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Beginning to understand variation in teaching approaches to game-based learning

Recently, games have grown in popularity as tools to support student learning and motivation. Accordingly, games represent one possible contributor to student motivation, an outcome of engineering education particularly important to learning and to student persistence. However, research into game-based learning — a broad term referring to the use of games in education — has been rather narrow to date, focusing on proving or disproving the effectiveness of games as learning tools. As evidence supporting games' effectiveness continues to mount, it is important that the field broaden its inquiry to provide practice-based insights that enable instructors to implement game-based learning in an effective manner. Our research seeks to address this gap by studying how engineering instructors use games in the classroom, and how these teaching practices related to student motivation to learn. The overall study will use a multiple-case study approach, including observations and interviews with instructors and their students. Preliminary results from this work-in-progress study revealed substantial variability in the teaching practices of two engineering instructors using non-digital games, and provided several methodological implications for future study of game-based teaching.