Gaming4All: Reflecting on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Game-Based Engineering Education

Game-based learning has long been heralded as a promise to transform education into a more engaging and experiential paradigm. Its implementation in engineering education has thus far shown that promise, yet more evidence is needed for widespread adoption. Our work focuses on issues of equity, inclusivity, and diversity, thus surfacing the question of whether game-based learning benefits each and every student. To date, these issues have not received much attention in game-based learning educational research landscape, despite its poignancy, given today’s global social climate and the systematic lack of equity and diversity in engineering education. With a focus on gender and race/ethnicity we reflect on the outcomes of implementing game-based learning environment in undergraduate geotechnical engineering courses (n = 362). We find evidence that game-based learning supports positive outcomes and provides an equitable learning environment. However, we also note several challenges that are further discussed.