Frontiers in Educational Psychology is a Specialty Section of the open-access Frontiers in Psychology journal family, supported by the non-profit Frontiers Research Foundation. In this publication, the researches around video gaming and what such games can offer to the field of education were extensively reviewed. Through an examination of the learning mechanisms found in cognitively motivational and commercially successful video games this commentary will explore “synergy between pedagogy and engagement”.
Video games and higher education: what can “Call of Duty” teach our students?
Nick Tannahill, Patrick Tissington and Carl Senior
Here, these approaches have been summarized into a number of overarching and overlapping themes that detail the importance of cognitive stimulation, motivation, constant assessment, and the encouragement of a system style of thinking. In addition to this, features unique to COTS such as in-game tutorials, challenging levels and eventual boss characters, exist to incentivize the player into a learning process analogous to the educational phases of learning, practice, and assessment, teaching students via what is essentially “the scientific method” (Wright, 2009).
