Digital Game-Based Problem Solving

College students may greatly benefit from the use of digital game-based problem solving to break the monotony of instructional activities that threaten student engagement in online courses. Many online courses limit student agency to activities that involve reading the course text, participating in a discussion, taking an objective test, and submitting formal and informal papers. The tedium of these activities does not sustain student engagement over the duration of the online course; however, digital game-based problem solving has demonstrated that the routine nature of activities in an online course can be overcome. One strategy that digital game-based problem solving employs to break the monotony of tasks in online courses is to engage students in real-world problem scenarios where the students have a virtual presence and are a charge to solve one or more complex problems. The scenarios compel students to work together, as deriving a viable solution to the problem is directly tied to the student’s capacity to work together.

Another strategy that digital game-based problem solving employs to reduce the monotony experienced by learners in an online is the delivery of frequent and rapid learner feedback. Providing students just-in-time feedback allows students to make informed decisions when altering their learning approaches, particularly when using prior learning approaches that have been shown to be ineffective. Such feedback is not typically available in the vast majority of contemporary online courses but could potentially have a dramatic impact on student engagement since students do not have to wait a significant amount of time to receive feedback. Learning situations where students have to wait for feedback typically has an adverse affect on student engagement.

Providing learners the capacity to customize their environment is a third strategy that digital game-based problem solving uses to minimize the routine nature of common student tasks in an online course. Customization allows the students to make decisions about their learning environment, unlike the typical online course. Students can select a persona, clothing, an environment, and weapons.

Digital game-based problem solving looks quite promising for college students, but educator adoption of this novel framework, like most innovations, will take time.