Education Week - September 18, 2013 - 12

12
EDUCATION WEEK
n
SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 www.edweek.org
n
DIGITAL DIRECTIONS > Tracking news and ideas in educational technology
www.digitaldirections.org
Consumer Demand for Digital Ed. Games Seen Rising
But level of interest
in K-12 lags behind
By Michele Molnar
& Sean Cavanagh
Consumer demand for digital
learning games and simulations is
steadily increasing and expected
to rise, a recent report concludes.
But that level of interest in using
games and simulations does not
appear to be as evident in K-12
schools, according to the lead researcher
for the study.
The boom in the use of mobile
technologies in recent years is a
major reason the global market for
learning games and simulations is
expanding—and likely to continue
to do so—during the next several
years, according to the analysis
by Ambient Insight. The Seattlebased
research firm has reported
extensively on global trends in
education purchasing.
Worldwide revenues for gamebased
learning in 2012 totaled
$1.5 billion, in U.S. dollars, and are
expected to grow to $2.3 billion by
2017, an 8 percent increase based
on the five-year compound annual
growth rate, the report says.
In North America, the expected
growth rate over the next five years
for all game-based learning is 10.1
percent, and for mobile “edugames,”
it is 15.3 percent.
“As a culture, we love game-based
learning in the early grades,” said
Sam S. Adkins, the chief research
officer at Ambient, but most of that
preference shows up in the marketplace
as parents purchasing products
for their children.
Mr. Adkins described Amplify,
a New York City-based education
technology company, as “unique
because they’re developing content
from 1st grade to 12th grade, and
some of those games are designed
for high school students.”
“Amplify will be a contender for
disrupting K-12,” he said. “It’s the
first time I’ve seen a game-based
portfolio for all grades mapped to
the [common] core curriculum.”
In May, Amplify signed its first
major contract, to deploy 21,215
tablets loaded with digital games
and other content for 24 middle
schools in the 72,500-student
Guilford County district in North
Carolina, a deployment that was
underway at press time.
(Larry Berger, the president of
Amplify Learning, the company’s
curriculum division, serves on the
board of Editorial Projects in Education,
the publisher of Education
Week.)
PD for Common Core?
Ambient evaluated simulationfocused
learning separately from
games-based learning and found
that the market for simulations is
even bigger—nearly $2.4 billion
last year, with growth projected
WORLDWIDE GROWTH
A new analysis predicts significant increases in revenues over the
next five years for digital learning games and simulations.
16% Growth
Numbers in Millions
10% Growth
North America
2012 $359
2017 $582
3% Growth
Western Europe
2012 $97
2017 $113
Eastern Europe
2012 $14
2017 $29
18% Growth
Middle East
2012 $4
2017 $10
10% Growth
22% Growth
Latin America
2012 $27
2017 $72
Africa
2012 $18
2017 $29
7.5% Growth
Asia
2012 $1,029
2017 $1,475
Note: Numbers are rounded.
SOURCE: Ambient Insight
2012-17 Five-Year Compound Annual Growth Rate
to be 23 percent, to $6.6 billion,
by 2017, also based on the compound
annual growth rate, which
is meant to calculate the growth of
investment over time.
Using Ambient’s definitions,
game-based learning products have
specific pedagogical goals, and they
“
We’re
seeing that
teachers are still
at the early
stages of even
considering
bringing digital
games into
classrooms.”
JESSICA MILLSTONE
Joan Ganz Cooney Center
At Sesame Workshop
involve the transfer of knowledge
through “gameplay,” in which users
compete to outperform others or
challenge themselves.
The reward-and-penalty system
in game-based learning works as
a form of assessment, the Ambient
report says. Simulation-based
learning allows users to try out
various physical and environmental
conditions, processes, and situations
virtually, through technology
and other means, with the goal of
teaching them to accomplish a task.
“One area where simulations
could have a real impact is in professional
development for teachers,
around questions of implementing
the common-core standards or on
training how technology can be
used in the classroom,” said Lee
M. Banville, the editorial director
of the Games and Learning Publishing
Council, a project of the
Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame
Workshop that convenes key
investors in game-based learning
and leaders in the field interested
in promoting such learning.
(The center—a New York Citybased
independent, nonprofit research
group working to improve
children’s learning through digital
media—receives support from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
which also helps support coverage
of business and K-12 innovation in
Education Week.)
An area the Ambient research
did not explore is how game-based
learning could be used to build assessment
tools, Mr. Banville said.
“When we’re looking at it from
the school side, administration
side, and the investment side, we
see assessment as an area where
there will be real growth,” especially
with the ability to scale up
across the country with assessments
geared to the common-core
standards, he said.
Educational game developers
could advance their cause with
teachers in classrooms by building
in more assessments, and self-assessments
for students, said Jessica
Millstone, an education fellow
at the Cooney Center.
“Teachers have identified this as
something that would give gaming
more traction, to help them understand
what students are learning
through the game play,” she said.
While generating data is a natural
part of the gaming process, she
said, getting teachers comfortable
with analyzing data, and giving
developers feedback about what
data are useful, will be part of the
evolution of K-12 gaming.
Biggest Barriers
In a survey released by the
Cooney Center last year, 70 percent
of teachers who used digital
gaming in the classroom said they
found it particularly effective in
working with the lowest-performing
students, said Ms. Millstone.
The “Teacher Attitudes About
Digital Games in the Classroom”
study of 505 mostly K-5 teachers
indicated that the biggest barriers
to digital game use in the
classroom were cost (cited by 50
percent) and access to technology
resources (46 percent.) Another
38 percent identified emphasis on
standardized testing as a barrier.
“We’re seeing that teachers are
still at the early stages of even
considering bringing digital games
into classrooms,” Ms. Millstone
said. She has heard a few anecdotal
reports of teachers’ being
given virtual wallets—usually in
conjunction with the acquisition
of new technology—to make individual
purchasing decisions about
educational games.
“We recommend teachers go to
BrainPOP, which curates a portal
of great games that are carefully
vetted,” she said. Educators have
access to “light” versions of games
for free at the site so they can see
if they might be appropriate in a
classroom.
Trying to harness the interests
of teachers, developers, and
investors, the Cooney Center
is launching a website called
GamesAndLearning.org this fall,
as a source for scientific and market
research to encourage investors
and developers to create more
research-based games and accompanying
assessments.
Meanwhile, the market for education-based
games beyond schools
continues to be hot. Currently, the
top-buying nations are the United
States, Japan, South Korea, China,
and India, in that order, the Ambient
report says.
But by 2017, the market will shift.
The biggest buyers will be China,
the United States, India, Indonesia,
and Brazil, the report predicts.
Mr. Adkins said what will happen
in the game-based learning market
in the United States, as it relates
to schools, is still an open question.
“There are starting to be some
serious studies in schools about
the effects of this,” he said. “Who
knows whether they will prove or
disprove [the efficacy of pedagogical
games] ... if they prove it, that
might help.”
Scan this tag with your
smartphone for a link to
“The 2012-2017 Worldwide
Game-Based Learning and
Simulation-Based Markets.”
www.edweek.org/links.
http://www.edweek.org http://www.digitaldirections.org http://www.GamesAndLearning.org http://www.edweek.org/links
Education Week - September 18, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - September 18, 2013
