Student-designed games (SDG) is the process in which students create, organize, practice and refine their own games within certain limits established by the teacher (Hastie, 2010). Recent research has proposed different methodologies to teach SDG, and among these, technology integration (TI) was proposed by Hastie, Casey and Tarter (2010) when using a wiki for game design. In spite of becoming an innovative methodology for teaching SDG, it is not clear how TI may impact the teacher´s pedagogy.
The purpose of this research was to analyze what implications TI had for a teacher’s pedagogy within a SDG teaching unit.
Method:
The researcher taught two SDG units in a Junior High School, one with TI and another without TI. Within a participatory action research methodology, the teacher´s pedagogy differences between the two teaching conditions were analyzed while considering three methods of data: field notes, post-lesson reflections and lesson plans.
Eighty two eighth and ninth grade students (34M, 48 F) participated in the five-week SDG intervention with classes meeting every second day. The students that participated in SDG with TI completed all their game design outside of the class by communicating with their group members through Edmodo (an educational social media website) and completing an electronic playbook developed in Microsoft PowerPoint. The students that participated in SDG without TI completed all their game design in class, having a face-to-face interaction with their group members and completing a portfolio playbook in handwriting.
Analysis/Results:
First, the field notes were exanimated to establish the first interpretations. Second, these interpretations were compared with the lesson plans in order to confirm or contradict the preliminary interpretations. When accumulative data confirmed the same concept, themes and sub-themes were generated. Three themes and six sub-themes emerged: i) Stages progression: (a) TI students had more liberty to work at their own pace, (b) Three physical education classes in a week was a constraint for the TI group; ii) Students autonomy: (a) The teacher had less control of students work in the TI group, (b) The teacher workload varied in the TI group; iii) Establishing a new culture: (a) Edmodo participation needed practice, (b) TI group students focused on preparing their game the day before their presentation.
Conclusions:
These findings reported that TI was more difficult to implement when teaching SDG, requiring a high level of experience with SDG and with TI.