A Case Study of a Gamer-student in Game-based Learning

VISOLE (Virtual Interactive Student-Oriented Learning Environment), which is a teacher-facilitated pedagogical approach to game-based learning, aims at enabling students to acquire subject-specific knowledge in a multi-disciplinary context as well as enhance their higher-order thinking for problem solving. In order to gain an in-depth understanding of the course of students’ learning in VISOLE, under the setting of formal curricular teaching, we carried out a qualitative case study in a Hong Kong secondary school, involving one teacher and 40 secondary-4 (K10) students. This paper focuses on presenting a part of the entire study, discussing two impeding phenomena, degenerate gaming and halt gaming, which emerged in a gamer-student’s learning process. The findings provide insights into the issue of implementing game-based learning in classroom teaching.