Unpacking the domains and practices of game-oriented learning

Using games for learning tends to blur boundaries across across in- and out-of-school domains. In this way, it becomes difficult to describe and understand the meaning-making processes involved in game-oriented learning. In this chapter, we present the analytical framework of scenario-based education, which can be used to explore the translation processes and framings in relation to using game-oriented learning designs. The framework is used to analyse two empirical cases. The first case concerns the use of two different types of computer games (the serious game Global Conflicts: Latin America and the horror game Penumbra) in formal education and focuses on the relation between schooling and everyday life. The second case concerns the development and use of a specially designed practice simulation that invites school children into a universe as professional journalists and newspaper editors and hence builds on a designed relation between schooling and professional domains. Based on these examples, we discuss how the aims and practices of game-oriented learning designs must be translated, communicated, negotiated, integrated, and thus reframed by teachers and students in order to produce relevant and valid forms of educational knowledge.