Exploration & Analysis
CHAPTER 10. ANALYSIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The following chapter analyses the data collected from both design workshops with the participation of the teaching team and from focus group interviews with the teachers.
As previously mentioned, the theoretical structure of the PhD project’s educational game design has primarily been developed by me as a researcher, while the teachers have been involved in the preparation of the quest structure and content.
The data of the design workshop and interviews thus contributed to the analysis with concerns and thoughts regarding working with Game-Based Learning from the teachers. Also, the data describe the teachers’ concerns about some of the educational challenges they have experienced in the previous semesters. Likewise, the data show the development of the teachers accepting Game-Based Learning as a learning approach that allows open learning trajectories. The purpose of the analysis is thus three-dimensional, with this chapter aiming to elaborate on the following three different perspectives:
• The development of the teachers’ understanding of working with Game-Based Learning.
• What design aspects from the workshops subsequently contribute to changes in the developed game, including the teachers’ reasons for these choices.
• The teachers’ educational reflections on the content and purpose of the fourth semester, what it is that the students need to learn and what significance this has in regard to working with a game of thinking.
Figure 63 – Pictures from one of the design workshops with the teachers.
It is, therefore, difficult to accurately distinguish among these three perspectives in the collected data and thus the following analysis, since the educators’ knowledge of their understanding of the concept of Game-Based Learning may be the element that brings
about a concrete change in the design. Likewise, specific expectations of what kind of competency goals the students need to achieve may be the condition that both directly and indirectly sets the requirements for the design and content of the educational game.
The following analysis will thus include both elements that seek a deeper understanding of the teachers’ experience, as well as elements that point directly to the design process.
Thus, it is a conscious choice to let these two perspectives inform each other in the analysis, as in practice it is difficult, and perhaps even meaningless, to separate them.
The analysis is based on the transcribed audio recordings from the design workshop, as well as data material from the two focus group interviews with the teachers. Based on the above three perspectives and an open and axial coding process of the collected data, the analysis relates to the following concepts (see section 9.3).
Table 3 – A list of all categories emerged from the coding process.
Category Definition Workshop Interview All
Learning conditions
The teachers are talking about the students learning condition and how
these make the teach-ing situation difficult
8 9 17
The content of the semester
Teachers describe the content and objectives of the semester, including
educational challenges
4 19 23
The landscape of doings and
sayings
The teachers describe and elaborate how the professional activities at ATCM can be understood as a
land-scape of doings and sayings
5 7 12
Planning and management
The teachers talk about the importance’s of being able to plan
and manage the semester project
5 9 14
Depth created through iterative
processes
The teachers talk about how depth in the student's projects is created
through iterative pro-cesses
9 8 15
Sequential quest structure
The teachers discuss the im-portance of dividing the content of the semester into a sequential quest
structure
6 8 14
Temporal conception
The teachers discuss how the game affords temporal
The teachers talk about the importance of the students having
specific analytical com-petences
5 20 25
Confidence
The teachers talk about how the game gives students confidence in
the learning process
0 9 9
Resistance
The student expresses discom-fort, concern, or a lack of moti-vation
regarding playing the game
4 8 12
Point The teacher is questioning the use of point within the game
11 0 11
Open-ended or closed
Discussion about how the semester project are either open-ended or
closed
5 14 19
Gaming concepts
The teachers are talking about the use of gaming concepts and its meaning to the students learning
The teachers talk about how the students are trying to decode the
learning situation
5 10 15
Motivation
The teacher expresses an am-bivalent attitude about how the
game creates motivation
7 3 10
Farming
The teacher talks about how collecting and combining differ-ent sources of materials creates learning
1 7 8
Through an axial coding of each of the categories, the following notions are developed.
“The content of the semester.”
“Open-ended or closed.”
“Depth created through iterative processes.”
“Planning and management.”
“The concept of games.”
“Collaboration between the teachers.”
Each of the notions from the axial coding is briefly described and defined in the paragraphs below. Further, each notion will constitute a framework and hence the heading for the chapter’s analysis of the teachers’ concerns and thoughts about working with Game-Based Learning, as well as an analysis of the design perspectives from the workshop.
The content of the semester ‒ This section addresses the teachers’ views on the learning explicitly and thus the pedagogical approach that is necessary for students to meet the semester’s learning objectives.
Open-ended or closed – This section discusses the teachers’ concerns about the relationship between the game’s possible closed framing and a desire for students to acquire the learning objectives through open-ended learning processes, as well as what requirements this relationship imposes for future game design.
Depth created through iterative processes ‒ This section discusses how specific design choices are created directly from the teachers’ reflections on how to create depth in student learning through iterative processes.
Planning and management ‒ This section discusses how specific design choices are created directly from the teachers’ reflections on the importance of students being self-initiating in their process and thus behaving autonomously.
The concept of games ‒ This section discusses how specific design choices are created directly from the teachers’ reflections about the rhetoric that characterises games.
Collaboration between the teachers – This section deals with the teachers’ experience of increased collaboration and understanding of each teacher’s discipline created through the development processes needed when working with Game-Based Learning.
10.1. THE PREPARARTION OF THE FIRST ITERATION
The first iteration or version of the educational game design is based on the PhD thesis’s theoretical desk research and pre-study. The first version was developed by
me as a researcher. For a more in-depth description of the development process where theoretical design principles are turned into a coherent educational game design, see Chapter 7. However, it is noted that the quest structure and its content in the first iteration have evolved continuously. The condition for the development of the first design version is described in the following statement. It is a quote from the first design workshop with the teachers, where I myself describe the process:
Example 1
"… In the beginning, all the types of quest that I somehow imagined were going to play a part in the game, and then I placed them (red. quest) in relation to the semester. The order was as I thought it should be, but as they then moved forward, I began to swap it (red. quest) around, waiting for something and advancing something. Or, some new types of quest emerged that I might not have thought about where included. So it was not; it was not a static course. You could not say that the game was in place when they started; in no way was it. It evolved. This is the result of where it landed, what they ended up getting."
Thus, the theoretical structure and framework of the learning game were determined in advance, while the content and sequences of the individual quest in the first iteration evolved continuously as the students completed the game.
10.2. THE PREPARATION OF THE 2ND AND 3RD ITERATION The following analysis focuses on data collected in the design workshop with the teacher, where the second and third iteration of the educational game design were developed.
10.2.1. THE CONTENT OF THE SEMESTER
The first chapter deals with teachers’ views on the educational challenge that is currently the situation for the four semesters, including the learning potential that the interdisciplinary semester project embraces. The teachers talk about how the interdisciplinary semester project is based on holistic thinking about the academic topics, where the students must be able to demonstrate an ability to combine many different disciplines in an integrated design process.
Example 2
"For me, it is mostly about saying that in the first weeks of the project, you work in a holistic way, so that you get an understanding of why, for example, energy design is linked to constructions and static processes