Games in Education 2016

The once prevalent image of video games as a trivial and corruptive media has been subverted and reversed as they are increasingly finding traction as forces of social good. The last decade has seen advances in research and an explosion in artistic, experimental, and learning game genres that have caused an increase in their use for socially beneficial purposes, including areas such as health, education and social justice. This session will specifically survey seminal work exploring how digital games can be used for peace education and to facilitate conflict resolution.

Based on research for UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP), the discussion will focus on how digital games are uniquely suited to produce empathy, grant perspective-taking, explore ethical dilemmas and encourage a sense of complicity. These qualities can catalyze changes in individual behaviors and attitudes and contribute to reductions of intergroup tensions and hostilities. The understanding of how games produce these beneficial qualities are transferable to diverse learning goals. Also, a broad swath of digital games will be used as examples, any of which can be used to enrich and enhance social science and humanities classes at all levels.