On Thursday 19th May 2011 Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) is hosting the Irish Symposium on Game-Based Learning.

“Game-Based Learning (GBL) is a fascinating medium which has the potential to increase both motivation and learning on the part of the learners. GBL has captured the interest of researchers, and some educators have already started to embrace this technology. Although there is a solid body of evidence on the educational effectiveness of GBL, it still needs to gain more recognition amongst Irish teachers, lecturers, and policy-makers.”

Dr. Patrick Felicia, researcher at the Department of Computer Science in WIT appears to be one of the main organizers and it just so happens that I’ve been recently poring over his wonderful booklet (PDF) Digital Games in Schools: A Handbook for Teachers. The following is just one of many powerful insights I could extract from it –

“Digital games can have an emotional impact onplayers, increasing their self-esteem (provided the proper monitoring is applied) and enabling them to engage in social activities. Playing can have a calming effect on participants who, as in other entertaining activities (e.g. watching films), feel a wide range of emotions, but in a safe andcontrolled environment. Emotions experienced during play can vary through joy, empathy, anger, frustration or triumph. This succession of emotions tends to keep the players immersed.

Furthermore, studies have shown that emotions can help thememorization process, especially if the emotional content or tone of the material to be learnedmatches the emotions of the learner. Because they induce different emotions in the players, digital games might help them to remember facts more vividly and so assist the cognitive process. “

Needless to say we’ve already registered to attend the Game-Based Learning symposium and are thoroughly looking forward to it.