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We are the Game Changers: An Open Gaming Literacy Programme

International Journal of Game-Based Learning

July 2017
7(3):51-62

DOI:10.4018/IJGBL.2017070105

Authors:

Sylvester Arnab

Coventry University

Luca Morini

Coventry University

Kate O'Leary

University of Nottingham

Alex Masters

Coventry University

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This paper discusses the first iteration of Game Changers Programme hosted by Coventry University's Disruptive Media Learning Lab (DMLL), an open game design initiative. The Programme had the goal of facilitating new models of teaching and learning, new practices in cross-faculty learning/collaboration to make game design and development more culturally open and accessible to staff, students and the broader informal communities surrounding the University. The paper will discuss the theoretical foundation of the GameChangers Programme, grounded in a conceptualisation of design as a holistic, modular and creative process, and in an ethos of sharing, collaborating and remixing. The paper will present the outline of the Course and the Community that constituted the core elements of the Programme, and discuss a plural showcase of a variety of outcomes from the GameChangers Community, focusing on the Programme's cultural impact and on how the Programme as a whole disrupted established notions of game based pedagogy, and the customary hierarchical relations between producers and users of learning games.

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DOI: 10.4018/IJGBL.2017070105



Volume 7 • Issue 3 • July-September 2017





Sylvester Arnab, Coventry University, Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry, United Kingdom

Luca Morini, Coventry University, Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry, United Kingdom

Kate Green, Coventry University, Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry, United Kingdom

Alex Masters, Coventry University, Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry, United Kingdom

Tyrone Bellamy-Woods, Coventry University, Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry, United Kingdom



This paper discusses the first iteration of Game Changers Programme hosted by Coventry University’s

Disruptive Media Learning Lab (DMLL), an open game design initiative. The Programme had the

goal of facilitating new models of teaching and learning, new practices in cross-faculty learning/

collaboration to make game design and development more culturally open and accessible to staff,

students and the broader informal communities surrounding the University. The paper will discuss the

theoretical foundation of the GameChangers Programme, grounded in a conceptualisation of design as

a holistic, modular and creative process, and in an ethos of sharing, collaborating and remixing. The

paper will present the outline of the Course and the Community that constituted the core elements

of the Programme, and discuss a plural showcase of a variety of outcomes from the GameChangers

Community, focusing on the Programme’s cultural impact and on how the Programme as a whole

disrupted established notions of game based pedagogy, and the customary hierarchical relations

between producers and users of learning games.



Design-Based Learning, Game Design, Game-Based Learning, Gaming Literacy, Open Course





It all started with a simple question, asked one too many times by one to many colleagues: “Could

you please make a learning game for us about our course?” To which, after designing one too many

games about one too many specific courses, we finally decided to answer with a different question:

“Why don’t you instead learn to make your own games?”

This paper will discuss the wide-ranging consequences of this further question and the reversal

in the customary producer-user hierarchy of learning game production practices that it brought forth,

which concretised in the first iteration of the “GameChangers” Programme of Coventry University.

This Programme explored the role and the opportunities of game design thinking in fostering creative

problem solving and cross-disciplinary design collaboration, and the complexities and criticalities

which emerged while deploying such approaches in a formal learning institution. Born with the initial

goal of helping lecturers adopt new, playful models of teaching and learning, GameChangers, as will

be seen in the examples below, soon extended to:



Volume 7 • Issue 3 • July-September 2017

• Fostering new practices in cross-faculty learning/collaboration.

• Supporting students and lecturers in co-designing learning.

• The development of new perspectives in the use of creative means for problem framing and

solving, applicable to a wide variety of different courses and real world situations.

However, to appropriately frame our approach to game design and learning, it is important

to emphasize from the beginning the relevance, in our research and innovation endeavours, of

acknowledging the multiple facets of the relationship between games and learning in formal contexts, a

relationship that all too often is misconstrued and strongly skewed through a specific, singular, techno-

deterministic lens (Oliver, 2011). In fact, beside the very pragmatic workload concerns touched on in

the first lines of this paper, the GameChangers Programme had its core rooted mainly in a theoretical

and pedagogical consideration: as a whole, innovation in learning research seems, particularly in this

historical conjuncture, to be overwhelmingly technology-driven (Buckingham, 2013). With the rise

of digital technologies, and particularly of the anytime-anywhere access to the web brought forward

with the diffusion of smartphones (Crompton, 2013), learning contents, resources and practices

are becoming more and more digitised and virtualised. This also happens in concurrence with the

increased interest in digitally immersive technologies and the growing requests for distance learning

(Lockwood, 2013). More specifically as pertaining to our field of studies, all too often game creation

in educational contexts has been driven by the aforementioned techno-deterministic and hype-based

approach, with a new gaming technology appearing on the market, creating a huge buzz (Cook & Triola,

2012). This has prompted educational institutions try to implement a (game-based) learning solution

based on that technology in the hope of riding the wave of hype and increase impact and notability.

So, as the digital game industry is still growing into a huge market (predicted by Huntemann

& Aslinger, 2016, to soon surpass cinema in total value), the education game industry turned to the

digital, hoping to tap into this same mobilisation of resources.

In blindly following this techno-deterministic hype, however, learning institutions often come

up with (costly) implementations that are not effective, not economically or structurally sustainable,

and, most importantly, not designed with a true grasp of what could make them meaningful for

teachers and learners, which is to say an understanding of the cultures and social dynamics that

underlie both learning and game cultures (Steinkuehler, Squire & Barab, 2012). Indeed, in recent

years, phenomena that run opposite to the foregrounding of technology are occurring within wider,

informal game cultures, with the so called “Rise of the Indies” (games and game creators relying on

low cost technologies and often embracing “retro” aesthetics; see Juul, 2014), and the “Board Game

Renaissance” (Philips, 2015) in particular highlighting a deep need for recovering a shared, playful

horizon of meaning, and even to return to local, face to face interaction.

As the cultures of play are moving away from a more technology-driven focus, prompting us to

engage in a re-evaluation of playful aesthetic and social experience, likewise thinking “technology

first and pedagogy later” tends to generate a stifled perspective of the consequences and ramifications

of technology in any learning ecology, starting with blinding ourselves to what learners and educators

actually find meaningful (Salen, 2008). To overcome this contradiction, we therefore endeavoured to

find a solution that would be at the same time holistic and modular, so as to enable game designers

in educational context to keep the broad vision that learning processes require, and at the same time

coherently and strongly scaffold the design process in an accessible and pedagogically sound way.

To bridge the technically minded gap between play and learning, we therefore referred to (and

refined) the transdisciplinary approach in serious games production developed by Arnab & Clarke

(2016). This is a layered approach that, starting with the consideration of learning needs and dynamics,

can inform learning design and the relevant enabling technologies, meant in their broadest sense.

Figure 1 illustrates this more modular and bottom up approach (layer 1 – layer 4) in looking at

teaching and learning challenges and formulating both game designs and the relevant technologies that

would enable the teaching and learning process. Before thinking about what the “solution” should be

and what technologies could enable the process, it helps to focus on the process itself, acknowledging

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Jan 2012

Emily Goligoski

As higher education costs rise in the United States, there have been frequent debates about why students might choose alternate options and avoid taking on large loans in pursuit of degrees. Even optimistic educators have agreed that access to academic institutions and experience need to be made more affordable. It seems unsurprising that discussions about the value of education—particularly from elite universities—coincide with the creation of alternative forms of accreditation for intended adoption by professionals (both degreed and not) to showcase skills to improve their futures. "It's often difficult to get recognition for skills and achievements gained outside of school," begins the description for the search engine organization Mozilla's Open Badges program, a project that is in development and slated to publicly launch this spring. The non-profit and open Internet advocate is creating a badge infrastructure as a way for people to use the web to share their expertise and experiences with potential employers and partners for the purpose of gaining "jobs, community recognition, and new learning opportunities." Beyond presenting work history and digital skills, it seems to be a novel approach to legitimizing informal learning experiences, particularly for people who are trying to promote or reposition themselves. FIGURE 1. Visual introduction to badging plans as laid out by Mozilla Open Badges. As creator of the free badge infrastructure, Mozilla offers access to the source code for the badges. It takes the stance that "it should not be up to individuals to have to craft their own infrastructures and mechanisms to make their learning visible." In the spirit of decentralization, the badges for "lifelong learners" will be created and offered by third parties (as described in detail later) and will serve as the content for the infrastructure that Mozilla is building.

What is the role of e-learning? Looking past the hype

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