This article, “Reflections on ‘A Review of Trends in Serious Gaming’” by Sigmund Tobias and J.D. Fletcher, summarizes findings from a review of 95 studies on gaming and its possible use in education. The article suggests that for games to help students with tasks in the physical world there would need to be an overlap with the content of the game and the tasks at hand. It also goes over the effect that aggressive games can have on the students, the aggressive content has the possibility of instilling aggressive behavior in the player that they can act out in person. To fix this issue the articles suggests that gaming companies should create games that have “prosocial themes that have been shown… to be effective in increasing outcomes such as conflict resolution and helping reactions.” However, this would not necessarily mean this would decrease aggression, that would require further research. The article does say however that at the current moment the “enthusiasm” over the idea to integrate gaming into students learning curriculum is still not backed up with enough evidence.

The article focuses on gaming and students and more specifically asking whether there is enough evidence to say that gaming can or cannot help students learn. For this article, they required reports of acts, behavior, or events to help them get to a consensus on the data. They would have gotten this data from public records, they examined data from reports and articles already published. To analyze their data, they would have used qualitative data analysis/thematic analysis.

I found that this research better clarified how society is trying to use technology, and in this case gaming, more integrally in everyday life. I felt that this article was successful in showing the possible pros and cons of using gaming to help teach students; explaining that although merit might be found that there really is not enough evidence to support using gaming in the curriculum like some other articles may suggest.

Tobias, Sigmund., Fletcher, J.D. (2012). Reflections on “A Review of Trends in Serious Gaming”. Review of Educational Research, 82(2), 233 – 237. 10.3102/0034654312450190