Abstract:

Democratic societies today face numerous challenges that represent a threat for democratic institutions and peaceful coexistence. Therefore, education for democratic citizenship and human rights is of great importance in preparing young people for life and work in a democratic society in order to become active, informed and responsible citizens. At the same time, within the framework of a curricular reform, digital media is being intensely introduced in the school system and education in Croatia, so the question arises in what extent and in what way they can contribute to development of democratic competences. Digital media enables networked, multimedia and interactive presentation of content and offer tools for networked collaboration. Digital media enable faster access to information about current events and political processes. Such an environment also enables an active introduction of computer games into the curriculum of school subjects, civic education being included as well. In fact, over the last few years numerous computer games are present on the market that enable students to face political processes and problem solving in a simulated situation. This paper analyses the available computer games and their possibilities and boundaries in the educational process in the area of democratic competences learning.

Computer games are able to simulate the complexity of political decisions and present them through a multimedia and interactive environment, providing students the possibility of viewing the situation from different perspectives which, in principle, can contribute to political judgment abilities. However, the political judgment abilities are just one part of the democratic competences. Besides, the optimal usage of the latter in teaching is connected to a number of didactic, organizational and technical difficulties. In the end, it was concluded that computer games which deal with the democratic processes cannot be considered neither exclusive nor an essential factor in successful learning or adoption of democratic competences.

Keywords:

Democracy, competence, computer games, civic education, multimedia systems.