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Game-based curriculum and transformational play: Designing to meaningfully positioning person, content, and context
... From a total of thirty studies (n = 30), twelve (n = 12) in primary education (PE) have used 3DVWs in several learning subjects, such as Natural science topics [8][9][10][11][12], Applied science topics, such as Computer Science [12,13] or Mathematics [14], and Social science topics [15][16][17][18][19], such as Language learning [17]. Additionally, in secondary education (SE), eighteen (n = 18) encompass several experiments made in the following learning subjects: Natural Science topics [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], Applied science topics, such as Mathematics [30], Computer science [1,5,6,31], or interdisciplinary STEM topics [32], and Social science topics, such as Language learning [33]. ...
... According to the above-mentioned analysis and the comparison provided in Figure 3, a significant body of literature [8][9][10][11][15][16][17][18][19] related to primary education, utilized reflection and discussion, perhaps because students at this age (under 12-years-old) want to immediately engage and discuss their own experiences, thus facilitating their creative reflection by interacting with 3D visual objects. While, in secondary education, a number of studies (e.g., [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]) utilized the same learning mechanics to a large extent for collabora-tive tasks, while some others (e.g., [31,32]) have also integrated assessment tools to measure students' outcomes and achievements in-game (i.e., correcting and applying coding tasks or integration of puzzle-based tasks). ...
... Considering the above, it becomes evident that the nature of the games was dynamic and complex to enable learners to have the protagonist role. The various action-points [25,28] (e.g., mini-tasks), game turns (e.g., difficulty level increase) [22,24], and narrationcontrol mechanisms (e.g., game zones) [20][21][22][23]33] that were in place to ensure participants' smooth progress influenced students' actions and decisions, especially in experimental or exploratory learning activities [20,24,26]. Conversely, studies which involved content creation exploited to the maximum the native 3D modeling tools that 3DVWs offer [27,28,35], whereas those who focused on the programming knowledge development, relied also on the integration of third-party software [5,31] and the distribution of awards or indicative changes in students' status [1]. ...
A substantial body of literature has well-documented and demonstrated the potential of using three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds (VWs) across various learning subjects and contexts in primary and secondary (K-12) education. However, little is known when it comes to issues related to child-interaction research and the impact that design decisions have on the user experience (UX), especially when game-based learning approaches are employed in 3DVWs. Hence, in this systematic literature review, we appraise and summarize the most relevant research articles (n = 30) conducted in K-12 settings, published between 2006-2020 and that elicit information related to (a) the interaction design (ID) of game events and trends associated with game elements and features that were utilized for the development and creation of game prototypes, (b) the research methods which were followed to empirically evaluate their teaching interventions, and (c) the design-related issues and factors affecting ID and UX by identifying the most frequent set of learning and game mechanics that were adopted in various game prototypes in different learning subjects. The vast majority of game prototypes enhanced students' engagement and participation, affecting their achievements positively. This systematic literature review provides clear guidelines regarding the design decisions that educational stakeholders should consider, and provides recommendations on how to assess and evaluate the students' learning experience (i.e., performance, achievements, outcomes) using 3DVWs.
... Despite this scenery, smartphones, tablets and videogames are becoming more widespread among rural population [Silva et al. 2013]. According to the principles of Popular Education, the teaching-learning process is improved when educators are part of the process as facilitators, considering the a priori knowledge of educands and their social, cultural and historical background, in a mutual exchange relationship, mediated by affection [Silva et al. 2013;Freire 2011], a dimension that can be easily reached combining education and games, improving the levels of engagement of learners [Barab et al. 2012]. Taking into account Transformational Play, learners who play transformationally become protagonists who use the knowledge, skills, and concepts of the educational content to first make sense of a situation and then make choices that actually transform the play space and themselves, are able to see how that space changed because of their own efforts [Barab et al. 2012]. ...
... According to the principles of Popular Education, the teaching-learning process is improved when educators are part of the process as facilitators, considering the a priori knowledge of educands and their social, cultural and historical background, in a mutual exchange relationship, mediated by affection [Silva et al. 2013;Freire 2011], a dimension that can be easily reached combining education and games, improving the levels of engagement of learners [Barab et al. 2012]. Taking into account Transformational Play, learners who play transformationally become protagonists who use the knowledge, skills, and concepts of the educational content to first make sense of a situation and then make choices that actually transform the play space and themselves, are able to see how that space changed because of their own efforts [Barab et al. 2012]. ...
... This work is the result of pedagogical actions of digital inclusion and health promotion in Brazil's countryside, conducted with rural settlements of the North Forest Zone of Pernambuco, proposing casual serious games for health education in rural communities, from basic health care themes raised by rural communities themselves [Silva et al. 2013], taking into account aspects of popular education that could be perceived in 3D games, such as interactivity, motivation, engagement, promotion of autonomy and identity, and development of the affective dimension [Freire 2011;Barab et al. 2012]. ...
Taking into account the fundamentals of Popular Education, the relation between educators and educands should be mediated by affection , a dimension that can be touched by using games. In this work we propose a game design method combining usual Participa-tory Design approaches with Popular Education methods, to build a participatory human factors elicitation process. Due to the wide availability of fast food in schools in the countryside, children and adolescents become more exposed to health risks like diabetes mel-litus, dyslipidemia, coronary artery diseases, and adulthood obesity. To help children to identify healthy food and avoid fast food, we propose "Comer Legal", a casual maze-based serious game where players control an avatar to find healthy food, avoiding unhealthy food and enemies. We conducted 30 participatory workshops with participant communities. We recorded video interviews with 25 popular leaders as well. The first stable prototype was technically validated by a set of nutritionists, which evaluated how the game deals with nutrition education contents and aspects related to engagement of players. All specialists considered the game appropriate. The game was also validated through experiments with 40 school children of the first five years of primary school. Most of them were able to identify healthy foods, considered the game fun, and would like to play it again.
... For qualitative data collection, interviews were the most commonly used approach (e.g., Ho, 2020;Lawrence & Sherry, 2021). Other techniques, such as observation (e.g., Barab et al., 2012) and reflection (e.g., Lee, 2019), were also used to obtain qualitative data. More details can be found in the Appendix. ...
... Most of the studies were found to adopt digital educational games for teaching writing. Such games were most commonly adopted to position and immerse students in game contexts that simulated real-world settings to help them obtain an authentic learning experience (Barab et al., 2012;Dickey, 2011;Fu et al., 2019;Lawrence & Sherry, 2021;Lin et al., 2018;Neville, 2015). For example, Fu et al. (2019) developed a mind mapping-based contextual gaming environment for use in an English tourism course to help students experience virtual tours and write creative travel plans based on the experience obtained during the gameplay. ...
Given the crucial role of writing in both academic and workplace settings, teachers should constantly seek effective ways to improve their students' writing skills. The use of games or their elements to support the teaching and learning of writing has gained much attention in language education studies. Despite the increasing number of empirical studies in the field, there has been no systematic investigation of what games, or their elements, have been applied in the writing classroom. The aim of this study was to summarize the empirical evidence on using game-related approaches, including game-based learning and gamification, to teach writing. Twenty-two studies were analyzed, revealing the following findings: (1) various types of games were used for writing instruction, including digital educational games, non-digital educational games, and digital non-educational games; (2) digital educational games were the most common game type reported in the literature, and such games were used to create authentic and interactive learning environments, provide writing practice opportunities, and evaluate students' writing skills; (3) various game elements, such as points, leader-boards, storylines, and role-playing, were incorporated to develop gamified activities; and (4) students participated in such gamified activities in online and hybrid modes. Taken as a whole, the findings show how games and their elements are used for teaching and learning writing. Suggestions and implications are provided for practitioners and researchers in the field.
... The teacher must create a framework and a pedagogical continuum based on the curriculum, and construct significant and holistic digital game-based processes (e.g. Barab et al., 2012;Chee & Tan, 2012). The teacher plays a central role in integrating DGBL into the classroom, from gathering information, planning and setting up the digital game (Kangas et al., 2017) to creating a connection between the study materials and the digital game, and subsequently evaluating the digital learning and its outcomes (Meyer & Sørensen, 2011;Watson et al., 2011). ...
... In planning the integration of the digital game, the teacher uses the relevant curriculum as a foundation to create a pedagogical framework and continuum and to construct holistic and significant game-based learning processes (e.g. Barab et al., 2012;Chee & Tan, 2012). ...
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Research Article
Knowledge and planning among teachers integrating digital game-based learning into elementary school classrooms
Merav HayakORCID Icon &Orit Avidov-UngarORCID Icon
Received 16 Feb 2021, Accepted 20 Sep 2022, Published online: 16 Feb 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2023.2175719
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ABSTRACT
The qualitative research employed semi-structured interviews with 28 elementary school teachers to examine the types of knowledge they use to integrate digital game-based learning (DGBL) into their classrooms and the nature of their integration planning. The findings revealed that teachers use four types of knowledge: game knowledge, game technological knowledge, game pedagogical knowledge and game technological pedagogical content knowledge. Five integration planning stages were identified, with stages A–C concerning the process of game selection and stages D–E concerning the integration of games in the classroom. Most teachers plan DGBL integration into their classrooms using a structured approach that follows each stage in order, whereas some teachers adopt a flexible planning pattern that omits or reorders some stages. The types of knowledge teachers use at each DGBL integration planning stage were identified and will be relevant to teacher educators and to teachers seeking to better integrate DGBL into their practice.
... Plague unit was based on Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus and this unit consisted of 12 classroom periods including computer laboratories, writing, and teacherled discussion (Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou 2012). According to Barab et al. (2012), "The significance of students' decision-making was reinforced by ensuring that students came to associate their decisions and actions in the game with actual consequences, thus reinforcing the importance of being an effective persuasive writer" (p. ...
... Plague unit was based on Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus and this unit consisted of 12 classroom periods including computer laboratories, writing, and teacherled discussion (Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou 2012). According to Barab et al. (2012), "The significance of students' decision-making was reinforced by ensuring that students came to associate their decisions and actions in the game with actual consequences, thus reinforcing the importance of being an effective persuasive writer" (p. 521). ...
This exploratory study seeks to investigate how a mathematical education game, DragonBox12+, effects students’ learning about algebra. Data for this research was collected from middle school 7th grade students in the Northeast region of the United States of America.The interviews and classroom observations were recorded on videotape. The research results showed that the video game DragonBox 12+ affects students’ attitude of mathematics and learning of mathematics by the help of using game mechanics to teaching algebraic rules.
Keywords: Algebra, video game, DragonBox 12+, middle school, 7th grade
... The learning takes place while applying previous knowledge or acquiring new knowledge to resolve a conflict [53]. According to several authors [52,[54][55][56], a very effective way to motivate this game confrontation is through the introduction of competition. Playing against other people engages the user to the gameplay. ...
... Real-time teacher support should be introduced, to enhance in-game feedback [105]. The ideal way would be to facilitate a teacher avatar that communicates with the players through an in-game chat [54,84]. Debriefing is the second way feedback can be offered; an informative after-game session with all the players [24]. ...
Serious games have to meet certain characteristics relating to gameplay and educational content to be effective as educational tools. There are some models that evaluate these aspects, but they usually lack a good balance between both ludic and learning requirements, and provide no guide for the design of new games. This study develops the Gaming Educational Balanced (GEB)Model which addresses these two limitations. GEB is based on the Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics framework and the Four Pillars of Educational Games theory. This model defines a metric to evaluate serious games, which can also be followed to guide their subsequent development. This rubric is tested with three indie serious games developed using different genres to raise awareness of mental illnesses. This evaluation revealed two main issues: the three games returned good results for gameplay, but the application of educational content was deficient, due in all likelihood to the lack of expert educators participating in their development. A statistical and machine learning validation of the results is also performed to ensure that the GEB metric features are clearly explained and the players are able to evaluate them correctly. These results underline the usefulness of the new metric tool for identifying game design strengths and weaknesses. Future works will apply this metric to more serious games to further test its effectiveness and to guide the design of new serious games.
... Research shows that today's youth have unprecedented access to digital technology and interactive media (Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou, 2012), with computer games proving to be popular amongst the adolescent age group. In 2010, 42% of Australian 12-14 year olds and 33% of 15-17 year olds reported playing computer games regularly (Thomas & Martin, 2010). ...
... Unfortunately, many educational games continue to separate gameplay and learning, primarily from a development perspective this option has lower cost. A game that combines gameplay and learning to achieve specific learning outcomes is known as a transformational game and few have been developed or trialled in the area of nutrition education (Barab et al., 2012;Baranowski et al., 2003;Majumdar, Koch, & Gray, 2015;Masek, Murcia, Morrison, Newhouse, & Hackling, 2012). This paper reports on a study at an Australian university that investigated the use of transformational games to engage young people in healthier food choices, game player knowledge of nutrition and the design and evaluation of a transformational game as a pedagogical device for nutrition education. ...
... Game-based learning provides learning experience that engages students and promotes active learning. Games are viewed as providing a curriculum for the twentyfirst century, one that moves beyond simply situating academic content and additionally positions learners and the spaces within which they interact in transformational ways (Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou, 2012). ...
... IEEE. Barab, S., Pettyjohn, P.,Gresalfi, M., Volk, C., & Solomou, M. (2012). Game-based curriculum and transformational play: Designing to meaningfully positioning person, content, and context.Computers & Education, 58(1), 518-533.Bebbington, S. (2014). ...
This chapter reviews the field broadly referred to as Intelligent Learning Environments (ILE), capturing the state-of-the-art in both Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) and Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED). After a brief historical account, we report design architectures and implementation approaches exemplified by a recent example. We then shift our attention to classroom implementation and blended learning strategies that take into account the challenges of using ILE in the classroom. We present Learning Analytics tools as a way to support teachers addressing these challenges, to increase their awareness and ultimately to support students directly. We conclude with a summary of efficacy studies and open issues while advocating that these systems should not be seen as displacing teachers but augmenting the human aspects of teaching.
... This type of game has more significant potential to provide interactive opportunities that support learning (Roussou, 2004). Previous work has shown that serious games can motivate and interest students (Burguillo, 2010;Dickey, 2011;Giannakos, 2013;Huang, 2011) and lead to positive knowledge gains (Barab et al., 2011;Chen et al., 2015;Hwang et al., 2013). In addition, serious games facilitate experiential learning or learning by doing. ...
... According to Kinzie and Joseph (2008), there are six activity modes, ranging from active explorative involvement to social and creative, that play a role in high school students' game involvement preference and could appeal to them more than educational games. Studies report that learners have positive attitudes towards the integration of video games into English learning as they find them facilitative and contributory (see Alrajhi, 2020) and curriculum informed by game-based instruction is observed to help learners engage more in classroom instruction, feel more motivated to set learning goals, and become more successful (see Barab et al., 2012). Enayat and Haghighatpasand (2019) reported that undergraduate students who were put into an experiment group and played video games showed statistically significant differences in terms of receptive and productive vocabulary recall compared to those in the control group. ...
Video games, as the most frequent tools of computer technologies, have been integrated into classroom teaching through experimental studies. However, there is still much to investigate if and to what extent video game involvement (VGI) in informal settings can influence students' language learning motivation (LLM) in formal settings. Adopting a survey methodology with the participation of heavy and frequent video game players, this study examined 100 high school students' LLM, both instrumental and integrative, and their VGI. The relationship between LLM and VGI was also examined from various angles. Descriptive, inferential statistics and correlation tests were employed for data analysis. The results revealed that the students had moderate LLM, with stronger and statistically significant integrative motivation (z = −3407, p = .001). Despite being negative and weak, VGI in English correlated with LLM (rs = −.355, p < .01), integrative motivation (rs = −.347, p < .01), and instrumental motivation (rs = −.339, p < .01). However, a very strong and statistically significant correlation was found between VGI in English and the time spent doing so (rs = .948, p < .01). A Mann-Whitney U test showed statistically significant difference in both LLM and integrative and instrumental motivation between VGI in Turkish and VGI in English (p < .05). The findings could highlight the significant role of integrative motivation on LLM. The close relationship between VGI in English and the time spent doing so, and also the statistically significant difference between VGI in Turkish and VGI in English, could suggest VGI as an opportunity for learners to interact more easily with English speakers and get to know them more and better.
... Artificial intelligence in serious games uses techniques that are well demonstrated in the entertainmentgamesector-mostnotablyintheformofreflexagents.Thedifference,understandably so,isthatseriousgameproducerscoercetheAIintodirectingrecognizedlearningaidsasopposed tostrivingforsuperiorentertainment. Bellotti,Berta,DeGloria,andPrimavera(2009)proposea gamearchitecturethatincludesAIforeventgeneration,NPCactivation(spawning)andasConnolly, Stansfield,andHainey(2011)purport,appropriatehinting.Thenotionofpersonalizedagent(NPC) responses (Thompson et al., 2010), sometimes directed by an NPC's own agenda (Barab et al., 2012),isalsoanAIpracticeappliedinseriousgames.Generatingusermodelsfromplayeractions, capturedandstoredinadatabase,isanotherconventionalAItechniqueforseriousgames.These usermodelsmanifestthemselvesinthegame'sabilitytoharmonizewithplayerlearningstylesby adapting the game's content presentation (Hwang, Sung, Hung, Huang, & Tsai, 2012;Soflano, Connolly,&Hainey,2015).Bellotti,Berta,DeGloria,D'Ursi,andFiore(2012)useseriousgame adaptivityforadjustingagame'sdifficultylevelaccordingtotheplayer'srecordedability.Thereare otherauthorswho,withoutimplementingAIintheirgames,recognizeandproclaimthepotential ofAI(specificallyusermodelling)toassistwithadaptivefeedback (Cheng,Lin,&She,2015)that willinturnbenefitscaffoldinganddebriefing (Ke,2008).Allinall,theauthorsareconfidentintheir stancethatAIshouldhavemorethanjustatoeholdintheseriousgamesarena.Arecentliterature review(Frutos-Pascual&Zapirain,2017)ontheuseofAIinseriousgamesshowsthatrecentwork inthisarea,aimstotestwhethervariousAItechniquescanbeimposedonseriousgames.Inthe processhowever,manyofthereportedresearchcasesfocusondevelopingAIrichgames,oftenat thecostofequallyimportantfidelity. ...
This study aimed to identify and rank the serious game fidelity themes that should be considered for retaining both the learning potential and predicted market growth of serious games. The authors also investigated existing links between fidelity and AI. The methodology unraveled serious game fidelity through the co-development of a theory- and data-driven codebook, applying the constant comparison method for data analysis. The theory-driven codes stemmed from literature while the data-driven codes emerged from a heuristic user interface evaluation of a comic book style game, named ExMan. This article identifies five fidelity themes, with functional fidelity as most important, and postulates that functional fidelity is most suited to AI integration. This study delivers a fidelity-for-serious-games codebook and concludes that observing the suggested fidelity hierarchy could safeguard that neither digital game-based learning is watered down, nor the lustre of digital gameplay dulled. Furthermore, the authors hold that AI for serious games should be given a high design priority.
... Games have been identified as highly motivating and engaging tools for 21 stcentury skills and the tech-savvy generation. Mastering new challenges using trial-and-error approaches and repetition of a task to understand better the concepts demonstrate positive learning through playing games (Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou, 2012;Young et al., 2012). However, binding game design elements into educational learning outcomes has factually generated positive and negative results (De Castell & Jenson, 2007;Young et al., 2012). ...
Games and Educational Games(EGs)! To what extent do they diverge? How do game designers approach such apposition? The extensive need for games in and outside classrooms demands clarity between games and EGs through game designers’ perspectives. In the Australian context, game designers have witnessed technological advancement, the user-expectation, and the use of games within various contexts, including the classroom. The transformation in technology and the need to adapt and design games corresponds to the needs and requirements of its end-users. Admittedly, it has been overlooked in gaming studies if the designing processes and their perception differs between games and EGs. Respecting that aspect and the knowledge adapted by game designers to achieve players’ experience successfully, we first need to comprehend how game designers position games and EGs within their context, their experience constructed over time, and their beliefs. Therefore, this paper interprets seventeen game designers’ perspectives through semi-structured interviews in Australia. The data is thematically categorized, coded, and analyzed using NVivo. The results are presented through the interpretivism paradigm, which is grounded in the theoretical implications based on Dewey’s theory of experience and concepts to gather the ‘essence’ of game designers’ experience. Furthermore, a conceptual basis is established for game designers and learning designers to consider while designing games and EGs.
... Tabletop games have become increasingly popular as a tool to deliver educational content and experiences over the past decade. Whether they are professionally produced by commercial publishers, or developed and released by academics, it is clear that they represent a unique mode of addressing students and the public about a wide range of technical topics (Gee, 2003;Barab et al., 2012;Whitton, 2012;Lean et al., 2018;Wake and Illingworth, 2019). Board games cast participants as active learners within a positive learning environment, forming new understanding through their actions and interactions with other players and the game system, and allow experimentation and exploration of an educational topic. ...
Diamond: The Game is a board game designed for secondary school students (aged 11–18) to enable them to explore a broad variety of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers, STEM subjects and life as a scientist. Board games are a reusable and entertaining way to directly engage students in STEM, but careful consideration of mechanics, messages and accessibility is required to successfully deliver on this goal. Diamond: The Game was designed and evaluated against these considerations. The inclusive approach to design resulted in a better and more accessible game for all. Its success is further evident in the rise in the number of players who would consider a career as a scientist or an engineer after playing. The opportunities to explore collaboration, failure and the interdisciplinary nature of science in the game were particularly highlighted in discussions with students, teachers and careers advisers.
... Like [4] and, more recently, [5,6] suggested there is, however, an inherently higher-order frame of thinking that is common and practised across all human cultures, that is, that of playfulness. Playfulness supports at the same time abstraction (in the form of "make-as-if" and game rules, for example; see [7,8] and contextsensitivity (in terms of being able to situate play within a culture and a community of peers; see [9]), and therefore acknowledging and fostering the play element in learning can be theorised as a strategy to induce (creative and critical) higher-order thinking, and at the same time a powerful approach to bridge the different cultures expressed by the curriculum, the teachers and the students through localised codesign. That is, if we intend to foster higher-order thinking as a bridge between cultures and approaches to the curriculum, our study aims to showcase how a plausible way of doing it is to use locally created games as bridges between the local and the global, the particular and the abstract (see [10] for a similar study of playful cross-cultural design, as applied to the field of advertising). ...
his action research utilised game-based learning principles in rural schools in Sarawak. Game design thinking was proposed as a pedagogical approach to guide teachers to address Higher Order thinking skills in subjects they teach, a requirement in the current national curriculum. Due to the lack of resources, facilities and training commonly faced by rural schools, the initiative was necessary to measure the feasibility of the approach for learning. The study also observed the similarities and differences in local cultural protocols as they differ by location, and adjustments were made to the presentation of Game Design thinking to accommodate community expectations and support. The study proposes a CreativeCulture model, an instructional approach which accommodates inclusive needs of indigenous communities in Sarawak, both within and beyond their local schools.
... To study the game, I examined a variety of supporting gameplay videos, documents such as the full student-teacher guide (available at https://gamesandimpact.org/taiga_river/), and research papers Barab, Gresalfi, and Ingram-Goble 2010;Barab et al. 2012;Barab, Sadler, et al. 2007) by the creators on the game to get a holistic picture of the game's design, which was the primary object of inquiry for this study. While having access to the game would have provided further detail, the combination of gameplay videos, documentation, and research provided a sufficiently rich account to make the analysis viable. ...
In this paper, I ask: ‘Can digital games support the learning of scientific inquiry as a situated practice? If so, how?’ To approach this question, I draw upon feminist, STS, and pragmatist scholarship to develop a framework that can be used to analyze how a learning environment has been designed to teach scientific inquiry, as well as how it can be redesigned to teach inquiry more like a situated practice. To demonstrate the utility of the framework, I employed it as part of a case study to analyze the game The Mystery of Taiga River. Based on this, I recommend general directions for the design of digital games to support the learning of inquiry as a situated practice using the framework.
... Educational benefits of teaching with digital games have been highlighted for years (Huizenga et al., 2017;Mayer, 2019;Van Eck, 2009) and have been confirmed by meta-analyses on digital game-based learning (Clark et al., 2016;. Digital games can be considered as a form of curriculum (Foster & Shah, 2020), can be integrated into existing curricula (Barab et al., 2012;Chee, 2016) and can be guiding principles of schools (Quest to Learn, 2021). However, previous works found rather low adoption rates of digital gamebased learning by teachers (Bourgonjon et al., 2013;Waarvik, 2019) and low response rates of project announcements on teaching with digital games (Rüth & Kaspar, 2020). ...
Despite many known educational benefits of digital game‐based learning, teaching with digital games is not yet a common practice in formal education. The role that digital game‐based learning might play in future school teaching can be explored by examining the behavioral intentions of pre‐service teachers as the ultimate gatekeepers. In this survey study, 402 pre‐service teachers from German‐speaking universities had participated. Multiple regression analyses were applied to examine the role of pre‐service teachers’ personal characteristics in their intention to integrate digital games into two educational contexts. For both educational contexts, we identified perceived usefulness and curriculum relatedness of digital games as key factors in pre‐service teachers' intention to teach with digital games. We also found differences in explained variance and relevant personal characteristics between educational contexts. Overall, we discuss how teaching with digital games could become a common practice if particular characteristics of pre‐service teachers are already addressed in teacher education.
Practitioner notes
What is already known about this topic
Several conceptual and empirical works have synthesized diverse educational benefits of teaching with digital games and digital game‐based learning.
Teaching with digital games poses several infrastructural and technological challenges for teachers.
Whether teaching with digital games becomes a common practice is related to the intention of teachers who act as gatekeepers for effective educational approaches.
What this paper adds
Insights into relations between intentions to teach with digital games and personal characteristics among pre‐service teachers as future gatekeepers.
The intentions of pre‐service teachers to teach with digital games show particularly strong relations to a small set of personal characteristics.
The relations between the intentions of pre‐service teachers and their personal characteristics may vary between educational contexts.
Implications for practice and policy
The usefulness and curriculum relatedness of digital games in different educational contexts should be made clear to pre‐service teachers.
Teacher education could better prepare pre‐service teachers for their future role as gatekeepers by providing key experiences and competences regarding teaching and learning with digital games.
Policy makers could support teaching with digital games by advancing digital game‐based learning in teacher education and by reducing known barriers related to teaching with digital games.
... The transformational play [Arici Barab and Barab, 2013;Barab, Gresalfi and Ingram-Goble, 2010;Barab, Pettyjohn et al., 2012] was first conceived as a framework to design educational videogames based on the idea of a transaction taking place between the person and their environment at a given moment [Dewey, 1963]. For a game to be transformational, it requires players who act intentionally with their knowledge to take actions that transform a problematic, fictional context. ...
This paper focuses on developing and assessing a non-obtrusive and transformative method, based on virtual reality, to evaluate science communication projects in science centres. The method was tested using deep-sea cutting-edge scientific content. We applied a mixed design, with 72 adult participants randomly assigned to experimental conditions (with/without exhibition exposure). Results showed that the exhibition promoted a better understanding of science. The non-obtrusive measures on awareness and engagement were positively related with questions posed via questionnaire and interview. The study adds theoretical and empirical support to the design and implementation of non-obtrusive and transformative evaluation experiences in science exhibitions in science centres and museums
... In another study conducted by Barab et al. (2012) over 90% of students of the 7th graders enrolled in the study were eligible for free-and-reduced meals. The game-based unit included 18 boys and 15 girls, while the story-based unit had 17 boys and 15 girls randomly selected from the three classrooms. ...
... In another study conducted by Barab et al. (2012) over 90% of students of the 7th graders enrolled in the study were eligible for free-and-reduced meals. The game-based unit included 18 boys and 15 girls, while the story-based unit had 17 boys and 15 girls randomly selected from the three classrooms. ...
This paper aims to explore the impact of freeform digital games on primary school students’ narrative skills, in terms of linguistic cohesion and semantic coherence, compared to other digital media, such as formally structured digital games and movies. A total of 128 Year 6 Primary school students participated in this research. Initially, students were divided into three groups. In all three groups, an educational intervention programme was applied. At the end of this phase, each student was asked to produce a narrative discourse (pre-test) about Crusoe’s survival on the mysterious island. Subsequently, students of each group were involved in activities with different digital material. At the last part of the research, students were asked to produce a narrative discourse (post-test) which was compared to the pre-test discourse, to determine whether there had been an improvement in the narrative discourse produced by the students of the three groups. The results presented in this paper show that the narrative discourses of students who played with the freeform digital game showed statistically significant improvement in cohesion and coherence compared to the discourse of students who played with the formally structured digital game and the students who watched the film.
... Therefore, this was the motivation for this study, which is based on drama-based situational learning strategies that require collaboration and learners to share ownership and acceptance of responsibilities for their actions, learning, abilities and contributions among peers (Chandra, 2015). Transformational play approach was used not only to provide opportunities for the students to mirror themselves as an individual who can achieve personally meaningful and socially significant learning outcomes (Barab et al., 2012). It is also used for collaborative learning that fits with classroom learning environments. ...
In this study, the transformational play approach was further used to deploy drama‐based situational learning in the classroom through the Digital Learning Theatre (DLT) by engaging drama performers and the audience collaboratively. This study analysed the learners' learning effectiveness based on translation and sentence‐construction abilities, and their perception by focussing on concentration, and comprehension of dialogues before and after the drama‐based activity. The experimental results were based on both the DLT including tablet PCs to enable audience participation in drama performances, and the DLT for drama performances in which the audience can participate through traditional open discussion sessions with the narrator of the drama. Sixty‐five students were selected randomly as participants from the English as a Foreign Language academic program at the junior high school level. The application of the DLT including the tablet PCs approach showed considerable improvement in students' learning effectiveness as well as a significant positive effect on classroom learning, outperform the effectiveness of the DLT with traditional open discussion sessions for the audience. Accordingly, to improve students' learning effectiveness, their engagement in the learning process can be advanced through situational learning activities using educational technologies that combine with collaborative learning mechanisms for classroom learning.
Practitioner notes
What is already known about this topic
The transformational play proposed by Sasha Barab is designed based on situated cognition theory to position persons, content, and context together through digital games.
Dorothy Heathcote proposed a drama‐based learning approach for learning in the classroom, and learners can play various roles in the drama to learn in a situational learning setting. The teacher, too, plays a role to guide the students and engage them in the situational learning setting.
Integration of immersive educational technologies supports learning by reducing obstacles to adoption in the learning process and improve learning effectiveness.
Within a rich contextual learning environment, learners can be placed in different situational learning tasks that allow them to apply existing knowledge and experiences.
What does this paper add
This study introduces a manner of applying the transformational play approach in drama‐based situational learning activities suitable for collaborative learning in a classroom setting.
It introduces a practical and simple method to transform a regular classroom into a digital version of the learning theatre, including a virtual stage to drama performances.
The drama‐based situational learning approach facilitates the audience as well as the performers to transform themselves into protagonists in the learning context by collaboratively following the learning content and learning with their peers.
The technology‐enhanced drama‐based situational learning approach is introduced based on the transformation play approach that allows the students to learn situationally through different script instances, and improves their learning effectiveness by helping them understand the learning content through performing, participating, watching, and interacting in the learning context.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Learners can apply their prior knowledge and experiences creatively through drama‐based learning activities, and interactive engagement allows the audience to participate in the learning process equally as drama performers.
Educators and learning system developers can implement this approach to facilitate situational practice and discuss learning content.
The learning process supports the reinterpretation of the learners' experiences and reflects on how to procure/adopt new knowledge and apply it to real‐life situations.
Drama performance is a collaborative/group learning task and it is performed for the audience. Students with higher achievements will help students with lower achievements so that everyone can contribute in the learning process to achieve their learning objectives.
... This can be achieved through putting the player in the role of the protagonist and/or choice maker; use conceptual understanding; providing a problem-based game context; and as problem-solvers based on what they have learned in the context (Barab et al., 2010b). Combining transformative games and stories can boost intervention effectiveness and change players from objects of change to agents of change (Barab et al., 2012). Yu et al. (2012) proposed games can be transformational when coupled with narratives, as game narratives enable players to witness the world from a different lens and live the experience of the protagonist. ...
Purpose
Although the concept of transformative gamification is mentioned in previous research, no research has provided a theoretically based explanation of how gamification can lead to transformative change. This paper aims to provide the explanation for the first time by combining storytelling elements with cognitive behavioural therapy logic and incorporating these into a framework to show the process of transformative behaviour change through gamification. The proposed framework not only furthers the theoretical understanding of transformative gamification services but also provides practical insight into design and implication of such services.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on critical analysis and synthesis of literature from different fields of research such as transformative service research (TSR), gamification, game studies, social marketing, storytelling and journalism. Ergo, several propositions based on the extensive literature review are proposed and aggregated in a conceptual framework.
Findings
This paper argues that apart from game mechanics that are often considered as an inseparable aspect of gamification services, immersive storytelling and a mechanism to encourage reflection are the pivotal components of transformative gamification services. In addition, this paper suggests that although reflection and immersive storytelling are often considered as opposite sides of the spectrum, they can have a synergistic effect once they work in tandem in gamification services.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a novel framework and an operational definition for transformative gamification services. It contributes to TSR, gamification and health promotion research through differentiating this concept from similar concepts, such as mHealth, propelling gamification to a more meaningful and user-centric version and providing service researchers with a practical guide to make use of gamification as a tool to serve TSR.
... Students in game-based or/and playful environments were intrinsically motivated, working to solve problems, tasks, and challenges [78,79]. Game-based curriculum studies in blended K-12 settings have demonstrated the superiority of gamification experiences in terms of learning gains and complex skill construction in comparison to teacher-centered methods [103,104]. Simulated, game-informed roleplay experiences are perceived to be free from the fear of failure [72], as failing in a virtual environment does not carry harmful consequences, and repetitive practice is a viable path toward mastery [74]. These effects are corroborated by recent related SVRE publications in terms of student engagement through gamification [50], deeper learning through game-and problem-based learning [49], and learning performance through embodied pedagogical agents [48] in the context of education 3.0 systems [47]. ...
Deep and meaningful learning (DML) in distant education should be an essential outcome of quality education. In this literature review, we focus on e-learning effectiveness along with the factors and conditions leading to DML when using social virtual reality environments (SVREs) in distance mode higher education (HE). Hence, a systematic literature review was conducted summarizing the findings from thirty-three empirical studies in HE between 2004 (appearance of VR) and 2019 (before coronavirus appearance). We searched for the cognitive, social, and affective aspects of DML in a research framework and studied their weight in SVREs. The findings suggest that the use of SVREs can provide authentic, simulated, cognitively challenging experiences in engaging, motivating environments for open-ended social and collaborative interactions and intentional, personalized learning. Furthermore, the findings indicate that educators and SVRE designers need to place more emphasis on the socio-cultural semiotics and emotional aspects of e-learning and ethical issues such as privacy and security. The mediating factors for DML in SVREs were accumulated and classified in the resultant Blended Model for Deep and Meaningful e-learning in SVREs. Improvement recommendations include meaningful contexts, purposeful activation, learner agency, intrinsic emotional engagement, holistic social integration, and meticulous user obstacle removal.
... Similarly, our iVR work applies learning theories, principles, and methods from the research literature on transformational play [14], design-based research [15], [16], video games, affinity spaces, and 21st century learning [17], resonant games [18], and design thinking for education and multimodal integration of STEM curricula guidelines [19], [20]. ...
This work-in-progress paper describes an immersive virtual reality (iVR) learning game for informal education to promote enhanced engagement, improved spatial thinking, and broader understandings of the Lehigh River watershed's cultural history, geography, and environmental issues. Our instructional design includes game design features in addition to learning elements. We provide design guidelines for adolescents and adults who are English language learners, including (a) autonomous learning, (b) fostering learners' use of metacognitive strategies, (c) adaptive, supportive, and motivational feedback to maintain engagement, d) sustained time on task, and e) content knowledge learning and language comprehension.
... Teachers are known to play multiple pedagogical roles in game studies, including observing students' game-play, scaffolding, serving as a consultant to students, and providing them with metacognitive aids (Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou, 2012;Tzuo, Ling, Yang, & Chen, 2012). When teachers in game-based classrooms become adept at re-configuring their position in response to events in the game, students' needs in the classroom, and demands of the curriculum, they are able to invoke student reflection, provide feedback, and exercise spontaneity in modifying curriculum interventions to orchestrate student learning (Hanghøj & Brund, 2011). ...
Teachers report experiencing frustrating issues in using games for instructional purposes. Teachers' inability to use games is further compounded by the lack of teacher education or professional development programs that focus on developing teacher competence in adopting game-based learning, particularly at the pre-service level. Thus, in this chapter, the Game Network Analysis (GaNA) framework is presented as a methodological approach developed to aid teachers in teaching and learning with games in educational contexts. The application of GaNA is highlighted through case studies with pre-service and in-service teachers. The case studies illustrate how GaNA, through a focus on game analysis, game integration, and ecological conditions impacting game use, can empower teachers to adopt game-based learning in a systematic, but adaptive manner. The chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions for teacher educators and educational researchers who are interested in developing teachers' knowledge and skills in game-based learning.
... An interesting aspect is that feedback is both part of the flow task as well as the flow artefact indicating that adding feedback to entertainment games can give a learning effect. Transformational learning can be the bridge, communicating the power of games (Barab et al., 2012). Furthermore, the positioning of the person and content are closely linked (Sousa et al., 2018), where positioning context can be derived from dialogues and narratives. ...
Today globally, more people die from chronic diseases than from war and terrorism. This is not due to aging alone but also because we lead unhealthy lifestyles with little or no exercise and typically consume food with poor nutritional content. This paper proffers the design science research method to create an artefact that can help people study the diffusion of serious games. The ultimate goal of the study is to create a serious game that can help people to improve their balance in physical exercise, nutrition and well-being. To do this, first we conducted 97 interviews to study if wearables can be used for gathering health data. Analysis indicates that designers, manufacturers, and developers of wearables and associated software and apps should make their devices reliable, relevant, and user friendly. To increase the diffusion, adoption, and habitual usage of wearables key issues such as privacy and security need to be addressed as well. Then, we created a paper prototype and conducted a further 32 interviews to validate the first prototype of the game, especially with respect to the diffusion possibilities of the game. Results are positive from a formal technology acceptance point of view showing relevance and usefulness. But informally in the open questions some limitations also became visible. In particular, ease of use is extremely important for acceptance and calling it a game can in fact be an obstruction. Moreover, the artefact should not be patronizing and age differences can also pose problems, hence the title not to make the serious game too serious. Future research plans to address these problems in the next iteration while the future implementation plan seeks for big platforms or companies to diffuse the serious game. A key theoretical contribution of this research is the identification of habit as a potential dependent variable for the intention to use wearables and the development of a diffusion model for serious games. The hedonic perspective is added to the model as well as trust and perceived risks. This model ends the cycle of critical design with an improvement of theory as result contributing to the societal goal of decreasing Obesities and Diabetes.
... The students were able to use the narrative and informational elements from the cards and manual to make links between an insect and a specific card (e.g., coleopteran with elytral wings) and thereby make educated rather than random choices of cards. This is important because knowledgeable action, as opposed to random action, is required to proceed with game play in a game environment (Barab et al., 2012;Abdul-Jabbar & Felicia, 2015). ...
The use of game activities is spreading in diverse contexts, including stimulating teamwork and creativity, selecting job candidates, and as a teaching aid. Games are recognized as promoting interaction and engagement among children through an abstract challenge, which often results in emotional reactions. We investigated whether a game-based activity is useful as a tool for teaching entomology, as assessed on the basis of the learning achieved and the feedback provided by students. Student feedback was positive regarding card content, the rules manual, game-play design, and game use (the functional perspective). Likewise, the students also considered the game a fun activity, fast and competitive, and even challenging (the personal perspective). Some difficulties were indicated, such as the amount of initial information required to play. Nonetheless, the game increased student learning, demonstrating its usefulness as a didactic activity in the classroom. In addition to encouraging creativity and healthy competition among students, the game represents an integrative and dynamic teaching mode that is different from traditional classroom methods.
... Involving students in practice in the game to adopt new ways to become and worldview, games can be the website of individual transformation, encourages students to think of themselves in terms of education roles like scientists or policymakers [10]. ...
This game is based on Logic Gates that invented by Walther Bothe in 1924 and improvised by Konrad Zuse (from 1935 – 1938). This game is a simple method for a student that try to learn in Logic Gates, an educational game with futuristic adventure. The only way for the player to save the digital world in this game by using Logic Gates, with Logic Gates formulas the player can make the power connection on the circuit to the digital world engine. Without knowing how Logic Gates functional will make the player losing the power for the engine to the digital world. 7 Gates Digital World is a complex genre game. The main genre for this game absolutely is an Educational Game. Although, the game developer made a complex genre for this educational game. Puzzle include in this game combined with platforms games style the player must collect all the switches in confusion platform map to go through the next portal to the next level. Educational genre in this game giving the content level completely based on the level of understanding and give the player to memorize every gates formula.
... According to transformational play, the user should be placed in a situation to help him/her to understand both the content and its context (Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou, 2012). The purpose of developing the 3D virtual environment was to enable students to act like a winter sport athlete and to interact with the content, objects, environment, and other students. ...
Üç boyutlu sanal dünyalar öğrenme ortamları olarak kullanıcılarına yeni ufuklar kazandırmaktadırlar. Bununla birlikte, üç boyutlu öğrenme ortamlarının belirlenen hedeflere ulaşılmasında etkili olabilmeleri için dikkatli bir şekilde tasarlanmaları gerekmektedir. Bu çalışmada Second Life’ta kış sporları teması altında bir öğrenme ortamının tasarım süreci ayrıntılı olarak anlatılmaktadır. Analiz, tasarım, geliştirme ve uygulama aşamalarında dikkat edilmesi gereken unsurlardan bahsedilmektedir. Çalışmada, 3B sanal dünyalarda etkili bir öğrenme ortamı tasarımı sırasında kaçınılması gereken önemli faktörler tartıştıldığı için gelecek tasarımcılara rehber olması beklenmektedir.
... This understanding and motivation partly comes from the regular, immediate feedback that allows players to understand the impact their decisions have on the game-world in realtime (Gee 2008, Kirriemuir andMcFarlane 2004). Further, games also provide players with opportunities to fashion and experiment with identities and choose the amount of effort they wish to expend in a low consequence environment (Gee 2008, Klopfer et al. 2009) that nevertheless feels authentic (Barab et al. 2012). Moreover, games can elicit social interactions between players in the virtual game environment, in online communities associated with the game and in real life (Gee 2008). ...
Meaningful use of digital games can create a more potent schooling environment where students are engaged, focussed and motivated to learn. However, the potential impact of games in the classroom will not be realised until teachers learn to embrace the strengths of digital games. This paper presents the Game Uses Model for Classrooms (GUMC), a Model to help teachers explore the use of digital games in their unique classroom context. The GUMC was directly derived from experiences of educators in Queensland, Australia. It aims to make explicit the intuitive thought processes of teachers who use games effectively, and can be used as a planning tool for all teachers to help them to richly and elaborately intertwine games into their curricula. The GUMC can also be used by game designers to help them create games that have subtle but powerful classroom relevance.
... Artificial intelligence in serious games uses techniques that are well demonstrated in the entertainmentgamesector-mostnotablyintheformofreflexagents.Thedifference,understandably so,isthatseriousgameproducerscoercetheAIintodirectingrecognizedlearningaidsasopposed tostrivingforsuperiorentertainment. Bellotti,Berta,DeGloria,andPrimavera(2009)proposea gamearchitecturethatincludesAIforeventgeneration,NPCactivation(spawning)andasConnolly, Stansfield,andHainey(2011)purport,appropriatehinting.Thenotionofpersonalizedagent(NPC) responses (Thompson et al., 2010), sometimes directed by an NPC's own agenda (Barab et al., 2012),isalsoanAIpracticeappliedinseriousgames.Generatingusermodelsfromplayeractions, capturedandstoredinadatabase,isanotherconventionalAItechniqueforseriousgames.These usermodelsmanifestthemselvesinthegame'sabilitytoharmonizewithplayerlearningstylesby adapting the game's content presentation (Hwang, Sung, Hung, Huang, & Tsai, 2012;Soflano, Connolly,&Hainey,2015).Bellotti,Berta,DeGloria,D'Ursi,andFiore(2012)useseriousgame adaptivityforadjustingagame'sdifficultylevelaccordingtotheplayer'srecordedability.Thereare otherauthorswho,withoutimplementingAIintheirgames,recognizeandproclaimthepotential ofAI(specificallyusermodelling)toassistwithadaptivefeedback (Cheng,Lin,&She,2015)that willinturnbenefitscaffoldinganddebriefing (Ke,2008).Allinall,theauthorsareconfidentintheir stancethatAIshouldhavemorethanjustatoeholdintheseriousgamesarena.Arecentliterature review(Frutos-Pascual&Zapirain,2017)ontheuseofAIinseriousgamesshowsthatrecentwork inthisarea,aimstotestwhethervariousAItechniquescanbeimposedonseriousgames.Inthe processhowever,manyofthereportedresearchcasesfocusondevelopingAIrichgames,oftenat thecostofequallyimportantfidelity. ...
This study aimed to identify and rank the serious game fidelity themes that should be considered for retaining both the learning potential and predicted market growth of serious games. The authors also investigated existing links between fidelity and AI. The methodology unraveled serious game fidelity through the co-development of a theory- and data-driven codebook, applying the constant comparison method for data analysis. The theory-driven codes stemmed from literature while the data-driven codes emerged from a heuristic user interface evaluation of a comic book style game, named ExMan. This article identifies five fidelity themes, with functional fidelity as most important, and postulates that functional fidelity is most suited to AI integration. This study delivers a fidelity-for-serious-games codebook and concludes that observing the suggested fidelity hierarchy could safeguard that neither digital game-based learning is watered down, nor the lustre of digital gameplay dulled. Furthermore, the authors hold that AI for serious games should be given a high design priority.
... Students in gameful or playful environments were intrinsically motivated, working to solve problems, tasks and challenges (Hornik & Thornburg, 2010;Mystakidis, Berki, et al., 2017a). Game-based curriculum studies in blended K-12 settings have demonstrated the superiority of gamified experiences in terms of learning gains and complex skills construction in comparison to teacher-centered methods (Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou, 2012;Metcalf et al., 2018). Simulated, game-informed role-play experiences are perceived to be free from the fear of failure (Berns et al., 2013) as failing in a virtual environment doesn't carry harmful consequences, and repetitive practice is a viable path towards mastery (August et al., 2016). ...
Current online teaching and learning practices in distance education face limitations in terms of quality and effectiveness. The theories of deep and meaningful learning have the potential to address these challenges by placing emphasis on the cognitive, social and affective aspect of learning by engaging the person holistically. New e-learning models and frameworks are needed to develop and sustain learners’ high levels of motivation, engagement and satisfaction.
This dissertation’s focus is on the motivation enhancement methods for deep and meaningful learning in distant education. The overall goal is to find out the effect of motivation-enhancement approaches using social virtual reality environments in e-learning and open education. Game-based approaches for enhancing intrinsic motivation include playful design, gamification and serious games. Previous empirical research in attendance-based, blended learning and online settings has shown promising results. However, there is a need for researching the effect of motivation enhancement methods in e-learning regard-ing the quality of learning.
Can we improve learning quality and help learners achieve deep meaningful learning when instructional design and teaching focuses on intrinsic motivation? To understand the effect of motivation enhancement, eight articles were authored using research designs based on qualitative and quantitative methods. The dissertation proposes four tentative frameworks towards deep and meaningful e-learning utilizing game-based motivation enhancement methods; OpenQuest, Serious E-scape Room, the Blended Model for Deep & Meaningful E-learning in Social Virtual Reality Environments and the Patras Blended Strategy Model.
The results from this study can accelerate the improvement of e-learning quality to address pressing societal and economic educational needs that affect the future of higher education and life-long learning. Facilitating deep and meaningful learning in online education to provide high-quality, flexible, personalized and transformative learning for large audiences could open new educational frontiers towards new milestones of economic growth, social progress and well-being.
... Specifically, practice activities (e.g., generating topic sentences or constructing an outline) can be embedded within game features and narratives (e.g., building robots or solving a puzzle) to make them more engaging. Various researchers and educators have successfully incorporated digital games in writing instruction (Colby, 2017), such as motivating writing via mystery-solving narratives (e.g., Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, Volk, & Solomou, 2012;Dickey, 2011) and world-building tools (e.g., Liao, Chang, & Chan, 2018). Relative to non-game comparisons, students who write and practice with digital games demonstrate improved writing and/or writing motivation. ...
Literacy is a critically important and contemporary issue for educators, scientists, and politicians. Efforts to overcome the challenges associated with illiteracy, and the subsequent development of literate societies, are closely related to those of poverty reduction and sustainable human development. In this paper, the authors examine literacy from the lens of text and discourse theorists who focus on the higher-order comprehension processes involved in literacy. Discourse processing models make the assumption that comprehension emerges from the construction of a mental model of the text, which relies on the reader generating inferences to connect ideas within the text and to what the reader already knows. The article provides a broad overview of the theoretical models that drive research on text comprehension and production, as well as how this research shapes literacy instruction and effective interventions. The authors focus on two interventions with proven success in improving deep comprehension and writing, iSTART and the Writing Pal. Increasing literacy across the world call for a greater focus on theory driven strategy interventions to be integrated within classrooms and community at large.
... Research areas that have been covered include food security, volcanology, animal adaptations, parasite ecology, plant biology, insect ecology, coral reef ecosystems, flood management and bioluminescence. Pedagogically, we employ a learner-centred constructivist approach (Brooks and Brooks, 2001;Rovai, 2004), using anchored instruction (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990) and constructionism (Papert and Harel, 1991), which is facilitated by the accessibility of Minecraft and its capability to support transformational play (changing their play environment; Barab et al., 2012) by allowing interaction with, and modification of, the virtual environment (for example, development of farms) and creation of almost any structure using blocks (Nebel et al., 2016). Through this approach, we encourage inquiry-based learning by supporting children to develop their understanding through their own ideas and efforts alongside collaboration with others, an approach endorsed by a growing body of empirical evidence and professional knowledge (for example, Loyens and Gijbels, 2008;Harlen and Qualter, 2018). ...
Engagement with science and scientific skills is an important aspect of children's ability to navigate the world around them, but engagement with science is low in comparison with other subjects. The Lancaster University outreach project Science Hunters takes a novel approach to engaging
children with environmental science research through a constructivist pedagogical approach using the popular computer game Minecraft . While Minecraft is extensively used in formal education settings, few data are available on its use in public engagement with scientific research,
and the relationship between children's and adults' attitudes to science and computer games are complex. Through motivational surveys conducted as part of the project evaluation, we analysed feedback from participants who attended sessions as part of a programme at public events, to explore
the basic demographics of children attending our events, and whether it is the prospect of learning about science, or the opportunity to play Minecraft that leads them to choose our activity. We also present evaluation of general feedback from participants at public events over four
years to give a broader view of participants' response to the activities.
... Appropriately designed gameful and playful motivation enhancement methods such as gamification and serious games can empower learners to develop and adopt autonomous, intrinsic goals, increase their engagement and facilitate deep and meaningful e-learning [12], [13]. Serious games are experiences that offer a set of meaningful choices with a primary educational purpose [14]. ...
Escape rooms are a phenomenon that has taken the world by storm in the last decade. Simultaneously Virtual Reality is a promising technology for innovation in education, training and e-learning. Combining these two concepts, this paper outlines a new model for designing serious games in virtual reality environments for high quality, deep and meaningful learning, the Serious E-scape Room. It describes the theoretical grounding, general guidelines and principles of the model. It also presents the case study “Room of Keys”, a serious virtual escape room for biology concepts. To test the assumptions of the model, researchers conducted a mixed research study with 148 students in a US high school. Pre-post test results recorded a 13.8% performance increase and high overall satisfaction. The game has been received enthusiastically by students, it increased their motivation and helped them build a deeper understanding of the learned concepts.
Object-based learning includes the active incorporation of historic artifacts into educational environments, which may yield meaningful learning experiences. However, gaining access to artifacts and coordinating object-based curricula with museum staff pose immense challenges to educators. Furthermore, digital representations of historic artifacts are often removed from authentic, culturally-situated surroundings. By providing a system-level overview of a game currently under development titled Kresy, this emerging technology report explains how video game affordances, particularly interactive narrative, may support object-based learning in digital environments. To support object-based learning and engagement with 20th-century Eastern European history, Kresy weaves story through evidence collection and inquiry mechanics. In presenting these design considerations, this report shows the viability of merging game- and object-based learning within an immersive virtual environment.
Although digital game-based learning (DGBL) has the potential to enhance learning motivation and complex cognitive skills of students, its adoption and effectiveness are heavily dependent on lecturers’ acceptance. Comprehending lecturers’ perceptions and beliefs underlying their decision-making processes is therefore significant. This study examines factors determining the intention of accounting and business lecturers in Indonesia to use digital games in their courses using an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Based on data collected from 258 lecturers, the research model is analyzed using PLS-SEM approach. The results show that the proposed model can explain 52.4% of the variance in accounting and business lecturers’ behavioral intention to use digital games in class. Particularly, both perceived ease of use and usefulness are the factors significantly determining lecturers’ intention. However, DGBL frequency negatively moderates the positive effect of perceived ease of use on lecturers’ intention.
This paper presents a systematic literature review of research papers, examining (1) the impact of free-form and formally structured digital games on L1 language learning and (2) the methods that researchers and educators use to leverage free-form and formally structured digital games in L1 language teaching. The current literature review revealed that the use of formally structured and free-form digital games are based on different theoretical approaches and can be used to serve different purposes of language learning. Free-form digital games help students develop a higher level of thinking skills; they are used more in groups of older students and aim at the whole class population, as language learning becomes a dynamic process of meaning construction. Formally structured games help students to develop lower-level thinking skills, serve the behavioural or constructivist approach to language teaching, and aim at younger students or students with specific characteristics.
This paper explores the implications of youths’ out-of-school gaming practices for teaching and learning in formal and informal learning contexts. We report on a study where we examined the video game play of two youths using a case study approach. User experience approaches, e.g. the think-aloud protocol and interviews, were grounded in the theoretical framework of social semiotics to analyse the gameplay videos and to discuss the implications for the youths’ learning. The paper contends that youths are demonstrating critical thinking, empathy, and multimodal literacy through their gameplay. We offer suggestions for how adults can use video games for youths’ learning.
This study modifies a popular business simulation game, Monopoly, to assess its effectiveness as a learning and teaching tool for helping high school accounting students acquire and apply foundational accounting concepts. The study compares an accounting-focused, Modified Monopoly simulation game with two other instructional methods. Using a quasi-experimental approach that involves three learning groups with random assignment of treatments based on school/class, a sample of 144 accounting students was obtained. This study found students using Modified Monopoly showed significantly greater improvement between their pre- and post-test scores than students in Computer-assisted instruction (CAI), but significantly less improvement than a paper-based extended accounting problem (EAP). However, students using Modified Monopoly, similar to CAI students, did not suffer the same significant decay in knowledge as students in EAP. These results offer evidence for the significant and more enduring learning benefits that Modified Monopoly can produce in students' higher-order thinking skills.
Data Availability: Data are available upon request.
This article describes educational research methodologies being used in the investigation and evaluation of desktop virtual world environments (DVWEs) as used to teach a variety of subjects in higher education. Ellis’ research framework on innovations (2005) and Reeves and Hedberg’s research goals (2003) were used as lenses to examine the state of educational research methods within DVWEs. An extensive search that resulted in 127 peer-reviewed papers chosen, was carried out to locate journal articles in the fields of educational technology, computer science and information systems, virtual reality/virtual worlds/gaming, science and health education, human-computer interaction, media and communications, psychology, social science, cognitive science, and library science. Results showed that while small scale research is common, research with broader goals (i.e. program evaluation, developmental research) is lacking.Implications include the need for signature developmental researchers to make their virtual world applications open source, and for DVWE researchers to explore collaborative research opportunities with postmodern, education researchers in order to shed more light on important issues of equity, gender, politics, and culture that impact education.
The purpose of this study was to explore four different methods of instruction: a traditional slideshow control group, and three groups using an educational video game played either individually or facilitated with a competitive or cooperative social structure. The instructional tool was an educational video game designed to teach a personal finance lesson on credit scores through individual play. The research questions focused on differences in participant performance, engagement, and attitude. The participants in the study consisted of adults from traditional extension and outreach audiences associated with a land-grant university located in the intermountain western United States. The results of this study indicated that, with one exception, there were no significant differences in outcomes between the four different methods of instruction. The broad interpretations of this study are that educational outcomes of using educational video games may not vary greatly based on social context when using precise definitions of competition and cooperation. Importantly, this affords educators the general freedom to choose among a number of social educational structures without fear of significantly compromising educational outcomes.
With the rapid development of technology, the variety, quality, performance, and social penetration of video games has reached an unprecedented height. The cross‐border combination of education and games has received extensive attention from various areas of society, including education, technology, and so forth. Educational games can create an attractive learning environment for students, make learning more interesting, and enable students to learn by doing, thus improving students' high‐level abilities. Educational games can make learning more scientific, enjoyable, and more effective. Many scholars and institutions have carried out a lot of research and practice about educational games. Based on the educational games research, this review will answer four questions: What are educational games? What is educational games research currently studying? What are the outcomes and benefits of educational games? What are the research directions of future educational games?
Despite increasing calls for science education that utilizes immersive technologies and authentically model scientific inquiry, little is known about how well curricula leveraging these technologies impact students’ science identity. This paper presents a mixed-methods study of identity exploration in 7th grade science students using a three-week immersive virtual world-based curriculum. Data sources include interviews and pre-post assessments which are compared to see how one can best assess science identity exploration. Students had statistically significant gains in scientific self-efficacy, and interviews showed an increasing awareness of what it means to be a scientist and how inquiry and argumentation skills can be used across different disciplines.
Game-based learning is becoming increasingly popular worldwide in recent years. With the value of games being recognized, researchers and educational practitioners are working on how to make use of educational games to have positive effect on students, and to promote a new way of learning. In this chapter, we review literature on game-based learning and provide examples. Exemplary games for game-based learning are FoldIt, MineCraft, and GraphoGame. Two cases of game-based learning from the United States and China are also described. One is Mad City Mystery, a place-based augmented reality game developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison for middle school students to learn environmental science and to develop scientific literacy, particularly the argumentation skills. The other is EduVenture, developed by researchers from Chinese University of Hong Kong as a learning system for mobile learning, by which teachers can facilitate students conducting social inquiry learning in social and humanities education. Then two exemplary game-based learning schools, Quest to Learn Middle School in New York and Yang Zhen Central Primary School in Beijing are also introduced, both of which are famous for its innovative educational practices. In the concluding part, the significance and development tendency of game-based learning are summarized, followed with suggestions for implementing game-based learning in future school, and a diagram for holistic game-based learning in future school is proposed.
Mississippi State University (MSU) Libraries recently held its first library-centered First-Year Experience course. To develop an appealing class for first-semester students, the authors turned to game-based learning in conjunction with a portion of the school identity to teach the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy that they hoped would resonate with the students. This article discusses the games that were implemented along with the corresponding IL framework and assessment of the course. The authors were able to increase student scores from 66.4% (pretest average) to 84.31% (post-test average).
Although every era is met with the introduction of powerful technologies for entertainment and learning, videogames represent a new contribution binding the two and bearing the potential to create sustained engagement in a curricular drama where the player's knowledgeable actions shape an unfolding fiction within a designed world. Although traditionally, stories involve an author, a performer, and an audience, much of the power of videogames as media for advancing narrative springs from their affordance for the player to occupy more than one role-and sometimes all three-simultaneously. In the narratively rich videogames that we design, players have the opportunity to perform actions, experience consequences, and reflect on the underlying social values that these situations were designed to engage, affording a type of narrative transactivity. Elsewhere we have discussed designing these media as contexts for engaging academic content; here we illuminate the power of videogames to engage children in ideological struggles as they are experienced in game-based adaptations of classic literature. Toward this end, we present our theoretical argument for the power of games as a contemporary story medium, grounding this discussion in the context of two game design projects and their implementations. Implications are discussed in terms of the potential of immersive, interactive media-videogame technology, in short-for achieving wide-ranging educational ends.
In this paper we describe our research using a multiuser virtual environment, Quest Atlantis, to embed fourth grade students in an aquatic habitat simulation. Specifically targeted towards engaging students in a rich inquiry investigation, we layered a socio-scientific narrative and an interactive rule set into a multiuser virtual environment gaming engine to establish a virtual world through which students learned about science inquiry, water quality concepts, and the challenges in balancing scientific and socioeconomic factors. Overall, students were clearly engaged, participated in rich scientific discourse, submitted quality work, and learned science content. Further, through participation in this narrative, students developed a rich perceptual, conceptual, and ethical understanding of science. This study suggests that multiuser virtual worlds can be effectively leveraged to support academic content learning.
Videogames are a powerful medium that curriculum designers can use to create narratively rich worlds for achieving educational goals. In these worlds, youth can become scientists, doctors, writers, and mathematicians who critically engage complex disciplinary content to transform a virtual world. Toward illuminating this potential, the authors advance the theory of transformational play. Such play involves taking on the role of a protagonist who must employ conceptual understandings to transform a problem-based fictional context and transform the player as well. The authors first survey the theory and then ground their discussion in two units that, as part of their design-based research methodology, have simultaneously given rise to and been informed by their theory of transformational play. They close with a discussion of research and design challenges.
This summary is based on the findings of the full-length report, "Graduation and Dropout Trends in Chicago: A Look at Cohorts of Students from 1991 through 2004." The report was written to disseminate accurate and detailed information on student outcomes in Chicago's public schools. This summary includes information on how the rates in the full report were calculated; a map showing graduation rates by community area; and selected findings from the full report.
Purpose
This paper aims to advance the idea of consequential engagement, positioning it as a necessary complement to the more common practices of supporting procedural or conceptual engagement. More than a theoretical argument, this notion is grounded in examples from the authors' work in enlisting game‐based methodologies and technologies for supporting such engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
Through the presentation of two example designs, an elementary statistics curriculum and an undergraduate educational psychology course, the paper attends to the potential of narratively‐rich, multi‐user virtual environments for positioning students to critically engage academic content. In particular, it discusses the importance of designing spaces that afford opportunities to understand and apply disciplinary concepts in making sense of, and potentially transforming, conceptually‐revealing scenarios.
Findings
The paper discusses the role of consequential engagement in supporting meaningful procedural and conceptual engagement, and the potential of these designed spaces for positioning learners to develop an appreciation both of the power of the conceptual tools they engage, and of themselves and their peers as people who use these tools.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a framework for design that can be applied to both real and virtual learning environments.
The learning of science can be made more like the practice of science through authentic simulated experiences. We have created
a networked handheld Augmented Reality environment that combines the authentic role-playing of Augmented Realities and the
underlying models of Participatory Simulations. This game, known as Outbreak @ The Institute, is played across a university
campus where players take on the roles of doctors, medical technicians, and public health experts to contain a disease outbreak.
Players can interact with virtual characters and employ virtual diagnostic tests and medicines. They are challenged to identify
the source and prevent the spread of an infectious disease that can spread among real and/or virtual characters according
to an underlying model. In this paper, we report on data from three high school classes who played the game. We investigate
students’ perception of the authenticity of the game in terms of their personal embodiment in the game, their experience playing
different roles, and their understanding of the dynamic model underlying the game.
While the knowledge economy has reshaped the world, schools lag behind in producing appropriate learning for this social change.
Science education needs to prepare students for a future world in which multiple representations are the norm and adults are
required to “think like scientists.” Location-based augmented reality games offer an opportunity to create a “post-progressive”
pedagogy in which students are not only immersed in authentic scientific inquiry, but also required to perform in adult scientific
discourses. This cross-case comparison as a component of a design-based research study investigates three cases (roughly 28
students total) where an Augmented Reality curriculum, Mad City Mystery, was used to support learning in environmental science.
We investigate whether augmented reality games on handhelds can be used to engage students in scientific thinking (particularly
argumentation), how game structures affect students’ thinking, the impact of role playing on learning, and the role of the
physical environment in shaping learning. We argue that such games hold potential for engaging students in meaningful scientific
argumentation. Through game play, players are required to develop narrative accounts of scientific phenomena, a process that
requires them to develop and argue scientific explanations. We argue that specific game features scaffold this thinking process,
creating supports for student thinking non-existent in most inquiry-based learning environments.
In this paper we describe our research using a multi-user virtual environment, Quest Atlantis, to embed fourth grade students in an aquatic habitat simulation. Specifically targeted towards engaging students in a rich
inquiry investigation, we layered a socio-scientific narrative and an interactive rule set into a multi-user virtual environment gaming engine to establish a virtual world through which students learned about science inquiry, water quality concepts, and the challenges in balancing scientific and socioeconomic factors. Overall, students were clearly engaged, participated in rich scientific discourse, submitted quality work, and learned science content. Further, through participation in this narrative, students developed a rich perceptual, conceptual, and ethical understanding of science. This study suggests that multi-user virtual worlds can be effectively leveraged to support academic content learning.
The situative perspective shifts the focus of analysis from individual behavior and cognition to larger systems that include behaving cognitive agents interacting with each other and with other subsystems in the environment. The first section presents a version of the situative perspective that draws on studies of social interaction, philosophical situation theory, and ecological psychology. Framing assumptions and concepts are proposed for a synthesis of the situative and cognitive theoretical perspectives, and a further situative synthesis is suggested that would draw on dynamic-systems theory. The second section discusses relations between the situative, cognitive, and behaviorist theoretical perspectives and principles of educational practice. The third section discusses an approach to research and social practice called interactive research and design, which fits with the situative perspective and provides a productive, albeit syncretic, combination of theory-oriented and instrumental functions of research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Once understood in the context of the narratives that give it meaning, law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which to live. We have reached a challenging junction at which, on the one hand, teachers and schools face increased pressure to prepare students for standardized tests, whereas, on the other hand, they face a generation of students who regard the school curriculum as largely irrelevant to their own lives. It has become all too common to develop curricula and teach domain content distinct from the people, places, and situations through which the content has meaning. While it is expected that the information learned will somehow, later, be connected to those situations in which it is useful and meaningful, this is rarely what occurs. All too often the knowledge students “acquire” in schools remains inert (Whitehead, 1929), something demonstrated on a test in a school context where it can be traded for a grade but not applied to a situation in which it has intrinsic worth (Lave, 1991, 1997; Wenger, 1998). The irony is that we then wonder why children appear unmotivated to learn after we have disconnected meaning from the learning situation, assuming that the learner somehow will attribute the same functional value to the information as the teacher does Unless we begin to engage youth in rich situations that add meaning to disciplinary concepts – as part of the learning process – the content of schools will be perceived as a thing to be acquired and exchanged for a test score (having exchange value) and not as a useful tool that has direct functional value in the world or to the learner.
Why do poor and minority students under-perform in school? Do computer games help or hinder learning? What can new research in psychology teach our educational policy-makers?
In a recent Educational Researcher article, Brown, Collins, and Duguid (January-February 1989) discussed the concept of situated cognition. We explore relationships between this concept and our Technology Center’s work on anchored instruction. In the latter, instruction is anchored (situated) in videodisc-based, problem-solving environments that teachers and students can explore.
We argue that situated cognition provides a broad, useful framework that emphasizes the importance of focusing on everyday cognition, authentic tasks, and the value of in-context apprenticeship training. Anchored instruction provides a way to recreate some of the advantages of apprenticeship training in formal educational settings involving groups of students. In addition, some of the principles of anchored instruction may make it possible to create learning experiences that are more effective than many that occur in traditional apprenticeship training. Together, the situated cognition and anchored instruction perspectives suggest ways to think differently about instruction, and they suggest important issues for future research.
Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children. The first edition of Unequal Childhoods was an instant classic, portraying in riveting detail the unexpected ways in which social class influences parenting in white and African American families. A decade later, Annette Lareau has revisited the same families and interviewed the original subjects to examine the impact of social class in the transition to adulthood.
Education is about revealing possibility and exciting passions, empowering learners with the disciplinary expertise to meaningfully act on problematic contexts in which applying disciplinary knowledge is important. Toward this end, we have been using gaming methodologies and technologies to design curricular dramas that position students as active change agents who use knowledge to inquire into particular circumstances and, through their actions, transform the problematic situation into a known. Unlike more traditional textbooks designed to transmit facts or micro-stories, our focus is on building interactive experiences in which understanding core concepts, such as erosion or the idea of metaphor, and seeing oneself as a person who uses these to address personally meaningful and socially significant problems is valued. It is the explicit goal of this manuscript to communicate this power of educational videogames, as well as the design steps that we have been using to make this happen.
How can we make sure that our children are learning to be creative thinkers in a world of global competition - and what does that mean for the future of education in the digital age? David Williamson Shaffer offers a fresh and powerful perspective on computer games and learning. How Computer Games Help Children Learn shows how video and computer games can help teach children to build successful futures - but only if we think in new ways about education itself. Shaffer shows how computer and video games can help students learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world. Based on more than a decade of research in technology, game science, and education, How Computer Games Help Children Learn revolutionizes the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of digital learning.
Interactive immersive entertainment, or videogame playing, has emerged as a major entertainment and educational medium. As research and development initiatives proliferate, educational researchers might benefit by developing more grounded theories about them. This article argues for framing game play as a designed experience. Players’ understandings are developed through cycles of performance within the gameworlds, which instantiate particular theories of the world (ideological worlds). Players develop new identities both through game play and through the gaming communities in which these identities are enacted. Thus research that examines game-based learning needs to account for both kinds of interactions within the game-world and in broader social contexts. Examples from curriculum developed for Civilization III and Supercharged! show how games can communicate powerful ideas and open new identity trajectories for learners.
This study describes an example of design-based research in which we make theoretical improvements in our understanding, in part based on empirical work, and use these to revise the curriculum and, simultaneously, our evolving theory of the relations between contexts and disciplinary formalisms. Prior to this study, we completed a first cycle of design revisions, restructuring an ecological sciences curriculum to make more apparent particular domain concepts that were consistent with the targeted learning standards. Of particular interest was how to embed more standards-based and science-domain concepts within the curricular experience without undermining the narrative and perceptual embodiment central to our design philosophy. In Study One reported here, the first pilot teacher used the second-cycle curriculum with fourth graders in a high ability track. Following this initial implementation, we analyzed qualitative and quantitative data on student participation and performance in order to evaluate and evolve our theoretical understanding and to further modify the curriculum. In Study Two, a first-year teacher used the modified second-cycle curriculum with fourth-graders, including multiple children labeled as special needs. We used this second implementation and our design trajectory to develop an appreciation for how to create an embodied curriculum that supports the learning of specific disciplinary formalisms. Correspondence about this article should be addressed to Sasha A. Barab, School of Education, Room
Schools are still programatically preparing children of different castes for different adult worlds. Black children often enter school with attitudes and skills which may be in conflict with those required for the middle-class type of school success. Schools often reinforce these conflicts and doubts in subtle ways. (Author/EB)
In her book, Philosophy in a New Key, Susanne Langer remarks that certain ideas burst upon the intellectual landscape with a tremendous force. They resolve so many fundamental problems at once that they seem also to promise that they will resolve all fundamental problems, clarify all obscure issues. Everyone snaps them up as the open sesame of some new positive science, the conceptual center-point around which a comprehensive system of analysis can be built. The sudden vogue of such a grande ideé, crowding out almost everything else for a while, is due, she says, "to the fact that all sensitive and active minds turn at once to exploiting it. We try it in every connection, for every purpose, experiment with possible stretches of its strict meaning, with generalizetions and derivatives." After we have become familiar with the new idea, however, after it has become part of our general stock of theoretical concepts, our expectations are brought more into balance with its actual uses, and its excessive popularity is ended. A few zealots persist in the old key-to-the-universe view of it; but less driven thinkers settle down after a while to the problems the idea has really generated. They try to apply it and extend it where it applies and where it is capable of extension; and they desist where it does not apply or cannot be extended. It becomes, if it was, in truth, a seminal idea in the first place, a permanent and enduring part of our intellectual armory. But it no longer has the grandiose, all-promising scope, the infinite versatility of apparent application, it once had.
This article has two primary goals: (a) to illustrate how a closer analysis of language can lead to fruitful insights into the activities that it helps constitute, and (b) to demonstrate the complexity of the practices that make up Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOGaming) through just such an analysis. The first goal is in response to the way we sometimes treat language in studies of activity, despite calls for more nuanced analyses (e.g., Wells, 2002), as a mere conduit for information in which its other (social, identity) functions are overlooked. The second goal is in response to the diatribes against video games in the media and their frequent dismissal as barren play. In this article, I use functional linguistics to unpack how a seemingly inconsequential turn of talk within the game Lineage reveals important aspects of the activity in which it is situated as well as the broader "forms of life" enacted in the game through which members display their allegiance and identity.
The situative perspective shifts the focus of analysis from individual behavior and cognition to larger systems that include behaving cognitive agents interacting with each other and with other subsystems in the environment. The first section presents a version of the situative perspective that draws on studies of social interaction, philosophical situation theory, and ecological psychology. Framing assumptions and concepts are proposed for a synthesis of the situative and cognitive theoretical perspectives, and a further situative synthesis is suggested that would draw on dynamic-systems theory. The second section discusses relations between the situative, cognitive, and behaviorist theoretical perspectives and principles of educational practice. The third section discusses an approach to research and social practice called interactive research and design, which fits with the situative perspective and provides a productive, albeit syncretic, combination of theory-oriented and instrumental functions of research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In our chapter in the first edition of this Handbook (see record
1994-98625-005), we presented two tables that summarized our positions, first, on the axiomatic nature of paradigms (the paradigms we considered at that time were positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism, p. 109, Table 6.1); and second, on the issues we believed were most fundamental to differentiating the four paradigms (p. 112, Table 6.2). These tables are reproduced here as a way of reminding our readers of our previous statements. The axioms defined the ontological, epistemological, and methodological bases for both established and emergent paradigms. The issues most often in contention that we examined were inquiry aim, nature of knowledge, the way knowledge is accumulated, goodness (rigor and validity) or quality criteria, values, ethics, voice, training, accommodation, and hegemony. An examination of these two tables will reacquaint the reader with our original Handbook treatment. Since publication of that chapter, at least one set of authors, J. Heron and P. Reason, have elaborated on our tables to include the participatory/cooperative paradigm (Heron, 1996; Heron & Reason, 1997, pp. 289-290). Thus, in addition to the paradigms of positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism, we add the participatory paradigm in the present chapter (this is an excellent example, we might add, of the hermeneutic elaboration so embedded in our own view, constructivism). Our aim here is to extend the analysis further by building on Heron and Reason's additions and by rearranging the issues to reflect current thought. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The emergence of a new paradigm of inquiry (naturalistic) has, unsurprisingly enough, led to a demand for rigorous criteria that meet traditional standards of inquiry. Two sets are suggested, one of which, the “trustworthiness” criteria, parallels conventional criteria, while the second, “authenticity” criteria, is implied directly by new paradigm assumptions.
Although every era is met with the introduction of powerful technologies for entertainment and learning, videogames represent a new contribution binding the two and bearing the potential to create sustained engagement in a curricular drama where the player's knowledgeable actions shape an unfolding fiction within a designed world. Although traditionally, stories involve an author, a performer, and an audience, much of the power of videogames as media for advancing narrative springs from their affordance for the player to occupy more than one role—and sometimes all three—simultaneously. In the narratively rich videogames that we design, players have the opportu-nity to perform actions, experience consequences, and reflect on the underlying social values that these situations were designed to engage, affording a type of narrative transactivity. Elsewhere we have discussed designing these media as contexts for engaging academic content; here we illuminate the power of videogames to engage children in ideological struggles as they are experienced in game-based adaptations of classic literature. Toward this end, we present our theoretical argument for the power of games as a contemporary story medium, grounding this discussion in the context of two game design projects and their implementations. Implications are discussed in terms of the potential of immersive, interactive media—videogame technology, in short—for achieving wide-ranging educational ends.