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Reflection is considered essential to meaningful and lasting learning. If instructional designers practice what they are taught to preach, reflection on the theories and processes learned in relation to the relevance of the real-world experiences help mold how the instructional designer will serve. Within the instructional design (ID) courses, instructors expose students to models such as ADDIE, different learning theories and philosophies, evolution of theories and trends. Designers assume responsibility for synthesizing all this information into meaningful instruction. The attributes for ID mentioned repeatedly in the literature for the twenty-first century are knowledge relevance, authentic environments, opportunities to build on prior knowledge and experiences, challenge, scaffolding and creative and critical thinking. Additionally, policy makers more than encourage formal education to respond and adapt to the innovations that technology presents (Arnab et al. , 2012).
In the early twentieth century, Lindeman (1926) noted that adult students are in specific situations with respect to work, recreation, family life, community life, etc., that education is life, and life is also an education. Lindeman (1926) stated that experience is the adult learners' living textbook leading to the notion that authoritative teaching, examinations which preclude original thinking, and rigid pedagogical formulae have no place in adult education. These notions apply to learners of all ages, but opportunities of knowledge building from prior knowledge and experiences for a novice learner may need a boost. For the considerations of this paper, a novice learner can be anyone who is seeking to learn a new skill.
Students' unique prior experiences, skill sets and motivation challenge the instructional designer's creations. Vygotsky (1978) recognized play as a way for children to experience and develop imaginative thinking for skills needed in the real world that they had not had the opportunity to actually experience. This same concept may extend to the novice learner or any learner; play may build the skills for the real world. Play enables persons to become emotionally involved, an activity critical to learning (Caine and Caine, 1994). This paper will investigate how play through serious games might fill the gap of experience in the novice learner, build on experiences of the not-so-novice learner, enhance learning and define the role of instructional designers in game design (GD).
Games for instruction
Video games that...