Linda Daniela - Smart Pedagogy of Game-based Learning

To date, games have been used both to help children learn by playing, an idea that originated from Friedrich Frbels work, and to support adults in developing strategic skills such as through chess, bridge, Go and similar. Reiser (2001) considers that the use of games as an instructional method for educational purposes dates to after World War II, when instructional media, for example different vizualisations to let students better understand some concepts, began to be used in any sense for instructional delivery (Reiser & Gagne, 1983). It is believed that the idea of digital games originated between 1960 and 1970 (Jaiswal, 2021), and since 1971, when Intel introduced its microprocessor in Santa Clara, California (Chan et al., 2006), there has been a revolution in various digital solutions that also affected the use of games in education. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, digital educational games became an important constituent of student-centred learning (Marklund, 2015). In the research literature, the term game-based learning (GBL) is mostly referred to as digital game-based learning (DGBL) (Giannakas et al., 2018), but for simplicity the term GBL is used and digital games are proved more as motivational than educational (Chen & Hwang, 2014). Although there is potential for the use of games in education, they are still rarely used. Denham, Mayben and Boman (2016) think that the reason for this is that teachers are unprepared for using this method due to a lack of professional development in teacher training. In order for teachers to start using digital games in the teaching process, it is necessary to acquire technological, pedagogical and content knowledge on how to manage this process (Becker, 2007; Kirriemuir & McFarlane, 2004).

Kirriemuir and McFarlane (2004) have defined a game as a type of activity either where the gaming is a central element of the activity or where there are stimulating elements for other activities and where learning is a planned or accidental outcome of that activity.