Selection Criteria for Using Commercial Off the Shelf Games (COTS) for Learning

Digital games are being used more and more often as teaching resources in the classroom (Habgood & Ainsworth, 2011). Some are games designed specifically for educational purposes, and others—commonly known as COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) games—are commercial games that were designed for entertainment, but have educational value as well. Some of these, like The Sims, Civilization, and Portal, have come to be seen as educational games despite having commercial success outside of education. COTS games may be free to download or play, or games that must be purchased. They can be for any platform, including mobile. While there appears to be a gradually growing acceptance of the use of games for learning, this acceptance is largely focused on games designed specifically for learning, in other words, serious games where the educational purpose of the game is explicit and was likely part of the design goals right from the start. When it comes to using COTS games in the classroom, acceptance is still often replaced with skepticism (Van Eck, 2006). Some have proposed their own theories about which attributes of COTS games make them suitable candidates for use in a formal learning context, and while the body of research on the use of games for learning continues to grow, there is still no definitive evidence that any specific theory carries more weight than any other. What is clear is that the use of games for learning holds sufficient promise to warrant continued inquiry (Perrotta, Featherstone, Aston, & Houghton, 2013). To avoid the negative backlash against games that occurred in the “Edutainment Era” we need to adopt a more moderate approach supported by evidence that our efforts are at least as good as traditional approaches, and preferably better (Wilson, 2009). The so-called Edutainment Era, which started in the mid- to late 1980s and lasted to the mid-1990s, was the first time that computer games for education became popular, and they were promoted by some as a panacea. All one needed to do was wrap a ...