Prof de Freitas is pro-vice-chancellor and professor of learning and teaching at Murdoch University, in Western Australia, and is a leading international researcher into the educational potential of serious computer games.
Such games are designed not primarily as entertainment, but also for other purposes, including education.
Prof de Freitas visited Dunedin recently, giving a paper at an Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (Ascilite) conference, which was jointly hosted by the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic.
Her talk focused on ''Educational games: negative rhetoric and the future reality?'' and noted there had been ''negative media rhetoric'' about some computer games.
This was despite scientific research findings showing ''game-based approaches to learning'' were in some cases more effective than traditional approaches.
Research showed ''benefits for all age ranges from using serious games'' but many educationists had often ignored such findings and computer games had not been ''broadly considered as educational tools'', she said in an interview.
But times were starting to change, with more use of gaming approaches in secondary and tertiary education.
Asked about violence in some computer games, Prof de Freitas said most serious games did not involve violence and could be played by both young people and adults.
Serious games opened up real potential for ''behavioural change and motivating students''.
Many children were not fully engaged in the classroom and serious games offered real potential for re-engagement and educational gains.
She was focusing on the 16-plus age group, but had also been involved in many studies involving school-age children.
Older learners could also benefit from ''game play'' , including through ''improvements in memory from playing puzzles''.
Dr Jenny McDonald, of Otago University, and Dr Bronwyn Hegarty, of the polytechnic, co-convened the Dunedin conference.
Dr McDonald said there was considerable potential to develop serious gaming approaches, and because game playing was recorded on computer, teachers could later analyse student performance to clarify which matters remained educationally challenging.