Three different things people call “games in education”
Discussions about games and school often go wrong because the phrase covers very different practices. It helps to separate them before asking whether any of them work.
Learning games are built from the start to teach something. The content is part of the play: a student practices fractions by running a shop, or sorts historical events to unlock the next level.
Commercial games used in class were made for entertainment and borrowed by a teacher. A city-building simulation might prompt a discussion about planning, or a puzzle game might start a conversation about logic. The game was not designed with a curriculum in mind, so the teacher does most of the connecting work.
Gamified lessons do not use a game at all. They borrow game features such as points, badges, levels, streaks and leaderboards and attach them to ordinary activities. A vocabulary quiz with a progress bar is gamified; a vocabulary game where the words are the puzzle is a learning game.
These three can behave very differently in a room full of students, and evidence about one does not automatically transfer to another.
Where games tend to fit well
Game-based learning is most convincing where practice is repetitive, feedback can be immediate and mistakes are cheap. A well-made game can let a student try an answer, see the result in seconds and try again, which is hard for a single teacher to provide to thirty students at once.
Some common uses:
- Drill and fluency. Math facts, spelling, map locations and vocabulary can be practiced in short rounds with instant feedback.
- Simulations. A system with rules, such as a small economy or an ecosystem, lets students change a variable and watch what happens. Simulation games are well suited to this kind of experimenting.
- Language practice. Games can give learners low-pressure repetition, which is useful in language learning where speaking aloud can feel risky.
- Logic and reasoning. Puzzle formats can exercise logic skills, though how far those skills carry over to other subjects is an open question.
- Making games. Students who design a game often have to think about rules, clarity and testing. This overlaps with learning to code, which many schools treat as its own subject.
- Non-digital play. Tabletop games and card games need no devices and can support discussion, negotiation and rule-following.
None of these is guaranteed to work. They are places where the match between a game’s strengths and a learning goal is at least plausible.
Why engagement is not the same as learning
A common trap is to judge a tool by how much students enjoy it. Enjoyment matters, since students who dislike an activity often stop trying, but it does not show that anything was learned. A game can be absorbing because it is fast and flashy while the educational content is incidental or skipped.
A few questions help separate fun from teaching:
- Is the learning goal required to progress? If students can win while ignoring the content, the content is decoration.
- Does the feedback explain, or only score? Telling a student an answer was wrong is less useful than showing why.
- Does failure lead somewhere? Good designs make errors informative, which connects to ideas about learning from failure.
- Is the time well spent? If ten minutes of setup and rules yields two minutes of relevant practice, a worksheet might do better.
- Does the opening teach the rules clearly? Poor player onboarding can eat the lesson before it starts.
A simple way to test a tool in your own class
Teachers rarely have time for formal research, but a small, honest comparison is possible. The aim is to check whether students learned more with the tool than they would have otherwise, not merely whether they liked it.
One approach is to give the same short quiz before and after a unit, with two groups doing the same topic in different ways. Here is a hypothetical example, with made-up numbers purely to show the arithmetic:
- Group A used the game. Average quiz score went from 61 to 70, a gain of 9 points.
- Group B used a regular worksheet. Average score went from 62 to 68, a gain of 6 points.
The difference in gains is 9 minus 6, or 3 points. Whether that is meaningful depends on class size, how much scores vary from student to student, and whether the groups were comparable at the start. With about 20 students per group, a 3-point gap could easily be ordinary variation. A single small trial can suggest something, but it should not settle the matter.
It also helps to check the following:
- Were the groups assigned fairly, or did the more motivated students end up with the game?
- Did the quiz test the same skill the game practiced, or something quite different?
- Did students retain the material a few weeks later, not just on the next day?
- Did one group get more teacher attention?
Cautions
Several issues come up repeatedly with games in school.
Novelty fades. A new tool can raise energy simply because it is different. Effects measured in the first week may not last.
Access is uneven. Not every student has the same devices, internet connection or experience with games. A tool that assumes familiarity can disadvantage some students.
Points can change motivation. Heavy use of rewards may encourage students to chase the reward rather than the understanding. Leaderboards in particular can discourage students who are already struggling.
Accessibility matters. Games that rely on fast reactions, small text or sound alone can exclude some learners. Options such as subtitle options and colorblind modes are worth looking for before a classroom purchase.
Privacy and advertising. Check what data a classroom tool collects, and whether it includes advertising or purchases inside the product. Some free tools make money through in-app purchases, which are not appropriate in a classroom.
Deciding what to do
A reasonable stance for a teacher is open but skeptical. Games can be a useful part of a lesson when the learning goal is clear, the game’s mechanics line up with that goal, and there is some way to check the result. They are rarely a replacement for good teaching, and the strongest classroom uses usually involve a teacher who frames the activity beforehand and discusses it afterward.
Marketing claims from vendors deserve the same scrutiny as any other. Be wary of precise-sounding promises of improved scores, especially when no description of how they were measured is offered. Ask what was compared, with whom and over what period, and prefer tools you can try on a small scale first.