Rice (2007) Assessing higher order thinking in video games



The purpose of this article is to identify games that are beneficial for the classroom in terms of its educational benefits.

The beginning of the article is about the lower level learning that takes place in edutainment (games meant for education) products. It examines what learning takes place and what is is not covered by games. The characteristics of highly cognitive virtual interactive environments are identified through examining these types of games. In order to help teachers as well as preservice teachers evaluate the games that they might consider using in their classrooms a rubric as well as an index are provided. These will help them to find how well the game encourages higher order thinking and thus determine how useful it would be in the classroom. At the end of the article an example is given of a social studies simulation that was designed to encourage higher order thinking and this game was evaluated.

This compares to the articles Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines and Games People Play: How Video Games Improve Probabilistic Learning as these also analyze how learning takes place in games and what type of learning this is.

The keywords for this article are: Cognition, computer-based training, education, Educational Technology, eLearning, Human Computer Interaction, human-computer interaction, Inclusive Education, Integration, interactive learning, K-12, pre-service teacher education, Preservice Teacher Education, Professional Development, simulation, teacher education, teacher preparation, teacher training, teaching, Teaching Methods, technology, technology integration, video games, Virtual Environments, virtual reality

Some useful articles were:

Alberto, P.A., & Troutman, A.C. (2003). Applied behavior analysis for teachers (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.


Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay.


Gee, J.P. (2003b). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrace Macmillan.


Gibson, J.J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.


Gredler, M.E. (2002). Games and simulations and their relationship to learning. In D.H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology (2nd ed., pp. 571-581). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaulm.


Squire, K., & Jenkins, H. (2003). Harnessing the power of games in education. INSIGHT, 3 (1), 5-34.


Some questions I have after reading this article are:

Do all educational games qualify as an edutainment product?

What is higher-order thinking?

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