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The research field of Learning Design (LD) has been active for some time now, but several questions remain open for the scientific community. In particular, the article tackles issues that have been core concerns in LD over the years: (1) how to support the different phases of the LD process; (2) what representations should be used in the various steps; and (3) to what extent should digital LD tools be structured or flexible, either guiding the teacher/designer or leaving them free to pursue their own design path and style. The authors investigated these open questions through an LD tool called the Pedagogical Planner. This tool has been evaluated in authentic contexts with the goal of providing input for the ongoing debate. Evaluation has focused on the perceptions and actual usage by teachers, generating significant evaluative data to be used as a spur for further reflection on LD.

This paper presents the results of a literature search and review focused on the integration of digital games into educational processes, specifically in primary schools. It briefly analyses around 78 papers reporting research carried out in a range of different countries and with a variety of educational objectives. The study confirms the increasing wealth of scientific studies dealing with game based learning and its implementation in formal educational contexts. This also holds true for primary education, which is at the core of this study. The review reveals that in this sector there is a predominance of papers that could be classified as theoretical or as position papers; only 78 out of more than 700 published papers surveyed actually reported concrete school experiences of any kind. Detailed analysis of this sub-group has highlighted some clues that may prove useful for interpreting the data as a whole and for reflecting on the current and future trends that they may indicate.

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