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Situated Gaming: Beyond Games as Instructional Technology

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Educational Media and Technology Yearbook

Part of the book series: Educational Media and Technology Yearbook ((EMTY,volume 39))

Abstract

Some recent science education scholarship has called for a renewed focus on empowering learners to engage with science for personally and socially meaningful purposes. However, engaging with science in these ways requires that learners adopt epistemic aims in their activity, which we cannot take for granted. I argue here that serious games could support these goals, but that our approaches to their design and implementation require greater attention to the cultural and historical aspects of the activity systems in which they are being used. Attention to these elements provides us with powerful tools for situating our designs in use contexts.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1256259. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Adam Mechtley

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  1. Adam Mechtley
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Correspondence to Adam Mechtley .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Learning, Design, and Technology pr, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

    Michael Orey

  2. Learning, Design, and Technology pr, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

    Robert Maribe Branch

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Mechtley, A. (2015). Situated Gaming: Beyond Games as Instructional Technology. In: Orey, M., Branch, R. (eds) Educational Media and Technology Yearbook. Educational Media and Technology Yearbook, vol 39. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14188-6_3

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