Classroom Play: Guidelines and Results

Mary, B. (2010). Bringing Play Back to the Classroom: How Teachers Implement Board and Card Games Based on Academic Learning Standards. Proceedings Of The European Conference On Games Based Learning, 13-18.

In terms of gaming and learning in the early school environment (K-5 in particular) can games be used to help or are they more harmful to the learning environment? Although this was a small article that did a basic overview, I found it extremely helpful to base guidelines for what teachers may need in standardizing gaming while in the classroom. It also helped by providing the feedback from both teachers and students while it documented the overall change in attitude towards using games while in the classroom.

The guidelines were simple enough:

• Teachers chose either board or card games to fit within an established budget
• Games needed to be easily played in twenty minutes and at least once a week
• After teaching the game, teachers needed to be more hands off and there as moderators.
• Teachers were also asked to keep weekly journals about how they and their students were responding to the introduction of gaming in the classroom, did it meet their needs for academic progress, adjustments to the games to better fit their learning, and they had to meet monthly to discuss how the progress was going.  

The researcher found that after a while teachers began to really took to having the games in their classrooms and that classroom morale as well as other aspects in learning took a turn for the better. In other words, they found that along with gaming and journal keeping, the overall effect was positive.

This has narrowed the focus for me in my own project for things to look for in design:

• Can it be played in a certain amount of time with ease?
• Can it be easily taught?
• Will teachers be able to adjust it so that it becomes more challenging or not?
•  Is it going to be easily translated from the classroom to other areas of both students' and teachers' lives? 

Everything needs to be considered here, but it provides a clear path as to what needs to be taken into account.