Course Spotlight: Design and Development of Games for Education

By Eleanor Hoskins — Posted on: Mar 26, 2015
(For a refresher on this topic, see our earlier posts on MOOCs and learning through play.)

If you’re interested in learning technology and looking for a MOOC to try, MIT might have just the thing for you!

As part of their edX XSeries on Educational Technology, MITx is releasing Design and Development of Games for Learning on April 1st. In this course, students are scheduled to learn about the history and current theory behind today’s learning games, and practice the many methods discussed to design and develop their own educational games. The class will use its large international community of participants to receive and provide feedback while they learn and collaborate with one another.

 

Making learning overlap with play is a great way of encouraging students to self-motivate and direct their own learning while also measuring their progress. For just this reason, recent advances in technology have given rise to enormous growth in the design (and redesign) of games for education. While games for learning sometimes tend to re-package content without much enriching it, as discussed in this article from Harvard Magazine, technology undeniably has tremendous potential to challenge students with “hard fun”, and to encourage self-directed observation, exploration and problem-solving.

By participating in a course like 11.127x, educators will have the chance to learn which strategies for creating and implementing games in teaching are actually effective, and apply these strategies to their own practice. The course’s basis in project creation and peer review, combined with its informative videos, should leave participants with a stronger grasp of current conversations, concepts and trends in educational technology.

 

If you’re interested in learning more about innovative approaches to technology integration, or want to see what participation in a MOOC is like, this course would be a great place to start! Take a look at the edX course homepage to learn more and sign up.

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