Gaming is a great way to get distracted and relaxed after school, but what if it can teach students some good stuff? It`s a double-edged sword.
Being a student, we bet that one of the most popular ways to relax for you is to play video games after classes (no stereotypes here). Are we right? When you study all day long and then stay up late to complete all the tasks, you feel so exhausted that you just have to relieve your stress and calm down your nervous system. Even though for such overwhelmed periods, you can hire an academic writing service to cover all assignments on time just by sending a request, «Please, help me write my essay,» gaming is still here to make you feel better. But did you know that playing games can not only help you relax but also teach some disciplines and improve your overall performance?
To play or not to play to study better
When we run out of time, we pay for essays online to get the work done (you only need to find some reliable essay writing service online). When we get tired, we play games – this scheme has been working for years. But today, with the rise of new technologies and approaches in education, teachers see a 70% increase in interest of their students in the learning process and these results are based on using some gaming. Over 80% of learners state that they feel more productive and engaged at lectures if it was in the form of a game or if they were assigned to reach the next level in a video game like they usually do at home.
Gaming can be used not only in the classroom: various educational video games have a typical story-telling, characters and levels, but when playing it, at the same time, you learn a lot of useful things (depending on the discipline this game is based on). The gamified education has become pretty widespread and tested by many schools around the US and the rest of the world, which made many companies create special platforms for a variety of fields to study.
Despite all this interest and popularity, there are still fans and critics of this approach. Among the advantages we can name:
1. Students` engagement and enthusiasm increase
Researches prove that young people are more likely to spend time on studies if it is an interactive game with a reward system. They feel more enthusiastic about learning Physics and other complex subjects they usually struggle with;
2. Instant feedback and progress tracking
Many systems that are based on games allow tracking your progress and seeing results immediately via leader and dashboards. It can motivate students to improve their results and work on mistakes;
3. Social connections and teamwork
While students often have troubles when communicating with peers, they can acquire virtual friends and learn how to cooperate in a team, especially in competitions and negotiations;
4. Experimentation and risk-taking
Stimulated environments for learning give students an opportunity to see how their ideas and decisions will work in real life with negative payoffs;
5. Personalization
Computers can learn about each student and adapt the program according to their personal needs, like simplifying the content. In addition, it allows you to study at your own pace, thus absorbing information more efficiently.
But this approach has still some cons:
1. Games are addictive
Often students don't notice how much time they spend, and even educational games can be bad when playing too long. Besides, students` start expecting immediate results and assessment in other real-life aspects;
2. Cost
Gamified learning can be quite expensive, depending on the used system. It can be expenses for equipment, training and software management;
3. Planning
Games often do not meet the curriculum, so using computers for productive play can be difficult. Setting up an educational game always requires a lot of planning, including the number of computers, tasks, curriculum matches and playing the game by teachers to make sure everything works well, which takes around 40 hours.
Besides, games can make students lazy and cause technologies to win over their own thinking.