Last week, an interesting slideshow was posted on Slideshare.net by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, CEO of Serious Games Interactive, titled "Important Lessons from the Last 10 Years with Game-Based-Learning." 25 slides long, I found it full of interesting insights, many of which ring true for this educational game designer. (I've embedded the full slideshow at the end of this post.)

A few things jump out at me from this presentation:

THE GOOD

• Many teachers are using game-based instruction. The presentation notes that very few teachers are dismissing games as effective instructional tools these days, and the majority of teachers are using them in one fashion or another. At Muzzy Lane, we're finding the question to be less "why should we do a game?" and more "how do we make a game that will be effective?" Furthermore, all the major educational publishers are taking game based learning very seriously, something that wasn't the case when we first entered this space.
  

• It works! Ten more years of research is showing that game-based learning improves self-efficacy, retention, knowledge transfer, motivation, and engagement to content. Students perceive they learn more, and there is evidence to suggest GBL is especially effective with struggling learners.
  

THE CHALLENGE

• There are Still Many Barriers to Wide Adoption. Many of the same barriers that existed ten years ago, still exist today. Computer equipment isn't very good, installation and licensing is difficult, teachers have little time to invest in trying something new, and so on. The presentation recommends browser-based solutions as "a must" to make adoption as simple as possible, which is something we obviously agree with, considering our entire Sandstone platform is built as a web-based game service.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• You need to Convince People! The presentation recommends getting games in front of teachers, through direct presentations or showcasing at seminars, and involve teachers in development. I couldn't agree more. We currently have a series of prototype games being tested in a small number of classrooms now, and these were games developed extremely closely with instructor subject matter experts. We feel this gives our games
  

It's a slide deck worth running through if you're interested in game-based-learning. We're incredibly optimistic that the next ten years are going to see GBL make even great in-roads into become a core pillar of 21st Century education.