Games and Learning/Topics/Case Studies/GlobalConflicts
"Global Conflicts" is an award-winning educational game series used for teaching citizenship, geography, and media courses.
The series allows students to explore and learn about different conflicts throughout the world and the underlying themes of democracy, human rights, globalization, terrorism, climate and poverty. The game series is easy to use for teachers and is developed with close attention to curriculum requirements and ease of use in classroom teaching.
http://www.globalconflicts.eu/
Trial: http://www.globalconflicts.eu//trial
Readings
Buch, T. & Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S. (2006), 'The learning effect of Global Conflicts: Palestine', Conference Proceedings Media@Terra, Athens. http://media.seriousgames.dk/downloads/learning_effects_palestine.pdf
Few field studies have examined students’ using of educational computer game titles in high school. This paper presents results from a research project in two Danish high schools with 51 students aged 16-20 using a playable prototype. The research project evolves around the development of the prototype “Global Conflicts: Palestine” an educational computer game about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Drawing on an evaluation survey that was administered at the end of an experimental game course, we examined how the students used a computer game developed for teaching a subject in history
Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S. (2007), 'Third generation educational use of computer games', Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia 16 (3), 263. http://egenfeldt.eu/papers/third_generation_JEM_egenfeldt-nielsen.pdf
This article outlines the characteristics and problems related to edutainment and of the associated research studies demonstrating that learning outcomes look promising. The article suggests that we are moving towards a new generation of educational use of games that is more inclusive. This new generation relies on constructivist learning theories and a deeper understanding of the potential and limitations of computer games in educational praxis. In this approach computer games are just another tool for the teacher which can be dispensed with great success for the right tasks, but have clear limitations and require qualifi ed teachers that can serve as facilitators of learning.
