Many young people today think nothing about spending hours killing trolls in a role playing game, freeing Angry Birds or competing with those in their social circles on Words with Friends. When it comes to studying for classes, though–an arena in which costs and future rewards are very real–they don’t have that same dogged perseverance.
We are failing our students. Whether it is because the material we’re teaching isn’t relevant for today’s society, our delivery of higher education is out of step with learning styles, or we’re not engaging students to show the demonstrable benefits for future success, we have failed them.
The goal of Higheredgames.com is not to trivialize the learning process by making it more game-like in the same way marketers are introducing game mechanics in their sales process. Rather, we asks the question here at Higheredgames.com: Is there anything we can learn from game design that would enable us to make higher education more engaging, relevant and exciting so that the average student would rather spend their time studying or taking part in activities that help them grow and develop as a real being rather than playing games as a virtual being?
