Literacy, learning and digital games: taking seriously serious play

Catherine Beavis, Deakin University

UTS/HKU Games and LearningNovember 26, 2019

Serious Play

• 3 year project

• 10 schools across two states (Queensland and Victoria)

• 3 Primary and 7 Secondary schools

• Students aged from 5-15

• 32 teachers

Catherine Beavis

Michael Dezuanni

Joanne O’Mara

Sarah Prestridge

Leonie Rowan

Jason Zagami

Roberta Thompson

Christy McGillivray

Yam San Chee

Australian Research Council (2012-2014)Serious Play: Digital Games, Learning and Literacy for twenty first century schooling

Areas of focus

• Focus on teachers

• Focus on students

• In school – out of school

• Focus on curriculum and learning

• Focus on games

• Focus on assessment

Aims: to explore:

i) How students with widely different preferences and experience of games and digital culture approached games-based teaching in the classroom;

ii) How teachers were able to work with games most effectively, and the kinds of pedagogical practices and approaches which best capitalise on the capacities of games to teach;

iii) The opportunities games provide for creativity, production and innovation;

iv) digital literacies and the ways in which learning through games challenge and extend multimodal literacy learning

v) assessment and whether a specific assessment framework was required to identify and support deep learning, creativity and the production and sharing of knowledge online.

• teachers introduced digital games in short school-based research projects within their curriculum units; groups of students participated in one or more school-based experiences.

• Collaborative and individual planning, Professional Learning days, sharing, cross school visits, blog posts etc.

• Data gathering: a range of methods including but not limited to surveys, focus groups, interviews, video recordings, classroom observations, and classroom artefacts (e.g., screenshots).

Learning with gamesAnalysing gamesMaking games

Student Views

Who were they?

• 232 students from 8 schools:

– 84 girls, 148 boys;

– 140 elementary, 92 secondary

– Two states

– Year 4 – year 9

– 32% year 9; 30% year 6.

• Background data

• Games played outside school

• Games in the classroom

• The three foci of classroom work:

– Using games

– Analysing games

– Making games

Games need to be fun and enjoyable

• It has to be fun and enjoyable.

• Having fun: EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

• They can make learning about a subject a lot more fun.

• Computer games are good at teaching people how to be happy.

• It would make work and learning more enjoyable

• You had to correctly complete a series of questions before you could play the game where you smacked bugs for points. The quicker you completed the questions, the more time you had to play the bugwhack game. The problem was that the game wasn’t fun at all and gave players no motivation to complete the questions.

Findings• Using digital games in the classroom requires just as much complex

decision making for the teacher as any other subject matter or approach.

• There is variation in student disposition towards digital games—from highly engaged to disengaged and skilled to novice players, digital “multiculturalism” rather than “natives”!

• Mostly teachers reported and we observed that the students were very positive in their approach to the games work. Some students who were normally successful felt challenged by the usage of games.

• Teachers reported that the work with games often positively disrupted established classroom relationships and enabled some students who were not usually successful to shine.

• While there was often a sense of risk involved in using digital games in classrooms, as the students often had higher levels of expertise than the teachers, the positive student approach enabled teachers to learn from their students and for students to learn from each other.

See Further:

See Further:

Beavis, C., Muspratt, S. & Thompson, R. (2014) ‘Computer games can get your brain working’: student experience and perception of digital games in the classroom. Learning Media and Technology DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2014.904339

www.seriousplayproject.org.

catherine.beavis@deakin.edu