2008, 229-230) and Ganguin (2012) summarized these improvements. For pedagogical concepts and scenarios, the Horizon Report 2012 (Johnson, L., Adams, S. und Cummins 2012, 18-21) suggests that within the next two to three years, concepts of game-based learning will increase and will be part of education, just like reading and writing.