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The purpose of this paper is to detail the perceived influence of early gaming habits toward media production from seven students enrolled at a university in the Southeastern US. Participants identified as heavily involved in creating media such as anime, videos, fanfiction, webcomics, games, and digital music.

This exploratory study used qualitative research, thus data collection and analysis included questionnaires, interviews, and artifacts identifying and categorizing six main themes: game play preferences, persistence, early connections between game play and media, support and feedback, creations inspired by games, and significance of games in current lives.

The study found that most participants believed game play in childhood influenced increasingly complex media production habits. Six of the seven believed game play influenced their career path. The paper concludes with implications for education including games as conduits to personalized learning and career paths.

Results from this study extend prior research on the value of games to promote media production and meet personal and professional goals. This is significant as prior research linking early game play to media production influencing career goals is sparse.

The purpose of this study is to identify and assess collaborative problem solving (CPS) behaviors in elementary students in science, technology, engineering, arts/humanities and mathematics (STEAM)-related making and to garner students perspectives. We offer a valid way for researchers to understand collaborative processes and for educators to create opportunities for collaboration. Additionally, the feedback from the assessment offers students a way to reflect on their CPS skills.

This qualitative study evaluated 52 elementary students’ CPS skills using co-measure, a validated rubric assessing students’ CPS when working in STEAM-related makerspace activities. Students worked in collaborative groups to “make” artifacts when solving a problem posed by their teacher. They were assessed using co-measure’s four dimensions: peer interactions, positive communication, inquiry rich/multiple paths and transdisciplinary approaches and scored via each dimension’s associated attributes. Student interviews provided their perspectives on CPS.

A majority of students scored in the acceptable or proficient range in the social dimensions of peer interactions and positive communication. Students scored slightly lower on the cognitive dimensions of inquiry rich/multiple paths and markedly lower on transdisciplinary approaches when collaborating. Findings suggest to increase CPS skills, teachers might develop “making” activities fostering greater inquiry and model ways to strategize and verify information, approach the problem drawing on student interest and prior knowledge and collaboratively use tools, materials and methods that mimic the real world when problem-solving.

Much of the current research on assessing CPS during making is in the early stages of considering appropriate assessment approaches, especially in schools. To expand this literature the study includes elementary students between the ages of 6-10, the focus is on assessing their collaboration using an observational rubric. The authors use preliminary findings from young children’s perspectives on making to position the future work.

This study is part of a participatory design research project and aims to develop and study pedagogical frameworks and tools for integrating computational thinking (CT) concepts and data science practices into elementary school classrooms.

This paper describes a pedagogical approach that uses a data science framework the research team developed to assist teachers in providing data science instruction to elementary-aged students. Using phenomenological case study methodology, the authors use classroom observations, student focus groups, video recordings and artifacts to detail ways learners engage in data science practices and understand how they perceive their engagement during activities and learning.

Findings suggest student engagement in data science is enhanced when data problems are contextualized and connected to students’ lived experiences; data analysis and data-based decision-making is practiced in multiple ways; and students are given choices to communicate patterns, interpret graphs and tell data stories. The authors note challenges students experienced with data practices including conflict between inconsistencies in data patterns and lived experiences and focusing on data visualization appearances versus relationships between variables.

Data science instruction in elementary schools is an understudied, emerging and important area of data science education. Most elementary schools offer limited data science instruction; few elementary schools offer data science curriculum with embedded CT practices integrated across disciplines. This research assists elementary educators in fostering children's data science engagement and agency while developing their ability to reason, visualize and make decisions with data.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the authors created a community of inquiry for game design with Crystal Island, report research results from a school pilot and analyze lessons learned. Using a community of inquiry approach, the authors created participatory structures for design and communication among the university team (i.e. computer science, literacy and science education, educational psychology and art design), elementary teachers and elementary students who were involved with Crystal Island.

As part of the design process and in the attempt to create a community of inquiry, the authors conducted ongoing sessions with the teachers and students (N = 800), or what the authors refer to as design charettes. The design charettes included forming a lead teacher cadre and conducting game-based learning teacher institutes. These sessions led to a mixed methods school pilot study.

Results of the classroom pilot study suggested that game-based learning environments not only increase student engagement but also positively impact content knowledge on science topics and problem-solving skills. A key finding was that these gains were not unique to any specific group of learners, as there were no differences by race or gender.

Applying a community of inquiry contributed greatly to the success of the authors’ results. Distributing knowledge and authority throughout the community (university and elementary schools combined) promoted rich social interactions that encouraged meaningful contributions from all participants. Future efforts will focus on sustaining our community of inquiry as the authors attempt to scale gameplay with CRYSTAL ISLAND.

This paper aims to describe the World of Warcraft (WoW) experience, where students in a graduate English seminar played WoW to ground their learning about digital literacies. Through the experience, students developed their own digital literacies and learned to enter academic discourse about games and digital literacies.

In the paper, the instructor and eight students describe the purpose, design and outcomes of the experience. Over the course of a month, the group coordinated logistics and roles, each person created a character, each character reached the threshold level for low-level dungeons, the whole class played several dungeons together and the class engaged in metaconversation about the experience.

The instructor reflects on the problem of practice that the WoW experience addressed and the instructional organization of the experience. The students, who came into the WoW experience with a range of prior knowledge about games and Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, reflect on what challenges they faced while learning to play and develop their own digital literacies, how they assembled resources to overcome challenges, how their views of digital literacies and games shifted from the experience and how the experience helped them rethink teaching first-year composition.

As the WoW experience illustrates, finding ways to connect games to advanced graduate courses can create fun, frustration and powerful learning experiences for students as they maneuver complex content.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact a games-based curriculum can have on library and information science (LIS) curriculum.

This is a worked example, using a case study and iterative design approach. Each iteration of this course and the reports are from the respective opinions of the instructors.

The authors found that once students looked past games as being pleasant distractions and were able to see them as both context-rich and well-designed learning environments, they were conducive in bringing games to libraries to spur interest-driven learning. Some students tackled analog and digital game design, while others would play historical games and tie those back to available books, and still others used board and video games to bring parents and their children together through play. While these findings do not dictate that this would work in all situations, presenting games and play as an inclusive practice that spans topics and interests was successful.

This research focuses on an LIS course and its development. Research and best practices in this course better inform future designs on how to take games-based design and interest-driven learning into broader areas to use games to spur interest and learning. The authors do not claim that our individual approaches to this class are the best methods in any course using games-based learning. Yet instructors in other fields can take what the authors learned, and the different approaches used to teaching games-based learning, and augment based on the authors’ experiences.

This worked example demonstrates that a games-based curriculum can help generate interest in informal learning spaces, such as in libraries.

The value of this paper is to emphasize the impact that games and games research can have on other disciplines. Games-based and interest-driven learning are broad enough that their usefulness in other fields is worth consideration. Libraries have been commonly looked at as “old” spaces to acquire knowledge. Combining “old” and “new” technologies to serve a more technologically savvy demographic not only helps the field of games-based learning, but also helps those in LIS how to better service a new generation of learners in collaborative relationships.

This paper aims to address opportunities and tensions when creating game-based learning practices in higher education. By detailing examples from a university in the Southeastern USA and the communities it serves, we suggest game-based research and learning be approached as a unifying influence adaptable across contexts.

We use a working example methodology where someone with expertise “works through” a well-known issue while making the thinking overt. In this manner, we reveal processes, successes and challenges infusing game-based learning in higher education to deepen understanding between fields and encourage research and practice with games across disciplines.

The working example demonstrates that games served as a unifying influence in three primary ways, which included redesigning courses and implementing programmatic changes; using existing programs to promote interdisciplinary teaching and research; and increasing outreach and partnerships. In each example, games served to strengthen or support the initiatives.

This paper extends literature on the value of games to promote research and learning. Significantly, it provides an example for others in game-based learning fields to consider when building similar programs in higher education.

This paper aims to provide a framework for understanding and differentiating among different forms of game-based teaching and learning (GBTL).

The framework is based on an analysis of existing literature and descriptions of GBTL in varied higher education settings, combined with case examples of the author’s personal experience as instructors of GBTL courses.

Four frames or categories of GBTL approaches were identified: the action frame, the structuring frame, the bridging frame and the design frame. Each frame represents a spectrum of related yet varied strategies and assumptions.

This framework is a first attempt at providing an analytic tool for making sense of the varied instantiations of GBTL in higher education. It can be useful as a heuristic tool for researchers as well as a generative model for designing future GBTL practices.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how videogames can be worked into various courses in a digital humanities curriculum.

The concepts included are drawn from media studies, game studies, and game-based learning.

The Digital Humanities and Social Sciences (DHSS) BS degree will begin enrolling students in the academic year 2016-2017, at which time findings will be available.

The DHSS BS degree is among the first of its kind, and will be a model for other programs to follow.

The purpose of this paper is to describe what students in an undergraduate course otherwise unrelated to games demonstrated about their learning during an analog game design assignment, and to explore what two of the resultant games revealed about designers’ understandings of the structural nature of social class inequality.

Students’ documents associated with game production were analyzed for overt statements of learning, which were then coded and categorized. The researcher also assessed analog game prototypes to explore their usefulness to learning assessment.

Students’ perceptions of their learning in both cognitive and social domains were apparent in written reports. Faculty assessment of game artifacts found evidence of designers’ grasp of structural aspects of social class inequality beyond that apparent in written documentation.

The case study approach limits the generalizability of the researcher’s observations.

This paper suggests that an analog game-making assignment can provide students with opportunity to document learning in both cognitive and social domains, through self-reports and game artifacts. Several avenues for further research are proposed.

This descriptive case study can assist educators developing game design assignments in courses focused on non-game topics, and educators considering the usefulness of game artifacts in learning assessment.