If your students play video games, you’ve probably seen how much persistence, problem-solving and focus can go into a game. A student who gives up quickly on a difficult math problem might spend an hour trying to beat a difficult level. So what is it about games that keeps us coming back?
In the latest ShiftED Podcast, I talk with David Waddington, professor at Concordia University and co-director of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, about his new book, The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games. David is a lifelong gamer who has spent years researching games as learning environments, including games focused on climate change, nuclear conflict and language learning.
One of the first things we unpack is the difference between gamification and game-based learning. Gamification adds game-like elements such as points, badges or rewards to an existing activity. Game-based learning uses a game itself as the learning environment. Students make decisions, experiment, fail, try again and gradually figure out how a system works. That can create powerful learning experiences. But, as David points out, putting a game in front of students doesn’t automatically create learning. There is a “last mile problem.” Teachers still need to connect the experience to curriculum goals, help students understand how to play, and create opportunities to make sense of what happened. The game is only part of the learning.
This is where the idea of a hidden curriculum becomes particularly interesting. David argues that the biggest concern with video games isn’t necessarily violence. It is the way some games can shape how we think. Many games reward speed, efficiency, optimization, extraction and constant progression. Get more. Move faster. Level up. Improve your score. Those mechanics can be fun, but they can also communicate ideas about what success looks like. That is the hidden curriculum David wants us to notice.
For Québec educators, this connects naturally with the Québec Digital Competency Framework. Digital competency is much bigger than knowing how to use an app or device. It includes critical thinking, ethical citizenship, problem-solving, creativity, collaboration and information literacy. Looking at technology through that lens means paying attention not only to what students can do with a tool, but also to the habits and ways of thinking that the tool might encourage.
The same thinking applies well beyond video games. Near the end of our conversation, we connect the idea of a hidden curriculum to AI. Students are increasingly working with tools designed to produce information quickly, automate tasks and reduce friction. There are obvious benefits, but there is also a learning question underneath it all: what happens when speed and convenience become the default? This isn’t an argument for keeping technology out of classrooms. It’s an invitation to be more intentional about the technologies we bring in and the experiences we create around them.
Good technology integration isn’t simply about finding something engaging or new. It’s about understanding what the technology does, what the learner does, and what students take away from the experience.
Sometimes the most important learning isn’t the lesson we planned.
It’s the lesson happening underneath it.
https://www.concordia.ca/faculty/david-i-waddington.html
