Digital Games, Simulations, and Play in Learning

Series Editors: Sara de Freitas and Nicola Whitton

Thinkers from Plato to Piaget have acknowledged the central role of play in learning. Games and simulations are expressions of play, as they support playful interchanges, promote learning through failure, build communities, and encourage collaboration. Increasingly, the engagement and motivation given by games, play, and simulations is finding its way into our educational institutions—schools, colleges, and universities—and into training and development in companies across many sectors. With this increased use of games, simulations, and other forms of digital play to enhance education and training in the twenty-first century, academics, business leaders, researchers, and learning practitioners are being challenged in a number of ways, not least how to adapt and deploy playful approaches effectively but also how to evaluate and measure successful outcomes.

This book series aims to provide a forum for educators and professionals to consider key questions and issues. How do we best design games for educational purposes? How do we engage and motivate their learners and staff through immersive experiences? How can we adapt and learn from gamification or game-inspired approaches to design better outcomes for education and training? What are the key concepts for understanding how play and games work in relation to learning? Why is play such as effective pedagogic tool? What frameworks and tools are available to learning practitioners? How can we think critically about the potential of play in education to ensure it is inclusive and diverse?

The book series has already attracted a range of authors who share their expertise and experiences with the wider education and training communities, including books on serious play that focus on how games can be used for literacy learning, online gaming and playful organization (which evaluates the impact of games on organization), aesthetics and design for games-based learning (which outlines how games can be most effectively designed), and digital games and learning (which provides a useful overview of the research and theory in the field).

The volumes in the DGPL series focus on innovative research, theory, and practice, including some or all of the following themes and traits:

1. Disciplinary grounding

   Our series investigates the relationship between more conventional pedagogies and new approaches to learning engendered by digital games, simulations, and play.

2. Interactivity of social relations

   Games, simulations, and playful approaches are often highly social, but their social and cultural codes still require substantial research.

3. Design-led learning

   One of the significant differences between conventional teaching and digital games, simulations, and play is the amount of design work that is required upfront in order to plan the learning environment and facilitate learning within it. DGPL investigates the theory and practices of design in digital games, simulations, and play.

4. Problem-solving

   Digital games, simulations, and playful approaches are useful learning environments for problem-solving heuristics. The extent to which this happens, for whom and under what conditions, is a theme of our series.

5. Innovative research methodologies

   We encourage forms of participatory and action research (practice research, participatory action research, action science, co-design, etc.) as well as the challenging of conventional approaches to cognitive science, to educational theory constructs, and to the philosophy of game play.

The series is an international resource for scholars, educators, technologists, and students/trainees. It brings together some of the best contemporary academic and practitioner commentators to tackle the dilemmas and opportunities in a challenging, informed, and inquiring manner. If you think that your research in the area of digital games, play, and learning should be shared with a wider international audience, please contact the series editors. Due to the cross- and inter-disciplinary nature of the area, we welcome proposals from across the academy and industry. Books may be monographs, single or multi-authored, or edited collections.

To contact the series editors, please email Sara de Freitas ([email protected]) and/or Nicola Whitton ([email protected]).

About the Series Editors

Professor Sara de Freitas

BA (Hons), MA, PhD, FRSA, PFHEA, FBEI

Professor Sara de Freitas is an international author, educator, and researcher with a specialism in digital immersive technologies. With a PhD in information science, she has worked across sectors exploring how digitization, immersive experiences, and the use of digital technologies can transform lives. As a scholar and Director of Research, she has supported the foundation of the London Knowledge Lab (now UCL) and has established the Serious Games Institute, the Digital Futures Institute, and the DigiTech Centre to advance the support of improved natural human computer interfaces and the implementation of positive feedback and reward systems. In support of her theoretical studies, based on systems thinking, her field studies have focused upon quality service provision and growth in regional development.

Towards that end, Sara has led academic portfolio areas in four campus-based universities, three colleges, two schools and a network of study centres in the UK, Europe, and Australia, including the management and support for tens of thousands of on-campus, online and international students. Her digital strategies and systematic view of education places her well to make huge improvements in online and edtech provision across her own and other institutions around the world through the adoption of game-based education and the use of pervasive interactive content.

As a research lead, she has held 82 projects, including 19 EU projects and 4 UKRI projects along with scientific coordination of an EU Network of Excellence in serious games. Her work is compiled in over 100 conference and journal peer-reviewed articles and 40 books. With first-in-field papers in serious games, exploratory learning, and feedback systems, Sara is currently a Governor at Sunderland University and holds honorary awards and fellowships from the Learning Skills Research Centre, Royal Society of Arts, Higher Education Academy, Business Excellence Institute, and University of London, and is a seasoned international speaker.

Her most recent book is Education in Computer Generated Environments published by Routledge.

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Professor Nicola Whitton

BA (Hons), MSc, PhD, PGCHE, PFHEA, NTF

Nicola Whitton is Professor of Digital Learning and Play in the School of Computer and Information Science at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. As Director of the Durham Centre for Academic Development, she established the Education Lab and Digital Playground at Durham University and co-founded the Playful Learning Conference and Playful Learning Association.

She has published widely in the field of digital games and play, including three single-author volumes, seven edited collections, and numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles. Her research focuses on the possibilities of play and digital games in higher education, and she is particularly interested in the use of mixed-reality digital gaming, escape rooms, and alternate reality games.