IMPLEMENTING EDUCATIONAL DIGITAL GAMES INTO TEACHER-TRAINING PROGRAMMES: A CASE-STUDY BASED ON GERMAN EXPERIENCE

Modern media that come in many different formats, including books, magazines, newspapers, television, movies, video games, music, cell phones, various kinds of software and Internet, can be viewed as an important form of pedagogic influence and socialization, as they not only spread information and knowledge but also form our cultural values and behavioural norms. Following the above, educational landscape has been seeing changes directed at tapping social media and mobile technologies to reach new student audiences and to apply media as an educational tool on a preschool, elementary, secondary, and higher educational levels with the aim to augment learning. Most recently, instructional designers have been examining how best to use digital games. Integration of digital games into formal education is still scarce. This is partially attributed to a still prevalent image of video games as a leisure time activity with little or no pedagogic value, low familiarity with digital game-based learning and teaching processes, wide scope of issues to be addressed while implementing digital games into educational contexts. The aim of the article is to present the stages, the content and the results of the seminar: “Educational Digital Games: From Theory to Practice” created to overcome some of the methodological challenges. The seminar was conducted in the University of Siegen, Germany in October-November 2024 as a part of a teacher-training programme. A complex of qualitative research methods, including synthesis, comparison and generalization of theoretical material was applied, which helped identify the main topics for the analysis. The work is also based on a constructivist theory of learning that emphasises how games generate meaning and reflect broader social and cultural discourses and a participatory seminar organisation, based on the reflective exploration of games. The discussions within the seminar of such topics as “What digital game-based learning is?”, “Educational potential of digital games”, “Structural characteristics of digital games”, “Building up educational digital game-based environment”; “Educational digital games in the classroom with the accompanying practical assignments ‘Games’ (game-play) analysis”, “Creating an analogue game”, “Creating learning environment around a game” contributed to students’ knowledge extension, teaching repertoire enrichment and comparison of methodological and cultural perspectives (as the material of the seminar was based on Ukrainian, Swedish, Portuguese studies and international research analysis). The sequence of the seminar themes and assignments was structured according to E. Rogers “Diffusion of Innovations” theory. The seminar was positively evaluated by the students, and this assessment was based on the questionnaire conducted in four weeks after the completion of the seminar. 5-width scale was used as the measuring scale. Conclusion. Absolutely valuable were practical experiences when students worked in mini-groups on discussion of articles, game analysis (SWOT approach – marked by students as new and helpful), creation of analogue games and lesson planning. In the course of the theoretical material discussion, the new themes appeared. Among them were: a) media literacy, media education, issues of cyberbullying, new literacies (AI); b) game mechanics: Loot Boxes, in-game gambling. As the area of growth and improvement, it was suggested to place more emphasis on how to implement games in schools, with the focus on primary school.