Fostering Ethics and Morality in Adult Learning Through Gameplay

This presentation discusses preliminary results of a design-based research study (Barab and Squire 2004; Amiel and Reeves 2008) in which the hypothesis that a digital game which presents situations that students may face in real work environments can lead to higher efficacy in the learning process, yielding more meaningful moral and empathic gains and increasing transferability of concepts. In terms of learning gains, it was expected that participants would be able to recognize the influences of their subjectivities and biases in their moral and empathic decision-making in professional environments, as well as understand the process of coming to such decisions. In addition to the contributions to participants, the design-based research techniques adopted in the study can shed light into aspects of game-based learning that have been underexamined by previous literature. Some of such characteristics are accessibility to different learner profiles and adequacy of game-based content to subject-matter.