A Participatory Approach to Redesigning Games for Educational Purposes

Even though games designed for educational purposes can be motivating, they usually shelter dated pedagogies, passive learning procedures, and often overlook learners' creativity. In an effort to reinforce the active participation of learners in games, this paper presents a participatory process in which students and teachers are involved in game design. The proposed process concerns redesigning existing commercial games into educational ones and includes establishing the learning goals, identifying appropriate commercial games, adapting the rules and context, crafting and playtesting the game. Using language learning as one application of this process, the paper presents how three well-known tabletop games were redesigned in a foreign language classroom with elementary and intermediate English language learners. The benefits that underlie the process concern students' active participation, boosting their problem-solving skills, and engaging them in creative learning

Point of Contact:Investigating change in perception through a serious game for COVID-19 preventive measures

COVID-19 exposed the need to identify newer tools to understand perception of information, behavioral conformance to instructions and model the effects of individual motivation and decisions on the success of measures being put in place. We approach this challenge through the lens of serious games. Serious games are designed to instruct and inform within the confines of their magic circle. We built a multiplayer serious game, Point of Contact (PoC), to investigate effects of a serious game on perception and behavior. We conducted a study with 23 participants to gauge perceptions of COVID-19 preventive measures and quantify the change after playing PoC. The results show a significant positive change to participants’ perceptions towards COVID-19 preventive measures, shifting perceptions towards following guidelines more strictly due to a greater awareness of how the virus spreads. We discuss these implications and the value of a serious game like PoC towards pandemic risk modelling at a microcosm level

Language Teacher Emotions in Game-Informed Teaching

This thesis follows the (emotional) experiences of ten language teachers of English in Greece when integrating game-informed practices in their classrooms and explores their emotions in a longitudinal manner. The English language teaching context in Greece is a characteristic example of test-centric and results-oriented educational practices, while the field of game-mediated teaching is in its infancy. Teachers’ emotions and their wellbeing are most of the times side-lined, while the focus is on students being entertained and staying motivated in language learning. This thesis recognises the importance of attending to teachers’ emotions in order to develop sustainable practice but also engages them in professional development to meaningfully adopt game-informed practices. An Action-Research cycle was followed, training teachers on game-informed teaching, guiding them in designing game-informed lesson plans and employing interviews and classroom observation to explore their emotions during and after this practice while contextualising emotions with teachers’ (and students’) behaviour. Thematic Analysis of the qualitative data uncovered the nuanced nature of teachers’ emotions, while it shattered binary-based theories and understanding of teachers’ emotions. Teacher-student relationships were found to be triggers of teachers’ happiness, enthusiasm, and pride, especially when witnessing the engagement and accomplishments of their students. At the same time, the involvement of teachers in creative practice seemed to have boosted said emotions, but also triggered slight anxiety and frustration when teachers were not convinced of their conduct in game-informed tasks. Following Positive Psychology theory, integrating game-informed practices in language classrooms seems to be a catalyst to fostering both teachers’ and students’ engagement, accomplishment, and strengthening the positive relationships and interactions of the two. Involving teachers in non-prescriptive research while offering them reflexive professional development is the way forward for promoting change in language classrooms. Game-informed practices can foster teachers’ wellbeing and we might need to start small before going radical