Despite Allure, Using Digital Games for Learning Seen as No Easy Task

Washington

Efforts to merge popular digital games with education seem to rev up with every new generation of technology. The latest came last week, when game developers, researchers, and educators came together to explore whether digital games’ powerful attraction for young people could be used to pull them deeper into academic learning.

Billed as a “summit on educational games,” the gathering here was informed by recent research suggesting that the average American teenager spends far more time playing video games each year than in any given academic class.

So what could be the learning gains, some participants discussed, if youngsters devoted some of the time they spend battling aliens on their Xboxes, for example, to a science game in which immune cells...