'Gaming in Education and E-Learning: Mock-Trials, Mock-Elections and Crisis-Simulations for Political Sciences and Communications Courses'

Y

9

Electronic Learning; Social Integration; Teaching Methods; Role Playing; Law Schools; Business Schools; Blended Learning; Educational Games; Programming; Case Studies; Political Science; Communications; Computer Science Education; Foreign Countries; Game Based Learning; Cross Cultural Studies; Computer Games; Universities; Private Colleges; War; International Relations; International Organizations; Presidents; Elections; Court Litigation

Poland; Florida

Among recent e-Learning Pedagogical Strategies, gaming and crisis-simulation games are increasingly used in recent years in university-learning and Blended-courses as an out-of-context effective tool for role-playing and education, especially in Law Schools and Business Schools. Gaming covers several sub-fields (war-games; Law School Mock-Trials; Tailor-made educational games in Business; playing commercials-off-the-shelf games; programming and code-learning; games to promote social inclusion of marginalized groups; Model U.N. and crisis-simulations) and are recently enhanced by the impact of using multi-modality and on-line education to apply several concurrent modes of presentation/communications, which are now being applied also in Political Sciences and Communications courses. In recent years, the much-touted future role of the Net-Generation of children and youth who grew-up with computer games should find a natural educational outlet in gaming, but this has been limited to the entertainment field, rather than university education, or in computer coding and programming, where gaming (both on-line and face-to-face) has only marginal effects, due to students' inability to grasp theoretical concepts, poor preparation or poor motivation. Thus, despite already existing methods of gamification in education, its promise as a didactic method in schools and universities is still at its beginnings. This paper analyzes as case-studies the emerging impact of gaming simulations in Political Sciences Blended-courses at Saint Leo University, USA and in Communications courses at the Pedagogical University of Kraków, Poland. [For the full proceedings, see ED621557.]

As Provided

2022

ED621616