Online Games for 21st Century Skills

Abstract

As foreseen by visionaries in the 20th century, mastery of the dynamic processes that underpin the acquisition and manipulation of knowledge is quickly becoming a critical capability in the 21st century. Our formal educational systems do not tend to facilitate the development of these capabilities, yet people of all ages are developing them via a variety of digitally-mediated mechanisms. Online games offer one area of exploration for spontaneously-occurring phenomena that represent the natural development of such literacy. This chapter reviews the need for 21st-century skills and illuminates existing digital domains in which these skills develop organically. Peering through the window of the present into the future, we present a view that envisioning change means taking a long look at what is working now, regardless of whether that activity is taking place in a formal setting or within entertainment-based worlds where the skills are mandatory for mastery, but learned incidentally through play.