MET Summer Institute: Digital Games, Learning, and Pedagogy (ETEC 565S)

This Institute addresses a large gap borne out by recent research on digital games and learning: teachers, who by and large have limited to no experience of digital games, also struggle to recognize, and, therefore have little idea how to assess, what is being learned through playing them. By bridging this gap, the Institute also addresses one of the core initiatives of the redesigned B.C. curriculum – digital literacies. Not all children and youth have played digital games, yet it is the modus operandi of the 21st century, used in training, jobs, and social and cultural life.

The questions this Institute will address are: How, and why, do we create learning environments that support both play and making digital games? How do we recognize, document and assess engagement and learning through digital game play? And what are the creative and computational possibilities of learning through making games? This Institute will establish a foundation for participants to answer these questions through an intensive, week-long immersion in digital games, learning and pedagogy.