Authors of Digital_Humanities (2012) lament the gap between the teaching modes inherited from closed doors and today’s hyperconnected culture. Could these two worlds—the classroom vs outside the university walls—be reunited? This idea is suggested in the book:
The digital environment offers expanded possibilities for exploring multiple approaches to what constitutes knowledge and what methods qualify as valid for its production. This implies that the 8-page essay and the 25-page research paper will have to make room for the game design, the multi-player narrative, the video mash-up, the online exhibit and other new forms and formats as pedagogical exercises.
A renewed culture implies new talents, new skills (design, programming, multimedia manipulation, critical curation), and along them new forms of knowledge. Why not embrace them rather than keeping them at a distance (if not in complete opposition)?
A video game may, for example, integrate historical elements in its narration; provoke ethical decision-making situations (e.g., in the context of caregiving); stimulate memorization through playful mechanisms (competition, cooperation). Video gaming can therefore be part of the paradigm of learning (rather than mere transmission): the protagonist actively traces their own intellectual route (rather than simply receiving serial information, with the passivity this encourages), in addition to developing their spatial perception abilities, reflexes, and other skills.
Playing does not have to be opposed to learning, as it is (unfortunately) often the case.