Principles and Best Practices of Designing Digital Game-Based Learning Environments

Playing games holds an important role in learning and development. While designing and using digital game-based learning (DGML) environments becomes more appealing to educators, there is a disconnect between the goals that educators try to achieve and the design strategies they utilize to achieve their goals. The inclusion of game elements alone is insufficient to improve students’ learning, and it does not solve educational problems that DGBL environments are aimed to solve. The current state of research on the design of DGBL environments calls for an updated review of the best practices in recent years for developing DGBL environments, which prompted this literature review. It draws from successful examples of educators implementing learning games in classes, and it highlights five key principles that facilitate the effectiveness of DGBL: (1) interactivity, (2) immersiveness, (3) adaptive problem solving, (4) feedback, and (5) freedom of exploration. Practical examples are used to illustrate the effective implementation of these principles in DGBL environments and to underscore the significance of each component.