What is Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS)

Many of the educational outcomes we seek to promote in public education, such as problem solving and critical thinking, are difficult to achieve given the constraints of the real-world classroom. Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) games make excellent tools for addressing both content-based and higher-order learning outcomes, and many educators are exploring their use in the classroom. But making effective use of commercial games in the classroom requires that we understand how games function in relation to the typical instructional strategies and practices of the classroom. The first part of this chapter will examine the theories that underlie the successful integration of commercial games in the classroom and look at an empirically based model, the NTeQ (iNtegrating Technology through inQuiry), for designing lessons that integrate COTS games. This will lay the groundwork for the second part of the chapter in which these theories and the model are discussed in the context of actually designing COTS game-based learning (GBL).