Integrating Games In Classroom Instruction: A Professional Development Module

Abstract

Student motivation and engagement in the classroom is a challenge for any educator especially when teaching difficult subjects or concepts. Many ideas have come about as to how educators can gain engagement thus motivating learners. One approach is through playing games. Games have existed through many centuries and are very engaging, some more than others. Many studies have been conducted regarding the effectiveness of using games as a learning tool. Despite this, games are hardly incorporated into student learning. Educators find incorporating games to be of a challenge. To help address this challenge, an instructional module was developed to ease educators’ apprehensiveness in incorporating games into their instruction by familiarizing them with different game formats. A total of 12 participants completed the asynchronous professional development module along with a pre survey, pretest, posttest and post survey. The results of the evaluation found that participants had an overall increase in knowledge as well as increase in confidence to integrate games in their classroom instruction. This indicates that the overall approach to the intended goal was successful.