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the added visual and audio effects, video games deliver information to students’ brains in a much more effective envelope.

research has shown that educational video games can increase student achievement, as well as spatial reasoning skills, compared to more traditional instruction.

Mission-based video games are about more than just getting students to memorize facts. Video games have been shown to teach literacy, problem-solving, perseverance, and collaboration.

Most video games offer students opportunities to both gain knowledge and, more importantly, immediately utilize that knowledge to solve a problem.

This immediate application of knowledge, coupled with the inherent fun of video games, engages and motivates students far better than many traditional lessons could. Students become problem solvers who can think through complex missions to find the best possible solution.

And because students are so motivated to find a solution, they will often take risks they might otherwise be too scared to take in the classroom.

Not only is he gaining valuable collaborative and leadership skills, he’s also becoming a true global citizen.

With any in-class activity, our job as teachers is to help students transfer that knowledge so they can use it in scenarios outside of that day’s lesson. The same goes for educational games.

Because students were in the lab, they weren’t bored enough to cause trouble during their down-time. Plus, teachers started seeing some intriguing self-regulation habits take form. With a limited number of controllers, students were politely asking and offering to take turns in the game lab, without adult intervention. And the lab attracted a variety of kids — girls, boys, special education students, kids from all socio-economic backgrounds. Students who normally never interacted were playing together.

School leaders contend that by building video games that work, students begin to understand complex systems, which will give them valuable knowledge as they enter the workforce.

“The amount of detail about proteins, chemical signals and gene regulation that these 15-year-olds were devouring was amazing. Their questions were insightful. I felt like I was having a discussion with scientist colleagues,” said Stegman.

he video game excites students about science

“The amazing results of the training and simulation program have led to significantly improved grades on students’ critical skills tests, taking scores from a 56% success in 2007, to 95% at the end of 2008 after the simulation was instituted.”