Playing games to save the world

Going forward with my Mindlab journey and general discovery in learning I am going to outline a possible approach to my next teacher inquiry. I, as always, would appreciate your comments on my blog.

Communities I am engaging with:

I am looking to engage with the year 10 social studies students. The year 10 students are in a BYOD environment and currently have 4 hours of Social studies a week. These students will be the main source of the data from my inquiry.

I will also look to engage with my departmental colleagues. As a department, we have been looking to increase engagement for a number of years as a departmental goal. My colleagues are also an important part of my plan as they have a good idea of critical skills needed as students go onto the senior school. We are a very collaborative team and known for leading the way with innovation.

I will also look to engage with fellow Mindlab students through the G+ community and also my weekly meetings with the Dunedin Mindlab students. These students are well placed to critique my plan.

The Model of My Inquiry

Through my teacher inquiry, I plan to look at how game based learning can impact academic engagement in year 10 social studies students. I plan to use the Spiral of Inquiry as my model to look at this inquiry topic. I will use the headings from the Spiral as I describe my approach to this inquiry.

I have chosen this model of inquiry due to each phase of the spiral having strong links to involving the learners and Whānau but also the fact that it is grounded in the emerging understanding of the nature of learning and the seven principles of learning (Timperley, Kaser, & Halbert, 2014).

Seven-principles-of-learning_imagelarge.

Scanning:

As I reviewed literature (This review will be linked to the blog later) specifically around how game-based learning can affect engagement, I saw a number of trends that I could relate to the learners in my classroom.

Some of these trends were:

Student engagement

Digital distraction

Lack of collaborative skills

Disenfranchised learners

Though these trends seem apparent to me and other teachers I must ensure I get a clear view of what is actually happening with my learners. To do this I will use Check and Connect's Student Engagement Instrument (appendix 1) this offers a holistic view of student engagement and is intended to give me a better understanding of the class rather than just academically looking at assessment or pastoral data. In using this I have also been offered support in understanding the results and am able to share the results anonymously with a larger community. Though to do this I will have to ethical consent from my learners and their whānau.

Focusing:

Looking further at common issues in the classroom it may become clear why students have struggled to engage with content involved in class and if this has led to a lack of critical engagement with the ideas discussed. This has been noted in staff meetings as well as departmental discussions. It is often noted in observations that some students struggle to self-regulate on their devices. It will be critical at this point to closely analyse the data from the Student Engagement Instrument. I will also share my findings with my colleagues in my department, again I would have to ensure that I have sought ethical consent to share the answers to this questionnaire in that way.

Though the school has been BYOD for a few years the shift in pedagogy has been difficult and regular sharing sessions have seen teachers collaborating more and more with each other on digital tools and their impact in the classroom. Students seem to be able to zone out on their devices and many of our busy students use their class time to catch up on their emails regarding sports, leadership and extracurricular activities. I wonder how I could further develop an immersive environment that allows students to be fully engaged in the classroom curriculum.

New Learning:

Through the literature review, it became clear that game based learning and in particular the use of Minecraft Education edition had been used to increase engagement in a range of educational setting right through to tertiary education. There is increasing interest in game based learning and the topic is an emerging discussion in education. In my new learning, I will focus in on the idea of how game based can be used in the classroom to impact on engagement.

I will focus on the following three books when looking at how to use games in the classroom:

Serious Games in Education: A Global Perspective Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon; Meyer, Bente; and more Aarhus University Press 2011

Game On: Using Digital Games to Transform Teaching, Learning, and Assessment—a practical guide for educators to select and tailor digital games to their students’ needs Schaaf, Ryan L.; Mohan, Nicky Solution Tree Press 2016

Simulation and serious games for education Yiyu Cai editor.; Sui Lin Goei editor.; Wim Trooster editor. 2017

Taking action:

Game based learning outside the classroom has created a highly collaborative and engaged community that actively critique and analyse work, harnessing this type of learning would restructure learning environments for the 21st century (Dodie J. Niemeyer and Hannah R. Gerbe)

In taking action first I will acknowledge this is not a solo task I will work with my department to look at a plan.

I will ask to run some small scale pilots with selected students during term 4 after the junior exams have been completed to trail some potential games and how they work in a BYOD environment.

I will use the Student Engagement instrument to assess how students feel about their engagement in class and school.

I will use the https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/surveys/answer/gamerprofile/ survey ( see Appendix 2) and have my students share their results with me to illicit what kind of gamers they are. I will analyse this along with the possible game based tools I have access to seeing if a particular game is fitting to the classes needs.

I will ensure that I can align the game with the necessary curriculum goals and outcomes.

I will share my plan with my colleagues and run a through a lesson with them.

I will inform Whānau of my plan to use game based learning.

I will then implement a planned unit using a game to support the curriculum.

I will ask a member of my department to observe the class using an (appendix 2) engagement matrix that looks at academic engagement.

I will gather student feedback on what they thought of the learning during the unit and how engaged they were with the work and how much they enjoyed the game.

Collate the qualitative data and share it with my department.

Checking:

I chose to use check and reflects (http://checkandconnect.umn.edu/research/engagement.html) Student Engagement Instrument to measure the perceived engagement of my class I chose this because it is a well-tested and multifaceted test that takes a holistic view of the learners in my classroom. I will compare this data to the feedback received from my learners at the end of the course as this should give me a good indicator of whether this helped to engage the students who identified as disengaged. I will also be able to compare their gamer types to how much they enjoyed the game giving me scope to change things in the future.

Another teacher from my department who has had similar experiences in the classroom was Joe Hunter and her comment on the plan was:

“Just an interesting point....our students need to learn some metacognitive stuff - e.g. the language and practice of reflection, in order to responses to practice. To me, that's an important skill set for us all to nurture.”

Would metacognition and reflection be something I should change in my inquiry or would the nature of the questionnaires and the inbuilt feedback to the plan help my learners with this?

The Centre For Innovation and Excellence in Learning (https://ciel.viu.ca/teaching-learning-pedagogy/designing-your-course/how-learning-works) state that having an awareness of the factors that influence your own learning has an effect on your metacognition. Perhaps as part of the planned unit of work I could try some of the end of the class reflecting on learning tasks and collate these as part of my inquiry.

Possible impacts:

The possible impact of this inquiry is that my less engaged students would start engaging and enjoying the learning more in class. Using an immersive gaming environment like Minecraft Education edition could lend itself to students finding new ways of sharing their learning through things like metagaming (Abrams & Rowsell, 2017). The review of literacy on this highlighted that student when using Minecraft enjoyed genuine collaboration within the classroom. This increased enjoyment and engagement if closely aligned to the curriculum could create more chances for cross curricular activities using game based learning.

Abrams, S. S., & Rowsell, J. (2017). Emotionally Crafted Experiences: Layering Literacies in Minecraft. Reading Teacher. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1515

Timperley, H., Kaser, L., & Halbert, J. (2014). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry. Centre for Strategic Education, Seminar Se(April), 1–24.

Efron, S. E., & Ravid, R. (2013). Action research in education: A practical guide. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. https://ciel.viu.ca/teaching-learning-pedagogy/designing-your-course/how-learning-works, accessed 5/10/2018

http://checkandconnect.umn.edu/research/engagement.html, accessed 5/10/2018

7 principles of learning picture form: http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Media/Images/Seven-principles-of-learning

Other Pictures from Pixabay

Appendix 1

Check and Reflects Student Engagement Instrument is available on demand from Check and Reflect. It divides student engagement into Affective engagement and Cognitive engagement. Affective engagement takes a measure of teacher student relationships, peer support at school and family support for learning. Cognitive engagement is separated into control and relevance of school work, future aspirations and goals and intrinsic motivation. Looking at these different factors would help me develop an idea of key themes that affect the leaners in the classroom which will help me focus my inquiry.

Appendix 2

https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/ the survey on quantic foundry not only gives me access to students gaming data profiles but can recommend the Video games based on data from over 300,000 gamers. This may not include the same demographic as I am looking at though which would be a concern and there may also be a gender bias in this data.