Games for Higher Education

In introducing this book, we would like to start by pointing out two fundamental truths about game-based education. Let’s start with the good news: There is ample evidence that serious games can have a highly positive impact on learners’ motivation and achievement. For example, a meta-analysis from 2006 found that digital games and simulations generally led to higher cognitive gains (i.e., knowledge acquisition) than conventional methods – as long as students played the games themselves and didn’t receive meticulous instructions (Vogel et al., 2006). This finding has been reproduced by several meta-analyses since (Sitzmann, 2011; Wouters et al., 2013; DeSmet et al., 2014; Mayer, 2014; Clark et al., 2016; Karakoc et al., 2022). Generally, these studies converge on the finding that game-based learning can have a similarly large positive effect on students’ learning as other modes of interactive teaching. This is largely due to experiential learning: The more that games provide learners with meaningful feedback, the more students tend to learn (Clark et al., 2016). Experiential learning without the use of digital games, for example in using roleplay, tends to be even more effective than (digital) simulation games (Sitzmann, 2011). Thus, using game-based learning in the classroom tends to lead to a higher engagement of students and improved learning outcomes. This brings us to the less favorable truth: Finding suitable games for higher education can be a nightmare. First, searching for suitable games can be an immensely time-intensive task. And secondly, games that have been designed for educational purposes are not necessarily good or suitable for your target group. At the outset of the Game-Didaktik project (2024–2026), we assumed that university teachers could find it challenging to identify serious games with the potential of enriching and improving their classes. When we began to search for suitable games for teachers at Leuphana University in Lueneburg, we were still shocked about just how difficult it was, however. Searching for games related to scientific methods for one course (see lead article) turned out to be time-consuming detective work, where we constantly had to come up with new ideas and pursue new leads. Often, when we thought that we had finally come across a game that sounded promising, we never managed to retrieve it. And when we did manage to find a game, it often did not serve our purpose: Some games were too long, others were not suitable for our target group, some were simply bad. With this volume, we want to help teachers in higher education find suitable games more easily. With the help of dozens of authors from around the world, we have put together a collection of more than one hundred games. In compiling this volume, we have expanded our own horizons massively. Although we do not cover many of the subjects in our own teaching, learning about the many games and how they work has been inspiring for us as educators and game designers. We hope that this volume helps you in finding suitable games to enhance your teaching and that you will find it equally inspiring.