Summit on Educational Games - Federation of American Scientists

10 SUMMIT ON EDUCATIONAL GAMES
➣ Game companies should look at education as a secondary market for
their technology. To help mitigate the high costs of educational game
development, game companies should identify technologies in their
portfolios — such as AI, character rendering/avatar technology, or
user interfaces — that may be useful for educational applications.
They should develop and be assisted in developing methods for
making these available for use in alternative markets. This would
include partnerships to make available game engines and other
technologies at nominal cost for use in education. Similarly, game
companies should consider licensing their game engines — even
second or third generation engines — for non-competing educational
applications.
➣ Open source initiatives should be established to encourage a wide
range of individuals and companies to self-construct learning games
or components for them. Similarly, potential educational game
producers should consider how they could encourage learning
software “mod-makers”, modeled after the game players that create
content and software modifications for commercial video games.
➣ With video game consoles in more than 45 million homes, game
companies or educational materials and educational software
producers should explore developing educational games and
simulations for home use. This is important because often in lowerincome
households, a video game console is the ONLY computing
device (advanced cell phones notwithstanding) in the household. True
digital-divide progress could be made if there were acceptable
methods to industry and non-industry partners to make use of this
incredibly large base of installed computing power.
THE ROLE OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING INSTITUTIONS:
➣ Education and training institutions should create incentives for
innovative approaches in education through better tests and metrics.
They should work with employers and others to develop tests that
adequately measure the kinds of sophisticated educational outcomes
required in today’s economy — such as higher-order skills.
➣ Each major educational institution should develop and execute a
strategy for changing instruction to reflect the kinds of innovations in
games and other areas expected in the coming decade. Schools
should redesign their instructional practices and formal learning
environments to take advantage of technology-enabled exploration,
interactivity, and collaboration encouraged by digital games and
simulations.
➣ Schools of education should engage the learning games community
to develop new and revamp old pedagogy to take advantage of these
new educational tools.