ETEC 565S: MET Summer Institute – Digital Games, Learning & Pedagogy

Explore the pedagogies that support playing and making digital games for the classroom.


  • Dates: July 5-9, 2021 (some assigned readings and assignments will be required in advance of the institute).
  • Instructors: Dr. Jen Jenson & Dr. Suzanne de Castell
  • Location: Virtual (mostly synchronous)

Digital games – the creative medium of the 21st century – are played on phones, tablets, and dedicated desktops and consoles by millions of adults and children worldwide. They are also the single fastest growing creative industry on the planet: in North America, the digital games market is expected to grow up to 10% (across all sectors – mobile, PC and console) in 2019 alone. Concomitantly, education authorities, and teachers in particular, have been slow not only to understand the educational value of digital games but also to integrate these media in teaching and learning ecologies.

This Institute addresses a large gap borne out by recent research on digital games and learning. Teachers, who by and large have limited to no experience of digital games, also struggle to recognize – and, therefore have little idea how to assess – what is being learned through playing them. By bridging this gap, the Institute also addresses one of the core initiatives of the redesigned B.C. curriculum – digital literacies. Not all children and youth have played digital games, yet it is the modus operandi of the 21st century, used in training, jobs, and social and cultural life.

The Institute will introduce you to empirical studies on digital games and learning that show they not only amplify student engagement but also result in demonstrable learning gains. They have, as well, rich potential to support differentiated learning and instruction – with particular gains for students who do not see great success through more traditional forms of literacy and learning. Focusing on digital games through the lenses of learning and pedagogy, we will examine the growing literature on digital game-based learning, the scant literature on digital games and pedagogies, and create a community of practice in which to experiment with these highly engaging digital media.

The questions this Institute will address are: how, and why, do we create learning environments that support both play and making digital games? How do we recognize, document, and assess engagement and learning through digital game play? And what are the creative and computational possibilities of learning through making games? This Institute will establish a foundation for participants to answer these questions through an intensive, week-long immersion in digital games, learning, and pedagogy.

What will you do?  You will play games, talk about games, review games, read literature on games and learning, and experiment (safety net deployed) with making your own game in small groups. In the end, you will leave with a games and learning unit (if you are a teacher) to take into your own classroom and try on your own.

Read this report on the 2019 ETEC 565S Gaming Institute