Chapter 3- Teaching with Instructional Software

I believe that instructional games are effective for educational purposes. According to Roblyer and Doering (2010), “The appeal of games seems to center around students’ desire to compete and play. Games provide teachers with opportunities for taking advantage of this innate desire to get students to focus on a curriculum topic,” (p. 92). I used instructional games with the students during my methods placement last semester. The games were a great way to get students motivated to practice the material. The students enjoyed playing the games and they helped reinforce what the students had learned. I believe that using instructional games did provide me with opportunities for taking advantage of their desire to compete and play to get them to focus on the topic I was teaching.

Roblyer and Doering 2010 mention some limitations and problems related to instructional games. “Some schools forbid any use of games because they believe games convince students that they are escaping from learning, thus drawing attention away from the intrinsic value and motivation of learning,” (Roblyer and Doering, 2010, p. 92). I can see how this could be a legitimate problem; however, I believe that as long as other motivators and hands-on activities are used to engage the students in the lesson, this should not be an issue. In addition, “some teachers have observed that students can become confused about which part of the activity is the game and which part is the skill; they may then have difficulty transferring their skill to later nongame situations,” (Roblyer and Doering, 2010, p. 92). One way to avoid this problem would be to use other ways of reinforcing knowledge in addition to instructional games. Then the students will have an opportunity to use the rules in other contexts besides game situations. Furthermore, before the students play the game the teacher should emphasize which rules are only part of the game and which rules are important to remember while they are doing their later work. Depending on the content, an instructional game might be one of the last things that the students do in the lesson. This way, the students will have time to practice the rules before they play the game.