‘Off the Shelf’ Computer Games: Some Initial Research Considerations

‘Unbox 21’: British Council Project

Dr. Tim Rudd, Education Research Centre, University of Brighton

- Multitude of types, foci, subject - Varied platforms

- Increasing elements of ‘user’ control, design, and collaborative and networked play

- Game like qualities in many interactive resources and tools

- Multi billion pound industry(s)

- Current trends and socio-political climate (e.g. Nesta report; emerging UK policy direction)

What is a computer game?

Changing what it means to be educated today?

Changes in practice and pedagogy?

Increased importance of critical digital literacies

Increased emphasis on develop 21st Century skills

COtS games in education

1 Year – 1st of kind/scale

Varied use, application & impacts

Great potential – new possibilities for pedagogy and practice

Teacher and pedagogical understanding key

Why are games potentially powerful learning tools?

• Media rich, original, engaging content

• Dynamic and high speed

• Provides instant feedback

• Flexible and customisable – end user choice

• Collaboration and cooperation

Why are games potentially powerful learning tools?

• High engagement – low stakes

• Ipsitive (assessment) play and challenge

• Multi-layered and multi level - varied complexity suited to ‘skills’ of user (internal individual differentiation & response)

• Discovery and exploration – self regulated

Reported benefits

• Motivation, engagement, stimulation

• Involvement, collaboration, communication

• Co-constructed learning, shared knowledge and skills exchange

• Visual, spatial & cognitive processing

• Functional and technical skills and understanding

• Critical digital literacies, higher order thinking skills

Reported benefits

• Creativity, problem solving and decision making

• Strategy and planning, decoding game and narrative

• Conceptual understanding, deduction and hypotheses testing

• Subject and skill specific improvements, test scores

• New pedagogies and practice, communities of interest and practice

• Technological dispositions and wider resonance

BUT...

Techno-romantic and determinist?

Many begin & end with motivation, engagement, technical mastery

Often unreported, poorly reported or promotional

Many one offs – no sustainability or transfer or not replicable

Direct causality of impact incredibly difficult

Multiple influential variables, Hawthorne effect, contextual milieu

Positivist, pseudo scientific approaches inappropriate

How might this influence our research approach?

Knights of Honor

Intervention project

Action research, CPD

Iterative research and analysis

P1.‘Baseline’ a) context b) prior use, knowledge, perceptions (survey)

Initial stimulus materials /events – (logs/capture)

Visits and workshops – opening minds to new possibilities

•Framed as action research/CPD – requirements explicit – guidance but not

prescriptive/onerous

•Develop ‘research’ questions/frame

•Research logs/diaries, broad framework – key foci, theoretical constructs

•Develop individual (cluster?) projects

•Observation, interviews, focus groups

•P3 - Post project reflections / interviews/ post ‘baseline’ perceptions

(baseline) – next steps

Phases 2 & 3

Type of game – affordances, functionality, narrative

How applied – subject, skills, objectives, time, location etc.

Changes in learning and teaching practice and structure & organisation of learning, and relationship

Impacts – to subject, skills, achievement

Incidental/unexpected changes

Changes in perceptions and attitudes

Changes in pedagogical practice, perceptions of identity

Techno-dispositions and trajectory

Some key areas for investigation

Some theoretical considerations...

Funds of knowledge

Person plus

‘Distributed cognition’ or ‘cognitive surplus’

4C’s

Mediational means and refraction through practice

Contextualisation, decontexualisation and recontextualisation

Cultural, social and economic capitals

Sustainability – of tools, resources, learning, of knowledge into system, communities of practice and interest

Rollercoaster tycoon

Core reading for all teachers

Offer key guidance and raises important questions educators should address from the outset

Taken for granted assumptions: Workshops?

What is a game? – what is the functionality, components

What makes good learning?

What is (e.g.) citizenship

What are 21st Century skills?

Why/how can games be better for learning aims than other resources?

Thinking = better learning discussions

Workshop techniques for innovative thinking - possibilities

The information landscape & data flood

Socio-technological trends – 4 C’s and ‘network logic’

Institutional boundaries

Importance of geography

Working with machines

‘Digital natives’ grow up

‘Hyper’ personalisation

Trusted following

*Adapted from Futurelab’s Beyond Current Horizons Programme

Current and emerging technology trends