Super Mario World and game-based learning: new literacy development in adults

This study is focused on media literacy, game-based learning and its relationship with development of critical thinking in an adult educational arena, and looks at the applicability of various approaches to game-based learning, and how adults learn through game-based learning. Twenty- first century higher education is unimaginable without media literacy skills such as the use of the internet, touchscreens and e-readers, keyboards and mice, software and the like. Students and facilitators alike must utilize these skills to even begin to access new technologies which are inextricably linked with the higher education sector. But media literacy is not the focus of higher education, only the medium through which education is now largely transmitted. How game-based learning is transposed to real life learning, and how that relates to developing media literacy as well as critical thinking skills is the framework of the study. Gamification learning can be transposed to the classroom in a higher education setting.