Digital education reading group: December 2021
As we wind down at the end of the year and look forward to the holidays, we’re taking a playful approach to our final digital education reading group .
Led by our Senior Product Innovation Manager, Tim Hall, the theme is playful learning which we think is a fitting topic for December, when curiosity, creativity, and advent calendar surprises are in full swing. Although play can be light hearted, we want to think about a the serious potential of play in education: how games and game-inspired design can enrich learning, build skills, and bring some much-needed joy to digital learning environments.
To get started there are a few education related games and activities to try out yourself, and then there’s some literature to read on games and play in education. Dip in to whatever takes your fancy.
Activities to Try
Advent calendars for educators
Sue Beckingham’s round-up of CPD advent calendars on Twitter shows how festive fun can meet bite-sized professional development. These playful microlearning formats demonstrate how a sense of anticipation and surprise can support engagement.
A graduate attribute escape room
The Game Based Learning group at University of Glasgow created a co-designed escape room to help students develop graduate attributes. It wasn’t just fun, it was purposeful. You can even try it yourself and see how game mechanics like puzzles and collaboration can support meaningful learning.
Creative Thinking Quest
This adventure-style game by Daisy Abbot was developed to help students generate ideas for a research project. With branching narratives and quest-style decision making, it shows how playful design can scaffold complex cognitive tasks, like idea generation and project planning.
Reading and resources
Whitton, N. (2009) Learning with Digital Games: A Practical Guide to Engaging Students in Higher Education (1st ed.) Chapter 3 Understanding the pedagogy of digital games, and Chapter 5 Integrating digital games in the curriculum.
A practical guide that unpacks the pedagogy behind digital games, with especially useful chapters on curriculum integration and learning theory.
Walsh, Andrew (2018) Giving Permission to Play in Higher Education pp. 329- 336.
Walsh argues that higher education sometimes needs to give itself permission to play, breaking from tradition to allow creativity and experimentation.
McClarty, K L et al. (2012) A Literature Review of Gaming in Education.
A broad overview of what the research says about the effectiveness of games for learning, including considerations for assessment, motivation, and learning outcomes.
Questions to think about
- What is your experience of games and learning?
- What can play bring to learning?
- How might we apply the concepts of games to teaching? Should we?
- Have you got any games you might like to play in our meeting?
List of topics discussed at previous meetings
