Is Gaming the Future of Education?

What can I say the world is changing and so are the ways that students want to be educated. Games have been a critical part to education since the beginning of time. With the development of the internet and the infusion of virtual worlds through gaming systems people are connecting around the world to interact with one another through games. However most of these games have little educational value and education institutions are doing little to invest time in integrating learning systems into a widely integrated virtual network.

Academic institutions are looking more and more like the mainstream entertainment conglomerates. The traditional academic institution layers of bureaucracy hinder their ability to be malleable and shift to the demands of students around the globe. Most importantly these traditional academic institutions are struggling to find relevant ways to deliver content. Students are no longer merely consumers they are becoming active participants in creating the product they are purchasing. Students want more information and to be able to experience it. Utilizing gaming systems is the first step to allow students to receive massive amounts of information while the student can interact with the content rather than just sitting in a class being told what the information is.

Colleges such as GCU who are looking into these forms delivering content and decentralizing their layers of bureaucracy so they can adapt to the needs of students and jobs is the future of education. Offering online classes however building their ground campus as their main focus is leading them to be in the forefront of education systems. Education institutions need to start creating a balance of online and offline courses for students to take while investing in new ways to deliver content. Check out their website to see how they are making dramatic changes to lead academia into the 21st century.