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This paper aims to explore how making tabletop board games elicited adolescents’ design thinking during their participation in a summer game design camp at their local library.

This study leverages qualitative approaches to coding transcripts of participants’ talk. This study uses the design thinking framework from the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University as provisional codes to identify and make sense of participants’ verbalized design activity.

This study found that the making context of designing tabletop board games elicited a high frequency of design talk in participants, evidenced by both quantitative and qualitative reports of the data. Additionally, participants in large measure obviated constraints on their design activity imposed by linear conceptions of the design thinking model this study introduces, instead of moving fluidly across design modes. Finally, participants’ prior experiences in both life and in regard to games significantly influenced their design study.

This study highlights the unique affordances of making-centric approaches to designing tabletop games in particular, such as participants’ quick and sustained engagement in the study of design. This study also highlights the need for conceptions of design thinking specific to designing games.

This paper introduces more-than-human perspective in information behaviour and information experience studies. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understandings of the concept of multispecies families by exploring their significant dimensions related to information phenomena involving multiple contexts, situations, spaces, actors, species, and activities.

Based on previous research in human information behaviour and human-animal studies, our ideas around information experience of multispecies families are developed conceptually. The paper builds both on previous empirical findings about human information behaviour and the new domain of information experience.

The paper proposes a holistic approach both to information phenomena in everyday living with companion animals including embodied, affective, cognitive, social, digital, and objectual information that shapes pet care and management practices, and to the context of study, including work, domestic, and leisure aspects of multispecies family.

This study broadens our understanding of information phenomena in multispecies families, and so contributes to the field of information experience. It also provides insights for animal welfare scientists to help them understand the information behaviour of humans who are responsible for keeping and caring for animals.

This study aims to build on Gee’s (2003) earlier question exploring specifically the learning processes associated with broadening cultural empathy and exploring personal bias through gameplay in the role-playing game, Oblivion.

Methodology for this case study (Stake, 1995) was informed by narrative (Reissman, 2001) methods that focused on collecting descriptions of the unique experiences of participants while being engaged in gameplay and their personal reflections synthesizing game-based engagement and course content. “Narrative research offers the possibility of exploring nuances and interrelationships among aspects of experience that the reader might better understand other related situations” (Josselson, p. 239). Our study focused on using narrative research methods to examine embodiment within the fictional world of the game as an experiential participatory-learning experience.

All participants indicated that the most salient learning experiences of the course was playing the game. The process participants underwent the experience of an event in the game and linked this gaming experience to their personal real-life reaction combined with emotions and thoughts. They then self-reflected on those reactions, which cumulatively contributed to self-reported increased self-awareness in the areas of personal bias, stereotypes, attitudes, values, beliefs and privilege. Three themes were identified from the data, namely, increase or variance in levels of self-awareness, navigating unfamiliar cultural systems and increased understanding and cognitive empathy for others. In addition, a fourth additional theme of embodiment and the value of embodiment were identified.

Lacking in the findings were reports by participants regarding application of skills to different cultural populations. Future research will focus on how integration of application of skills can be facilitated using similar pedagogical practices. Because this study included a small number of participants who were counseling students in a master’s program, the applicability of the findings to other student populations is limited. Further research would need to determine whether or not the findings could be replicated with other types of students.

Embedding the intervention within the structure of a course appeared to provide a supportive and safe space for experiencing embodied selves, it also provided a mode for performing their future selves for and with colleagues experiencing similar situations. In this way, they were able to venture with and among their colleagues toward a fuller understanding of self, and particularly in conjunction to diverse populations. These features of the intervention appeared to work in concert together holistically affording a space where they could be vulnerable enough, open enough, to begin questioning their central thoughts and beliefs and increase their empathy for others who are different.

Using the game of Oblivion allowed our students to have an embodied experience in a virtual space where they got to experience being in a completely different culture and experience culture shock. They had to make decisions that forced them to review their belief systems, go against their belief systems, or explore options that were against their belief systems in a safe way with no real-life repercussions. This embodied experience allowed our participants to engage in behaviors that none would dare to do in their real world and provided a comfort zone to explore taboo subjects.

Embedding the game within the curriculum encouraged participants to experience feelings of embodied empathy (Gee, 2010). Oblivion assisted in this process by providing participants the opportunity to gain entry into a unique designed world, a realistic but pseudo-cultural world replete with social and institutional structures both familiar and foreign to their real life. This appeared to provide a realistic manifestation of self, positioning participants toward experiencing embodied empathy for the designed scenarios in the game.

The purpose of this paper is to pursue the themes of feminine identity, doubling and (in)visibility; first in terms of “signifyin(g)” as a cultural and literary strategy, and second, in terms of quilting seen from the fiction of Alice Walker to the quilting of Gee's Bend. In the background, there plays the relationship between art and commodification.

The paper examines “commodification” and “doubling” in the case of the Gee's Bend quilt makers. The quilts foreshadow the modernist aesthetic and are of the highest aesthetic quality. They were made in a traditional rural society by very poor uneducated black women. The quilts were not made to be sold, but were dedicated to familial remembrance and to immediate aesthetic pleasure.

Commodification doubles self and work, life and object, uniqueness and standardization, art and management. For the artist, the unicity, beauty, inspiration and creativity of art is doubled in the sale, marketing, display, distribution and mass production of “art works.” Making art is intimate, personal and individual; selling art requires public display, pleasing the all‐important customer(s) and dealing with many sorts of in‐betweens. What “commodification” is on the artist/art work level, is “doubling” on the I/me, self/persona, private/public, and in‐group/out‐group level.

The author proposes, from the example of quilt‐making, a wide‐ranging interrogation: “Is escape from commodification possible?”

Commodification doubles self and work, life and object, uniqueness and standardization and art and management. For the artist, the unicity, beauty, inspiration and creativity of art is doubled in the sale, marketing, display, distribution and mass production of “art works”. Making art is intimate, personal and individual; selling art requires public display, pleasing the all important customer(s) and dealing with many sorts of in-betweens. What commodification is on the artist/art work level is doubling on the I/me, self/persona, private/public and in-group/out-group level. This paper aims to examine the commodification and doubling in the case of the Gee’s Bend quilt makers. The quilts foreshadowed the modernist aesthetic and are of the highest aesthetic quality. But, they were made in a traditional rural society by very poor, uneducated black women. The quilts were not made to be sold but were dedicated to familial remembrance and to immediate aesthetic pleasure. But now that they are on display: is escape from commodification possible?

Reprint for special issue.

Doubling, in the original article below, was tendentious but artistically and politically to be overcome; doubling currently seems much more ominous, omnipresent and out of control. Signifyin(g) has become bomb throwing. Present day doubling apparently produces terror and not just commodification.

Invited for publication.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss an assignment using videogames to demonstrate theories from in-class readings. Game-like learning principles (Gee, 2007), collaborative learning in games (Echeverria et al., 2011) and gamification (Sheldon, 2012) are just a few examples of the discussion areas in videogames and education research. But as Rice (2014) finds, there are few available lesson-plans and examples of everyday classroom use of popular videogames.

In response to this need, this paper discusses classroom use of free popular videogames as cultural artifact examples for course content discussions in a Videogames and Literacies Junior Writing Course offered within an English department.

This paper describes the assignment and learning goals, specifically discussing the first iteration and subsequent changes made to aid students in their presentations and learning. Included in this paper are discussions of technology affordances within the classroom space, student reactions and student successes and failures with games. This assignment asks students to find a videogame example to use as demonstrations of the course material as they lead class discussion.

Asking students to use videogames and game play to engage course content also engages students in higher-order cognitive thinking about play and game mechanics, helps students analyze course material and develops presentation skills using videogames to discuss course material. In examining videogames as more than just entertainment, students see games as learning tools with ways of teaching culture, teaching learning and testing learning.

Of all the speakers today, I think I have the easiest task, since I have to set the stage for justifying information services faced with the widespread problems with which you must be familiar—otherwise you would not be here. It is not for me to conjure up the ideal system, the short or long‐term solution, or the methods which will overcome the sometimes intangible problems. It is merely for me to state some typical problems as a framework for the thoughts of the day. I cannot even promise to mention them all, and hope your discussion will correct my omissions.

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.

This paper first generally discusses United States bank liquidations under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), and addresses the purposes and impact upon US financial institutions of FIRREA. It also addresses the role and powers of the FDIC as affected by FIRREA. The second section discusses the use of ancillary bankruptcy petitions in the United States to aid in the liquidations of foreign financial institutions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the availability of plenary bankruptcy relief for foreign bank holding companies and foreign banks not engaged in banking business in the United States.

This study aims to examine the impact of activity restrictions in shaping the risk-taking behaviour of banks through the channel of competition in different economic conditions.

The authors use a dynamic panel regression method, particularly a two-step system generalised method of moments to address the risk-taking persistence of banks and endogeneity of activity restrictions and competition with banks’ risk-taking using financial freedom and property rights as instrumental variables. Activity restrictions are computed by constructing an index based on the survey results of Barth et al. (2001, 2006, 2008 and 2013a). Competition is measured by the Panzar–Rosse H-statistic and risk-taking behaviour are measured by non-performing loan ratio and lnZ-score. In the investigation process, the authors control bank characteristics – size, efficiency, ownership and loan composition and macroeconomic factors – gross domestic product growth and inflation, and use 2,527 bank-year observations from 180 commercial banks of Association of the Southeast Asian Nations-five countries over the 1990–2014 period.

This study finds that activity restrictions exacerbate the risk-taking behaviour of the banks leading to changes in the channel of competition because of the “risk-shifting effect” of competition. The finding is robust by considering the financial crisis and alternative specifications.

This study contributes to bank literature and policy formulation regarding the effect of activity restrictions on the risk-taking behaviour of banks, which is an issue of concern amongst bank regulators, policymakers and academics, especially in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 global financial crisis.

Understanding how the competition plays a role in the relationship between activity restrictions and the risk-taking of banks in different economic situations.

This study provides new insight into the bank literature by investigating the moderating role of competition on activity restrictions and the risk-taking behaviour of banks in a different economic environment.