MMORPGs in Support of Learning : Current Trends and Future Uses

Since the late 1990s, there has been a steady increase in the number of people who play online games. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (or MMORPGs) are a $20-billion/year industry, with the top MMORPGs comprising between 11 (United States) and 20 million (Asia) players for a global market of over $9 billion dollars (Wauters, 2008; Wei 2007). Given the popularity of this medium, and the growing use of video games in support of various learning, it was not long before educators began using MMORPGs in instructional settings. Instructors from academic disciplines such as childhood education, communication technology, psychology, and computer-assisted language learning began to experimentally investigate the use of MMORPGs in instructional settings. While an increasing number of teachers and educational institutions are making use of MMORabStract

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