Going through a bunch of starred articles and found this quote from Virtual Learning Worlds:
I’m not sure why educators have this preconception of a learning game being a perfect standalone learning experience. Instructors don’t solely rely on a lecture in a classroom, they often have electronic support like video, images, or slides, they have assignment support like readings, as well as labs and activities.
I can’t agree with this more. There are so many people who want to be able to use a single delivery method (and call themselves teachers/instructors) and ignore the fact that people learn by reflecting and making connections with what else they know and have been presented in the class. Sure games have a number of “media channels” already, but those are all contributing (hopefully) to the game experience (working like intro or summative labs). But the learning only really happens when the ideas are applied outside the game world. So regardless of how or for who the game was created (education or commercial), you need to be able to bring in more than one delivery method to get any learning happening.
If you want to see some best practice on designing games that you can then built other connections to, check these out (pt1, pt2, pt3, pt4, pt5, pt6, pt7).
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