Contact a consultant in Instructional Design and Development (IDD) to incorporate games or simulations into course learning activities. The IDD interactive-design team works with the content expert - the faculty member -- to either create custom interactive materials, or to recommend existing tools that best suit your needs. The following list provides examples of educational games and simulations and highlights a few of their key benefits:

• Allow students to learn by doing: Interactive simulations provide a way for students to become active participants in the learning process. Simulations allow students to make decisions and learn from their mistakes in a low-stakes, safe environment. This experience helps prepare students for real-world situations in ways that reading and talking about them cannot. For example, in the PC-game A Force More Powerful, students learn about and enact strategies of non-violent protest to fight oppression and injustice.
• Keep students engaged: Games and simulations can provide a valuable supplement to traditional instructional methods that keep students engaged and deliver course content to a wider variety of learning styles. Here are simple examples:
  - Intermediate German Quiz
  - Black Holes Jeopardy

Below are a few more complex examples:

- In Ayiti: The Cost of Life, players manage the everyday struggles of a poor family struggling to survive in Haiti. The game can be a useful way to help students better understand the economic, social, and political issues that contribute to third-world poverty. 

- The McDonald's Videogame allows players to control the profitability of the McDonald's corporation - from cattle farming to distribution and marketing. The game serves as a form of protest and means for its creators to express their unfavorable views of the company, making it a provocative tool to get students thinking about how large companies are run and how the Web is changing the way political messages are promoted. 

• Take learning beyond the classroom: Games and simulations allow students to practice concepts and skills from any location. One example can be seen in the text revision tool developed by IDD to allow law professor Jim Sowerby to demonstrate how small changes in wording can impact reader perception. While the tool makes it easier for the professor to present writing concepts in class, its availability online encourages students to further explore this concept outside the classroom.

DePaul Faculty Publications

Cook, L., & Olson, J.R. (2005). The sky's the limit: An activity for teaching project management. Journal of Management Education 30 (3), 1- 17.

Reinhardt, G., & Cook, L. (2006). Is this a game or a learning moment? Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education 4 (2), 301-305.

Additional Readings and Resources

Dickey, M.D. (2005). Engaging by design: How engagement strategies in popular computer and video games can inform instructional design. Educational Technology Research & Development. 53(2).

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative resources on Games and Simulations. Includes links to articles and examples.

StudyMate game creation tool. Provided by Instructional Technology and Development creates a series of small games - crossword puzzles, hangman - that reinforce concept memorization.