Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DOI 10.1007/s40299-013-0070-4
REGULAR ARTICLE
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Students views
Activity
Why and how should I use GPGD in a school context to effect learning
when there are various other activities?
Subject
Tools
Why and how should I use the tools provided in GPGD, compared to other
activities, in light of school learning?
Rules
Why and how should I involve GPGD when there are various school rules
(such as assessments and exams) I have to follow?
Division of How can the division of labor be designed in GPGD How much should I involve GPGD to attend to the various demands in
labor
to optimize a subjects effective learning?
school?
Objectives
How can the objectives be set in GPGD to cater to What are the specific purposes (reasons) for involving GPGD compared to
students learning needs?
other school activities?
Outcomes
2.
3.
4.
Methods
Background
The study reported here was extracted from a large-scale
project conducted over 10 months during the years
20082009 as part of a 3-year project. The 3-year project
was a cross-disciplinary collaboration between educational
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650
Process
During the 10-month study, we delivered GD and GP
activities and explored students reflections on incorporating them into school curriculum if they can have free
choices. For GD, two 3-h workshops were conducted
separately in two schools. The workshops began with a
briefing of the purposes of GD activity and explanations of
the tasks. The tasks were to apply weather-related knowledge by referring to school textbooks or other information
students knew or searched for on the Internet to design
game narratives. Each student designed his or her game
narrative using PowerPoint. We did not use a particular GD
program as our goal was to promote a sustainable approach
using commonly accessible computer programs such as
PowerPoint. For GP, the 30-min briefing was conducted
first and covered how to play the game; this was followed
by 1-h school free play. The game we used in this study
was Weathering, which was designed by the game-programming team. It is an online card game catering to
middle school-aged students learning about weather and
climate. Next, we collected data regarding students perceptions of and reflections on the GD and GP and analyzed
them (these data are the focus of this study and are reported
in subsequent sections).
Participants from the Four Schools
This report is based on the study of 20 pupils from four
focus groups in four schools (namely, Schools A, B, C, and
D; see Table 2a, b) who participated in GDGP activities
and uncovers consensuses and general agreement among
them. The four schools where the study was conducted are
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(2)
Chinese
Chinese
Malay
Chinese
Indian
Chinese
Malay
Chinese
Chinese
Malay
Race
Frequency of educational
Once a week Once a week Three times a week Once a week Once a month Once a month Once a week Once a week Twice a week Once a week
games played on school learning portal
F
M
M
F
F
Gender
P20
P19
P18
P16
P17
651
P15
P11
P12
P13
P14
Chinese
Frequency of educational games Three times a week Once a week Once a month Twice a week Once a month Once a week Twice a week Twice a week Once a month Once a week
played on school learning
portal
Chinese
M
F
Malay
Indian
Chinese
M
F
Chinese
Malay
Chinese
Chinese
Race
F
F
Gender
Indian
P7
P6
P5
P4
P3
P2
P1
Table 2 Focused participants who favor to continue utilizing GD: (a) Groups 1 and 2, (b) Groups 3 and 4
P8
P9
P10
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Findings
As previously mentioned, the focus of this paper is to
discover students perceived significance and projected
ways of integrating GD and GP into their school learning;
data were extracted from the 3-year project. Qualitative
data from 20 participants from four focused groups (as
indicated in Table 2a, b) were analyzed and interpreted.
The findings we report subsequently are the patterns we
identified and aggregated across participants and focused
groups.
2.
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individual level to move to more advanced levels. Therefore, as participant 19 suggested, Game as introduction,
teachers instruction comes in, and then games again.
Teachers instruction still excellent learning after GP
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activity in the middle of teacher instruction to pitch individual students levels of learning. They also propose that
GD take place in the middle of teacher instruction to sustain interest in learning. It is noteworthy mentioning that
regardless of GP or GD, students prefer teachers instruction as closure as they believe it still leads to excellent
learning of subject content knowledge.
In short, to have a student-centered method of integration, GP and GD have to map onto the curriculum to
integrate with teachers instruction along the process of
learning. We visualize the students views of the significance and purposes of integrating GPGD as integrating
with teachers instruction in Fig. 2.
Furthermore, based on the overarching relationships
among GD, GP, and teacher instruction activities, we
provide some suggestions for ways in which schools can
integrate student-centered game-support learning, as
described in the following:
1.
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2.
3.
4.
655
Conclusions
GP and GD have been developed in the past by designercentric views on a touch-and-go basis. Our paper is meant
to discover and report student-centric views of GP and GD
at a more than touch-and-go basis by streamlining its
application with school curricula. We call it studentcentered game-supportive learning.
In this study, Engestroms (1987) activity theory is
adopted to distinguish student-centric views from designercentric views and to design our research questions. The
findings from our student participants suggest that GP fits
as a preinstructional activity to enhance students curiosity
and intermediate activity to cater to individual needs,
whereas GD is an activity best presented in the middle of
teacher instruction to sustain student interest.
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Copyright of Asia-Pacific Education Researcher (Springer Science & Business Media B.V.) is
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emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written
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