Designing leadership and soft skills in educational games: The e‐leadership and soft skills educational games design model (ELESS)

Abstract

What is already known about this topic• Studies have been undertaken which shown the potential for learning soft skills and leadership skills in game environments and serious games.• Games are powerful training and educational tools for motivating and engaging learners, and reaching hard-to-reach learner groups• Leadership and soft skills need to taught differently from hard skills What this paper adds • A new model for designing and analysing serious games and game environments for leadership and soft skills (ELESS)• A consideration of the literature around current leadership models in relation to their use in the few studies undertaken using game-based approaches.• A case study of the Leadership Game, a game used to teach leadership skills, including decision making, team work and social interactive learning Implications for practice and/or policy • As previous studies have shown using games for education and training as part of a blended learning approach can be more effective than using just traditional approaches alone.• The growing use of game-based approaches in the US is evidenced in representation at WhiteHouse level of specialists in the field and growing funding into serious games initiatives in the US and EU. The impact upon policy therefore is to see more uptake of game-based approaches in primary, secondary, tertiary and training contexts, more representation of SG in policy and funding development levels and wider investment into research and development (e.g. EU FP7 funded GALA network of excellence in SGs).• The implications upon educational infrastructure and practices will be considerable over the next five years, as systems evolve to respond to increasing online and technology enhanced learning approaches. pervasive, and as expectations of learners to be more engaged during learning increase over time.Another perhaps deeper reason for the lack of literature is because the focus of 'pedagogic modelling' in sophisticated learning environments, such as learning game environments, has taken traditional curriculum objectives, tasks and outcomes, and modelled them in the environment, rather than the other way round. As many soft skills are not embedded into the national curriculum, the full benefits of teaching and learning in technology enhanced environments is only beginning to be considered and the advantages more fully understood. Although it is fair to say that even the early training game children in the 9-15 year age range and was named by 53% of boys and 12% of girls . This same study revealed that children play a diverse selection of games, while the largest proportion played action and adventure games which include leadership skills (73% and 75% of male and female children played these respectively), puzzle games (66%), simulations (56%) and roleplaying games (56%) were also popular (Dunwell et al., 2011: 53). Multiplayer onlines games in general have been found to be very engaging and absorbing leading to long play times (e.g. Yee, 2006).While these predominantly entertainment genres are...

Effective Leadership in Virtual Learning Environments

“…However, [5] argued that there are significant differences between leadership in conventional organizations and virtual environments. The scale of e-leadership was expanded to not simply refer to leadership in a virtual environment but also the idea that e-leadership can uphold advanced models of leadership in which students can effectively improve their skills and enhance their social interaction [11]. The implication of leadership in a virtual environment is still at a relatively early elaboration phase, and e-leadership will become more imperative in the near future.…”

“…The implication of leadership in a virtual environment is still at a relatively early elaboration phase, and e-leadership will become more imperative in the near future. Therefore, more research needs be done to explore the effectiveness of leadership in virtual learning settings [5], [11].…”

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“…• Meanwhile, Freitas and Routledge (2013) developed the ELESS model for evaluating educational games.…”

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