Assessment of co-creativity in the process of game design

We consider game design as a sociocultural and knowledge modelling activity, engaging participants in the design of a scenario and a game universe based on a real or imaginary socio-historical context, where characters can introduce life narratives and interaction that display either known social realities or entirely new ones. In this research, participants of the co-creation activity are Malaysian students who were working in groups to design game-based learning resources for rural school children. After the co-creativity activity, the students were invited to answer the co-creativity scale, an adapted version of the Assessment Scale of Creative Collaboration (ASCC), combining both the co-creativity factors and learners’ experiences on their interests, and difficulties they faced during the co-creativity process. The preliminary results showed a high diversity on the participants’ attitudes towards collaboration, especially related to their preferences towards individual or collaborative work

Students and staff co-creating curricula: a new trend or an old idea we never got around to implementing?

Within higher education, there is increasing interest in conceptualising students as producers, partners and co-creators of their own learning (Little, 2010; McCulloch, 2009; Neary 2010; Werder and Otis, 2010). One particular area of interest focuses upon students and academic staff co-creating curricula (Bovill et al, 2011; Delpish et al, 2010). The nature of co-created curricula can vary greatly and might include: students being consulted about changes to the content of course design; students designing part of a virtual learning environment; students designing marking criteria; or designing some of their own learning outcomes. The concept of co-created curricula is not new. However, discussion about co-creation of curricula has been most strongly evident in schools based literature, with many important discussions framed within ‘student voice’ and critical pedagogy discourse. In contrast, there has been less engagement in co-creation discussion and practice within higher education contexts until more recently

Advocating a Co-Design Methodology Across Academy and Community

Architecture live projects have been undertaken at this institution since 2009. The completion of New Wortley Community Centre (NWCC), a £759,497 building is the most complex. Using the definition of co-design put forward by Sanders and Stappers referring “to the creativity of designers and people not trained in design working together in the design development process”, stakeholders including students and tutors of architecture, graphic art and design, landscape architecture, product design and creative writing, community association, service users, contractors and design consultants, collaborated to design the building as an example of co-design. Co-design is presented as a situated learning environment and co-existing in both the academy and community it is further differentiated. This paper describes and evaluates an emergent model of co-design adopted by the writers, considering the positive and negative outcomes, with the aim of evolving the methodology for forthcoming live projects involving students and external communities. Extending the fora of co-design workshops used throughout the design of the building, the reflections, perceptions and personal learning experiences of the participants are collected using face-to-face dialogue and critical discussion. Evaluation takes the form of summative qualitative analysis and involves the co-design group in forming conclusions for final consideration of the writers. The results suggest that: a, co-design fosters situated learning environments where learning is deep and the experience is rewarding for all co-designers. b, situated learning environments of formal learners from the academy (students) and informal learners from the community working together has a positive and reciprocal effect on their learning. c, academy and community collaborations have a beneficial social, cultural and economic effect. d, the co-design process to deliver the NWCC has established a co-design methodology. By reflecting on aspects which were successful alongside those which were problematic the co-design method is further informed for new live projects being undertaken. This model of co-design, where the academy and the community work together on a design project has generated meaningful, diverse and rich learning experiences for all co-designers that also contributes to economic, social and cultural regeneration in the community. This experience has identified key characteristics of academy and community co-design that can be activated in a co-design methodology for future co-design projects

Front-Loading Problem-Solving in Co-Development : Managing the Contractual, Organizational and Cognitive Dimensions

Front-loading ” problem-solving is one of the major strategies to reduce development costs and development lead time. In co-development situations, the implementation of such methodologies rises specific questions, due to the difficult partition in responsabilities and skills between the car manufacturer and the supplier, especially when customer and supplier contributions cannot be clearly interfaced in a “ black-box sourcing ” relation. This results in a difficult and permanent debate about design modifications. The article analyses such a co-development situation in the case of a car manufacturer and its die design and engineering suppliers. The case illustrate how to combine organizational integration (i.e. co-localization, shared development methodologies) with new economic contracting rules which create front-loading problem-solving incentives for the two partners. We compare the economic outcomes of a traditional process with a co-developped project, from the viewpoint of both the customer and the suppliers. The study demonstrates how co-development played a major role in reducing the number and cost of modifications for the customer. The benefits which suppliers can earn depend on their ability to involve in the project in terms of design and engineering capacity at an early stage. These results generate theoretical outputs which bridge the gap between incentive and contract theories on one side, and cognitive and learning fields on the other."concurrent engineering";" co-development";"contracts";" learning";"die design"

Uncertainty, learning design, and interdisciplinarity: systems and design thinking in the school classroom

This paper explores aspects of learning design for design thinking within a small (circa 100) remote rural secondary (12-18 year old) school in the Highlands of Scotland. It introduces action research school teachers and final year (17-18 year old) pupils which explored how “real world” learning experiences can be brought into the classroom. It does so by joining two areas that are often treated as distinct practices. These are, the use of system theory and community development approaches to identify and map complex issues (Bell and Morse 2012), and the use of ideas from co-design to include non designers in the design process (Sanders and Westerlund 2011). The paper takes a grounded approach to the application of these ideas, simply asking “do they work”, and then “what”, “how” and “why”. In exploring those questions the paper tries to be open and transparent about learning design as a messy, uncertain and emergent proces

An organisational semiotics perspective to co-design of technology enhanced learning

While Co-Design approaches have been used in designing technology enhanced learning (TEL) by different scholars, research is needed to understand the relationships between technologies, design and practice. This paper presents organisational semiotics (OS) as an approach for Co-Design of Technology Enhanced Learning. This perspective will provide an insight into the Co-Design of technology and learning in higher education