In recent years, online games in education have gained widespread popularity for their potential to enhance learning outcomes and skill development. While traditional teaching methods have proven effective, integrating gaming in education has shown to be an innovative and exciting way of engaging students in learning. In addition to hard skills, online games can help people to develop their soft skills.
Generation Z is one of the most tech-savvy generations to date and this has greatly affected the way they learn in the classroom. According to researchers, almost half of children spend more than ten hours online every day, and an average, they will have accumulated 30,000 hours of gaming by the time they turn 20. Games are challenging and can be a highly productive activity with its power to stimulate learning and cognition. Instead of separating children from technology, many educators have elected to embrace technology in the education process through game-based learning or blended learning, which is the process of combining technology with more traditional forms of education.
Many researches have shown that there are many benefits for playing daily games in the classroom. Games have been found to be more engaging than traditional forms of education. By providing information and learning over an extended class period, games provide small amounts of information over multiple stages. Gaming improves metacognition, which is the ability to think about your own thinking. Strong metacognition has been proven to help with developing academic skills and allowing students to learn about their strengths and weaknesses, ultimately improving performance. When teachers plan lessons, they should try to incorporate at least one game a day as a teaching and learning tool, assessment strategy or classroom motivator.
Students become more engaged in their learning when playing games, and taught content is reinforced as class positivity is increased. Games have been found to improve cognitive functions like memory and reasoning and have the potential to reverse aging-related brain function problems such as short term memory loss. Decision-making processes required to play games provide cognitive exercises for children that can range from making simple decisions to the formulation of complex strategies. Games can be designed by teachers and other education specialists in a way that balances academic subjects such as history with the strategies, rules and social aspects of playing a game. These games are typically designed at different ability levels with the ultimate goal of providing the players with an innovative method of retaining information, learning and problem-solving.
