Video games might increase motivation and improve critical thinking and problem solving skills of learners.

Thanks for being the first to respond Ms. Ghada M. Awada . Yes, definitely, such instructional approach can increase learners' motivation and creativity. Back in the old days, children were engaged with cassette video games like Mario Brothers, Battle Tanks and Pac-man, to name a few but they were dedicated for fun purposes only. Do you have any ideas on what design features or maybe types of games that I can infuse into the proposed educational games?

Video games can improve leadership skills if they include the proper content.

Take into account that teaching vocabulary comprises different aspects of a word. Students must be able to play with the word, the visual concept and the pronunciation; and at a higher level with the part of speech and context in a sentence. As it is a game, eye catching visuals are essential.

Thanks Gabriel Cabezas for the response. Yes, I do agree with you. The idea of playing is central in video games but to make them educational, I feel there should be a balance between the fun part and the learning part. Definitely, the pronunciation aspect is something I should consider as even English speakers are struggling to pronounce words as they are supposed to be. If you don't mind to elaborate further, what kind of eye-catching visuals that you think can attract young learners to learn ESL when it comes to gaming context?

Well, Mohd Syazwan Wan Mahzan , thanks for considering my comment. What I think is that you need to consider commissioning a game designer for the visuals, to make it look like a real game. Some years ago, along with a colleague who was researching on m-learning, we presented a project for a vocabulary game aimed for learning TOEIC Bridge vocabulary. Everybody liked the idea, but the layout wasn't really appealing for the students. Our game was like a trivia game, where students needed to complete challenges to get to higher levels of vocabulary. At the end, what we had in our minds wasn't what we had in our hands.

Gabriel Cabezas, you know what, we happen to think along the same line! I have come across with the same problem in some design and development journals highlighting the huge cost incurred for refining their prototypes. That's what I'm afraid most, having the prototype that I am required to do major overhaul. Developing digital games is not comparable to developing teaching or learning blog in which you could always touch up on the cosmetic parts in later stages of your product development.

As for games, everything should be decided at the design phase; game mechanics, types of game-plays, gamified environments, challenges, characters, layout-to-layout transition, colours and concept. Once the games are materialized in the form of prototype, only minimal tweak should be done on them. If appointed review experts are not happy with the very foundation of the games for instance the game-plays chosen, designers will have a very hard time to re-do and re-code everything from scratch, including other gaming elements and this is a nightmare for any instructional designer-cum-the-researcher.

Having this foreseen issue in mind, I'm taking the approach to have a very comprehensive design phase in which once everyone (the experts, the instructors and the targeted learners) are happy with my games storyboard, then I'm going to say yes to my development team members to start developing the proposed games.

Mohd Syazwan Wan Mahzan , I completely agree with your ideas. If you keep that in mind, your game will be a success. I'm really interested in your project now, please continue sharing your updates. I would like to learn by your work and maybe reformulating mine in the future. Thanks.