Is Winning A Serious Game Gaining New Knowledge? A Case Study At Grade 6.
Conference:
ECER 2015
Format:
Paper

Session Information

27 SES 10 B, Serious Games, Imitation, Enterprise Education

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-10
15:30-17:00
Room:
202.Oktatóterem [C]
Chair:
Brian Hudson

Contribution

Our paper addresses the issue of the teaching-learning process when a serious game is used in the classroom: How might it foster learning? How might it impact teaching? How winning the game might mean gaining new knowledge? We work on these research questions throughout the case study of Antipolis (Gatayatech, 2014) at grade 6. Our research team were asked by the editor to study the didactic potentialities and the didactic implementation of the serious game in the classroom. Antipolis is a first person serious game in the antique city of Antibes. The student-player has to solve a series of enigmas to win the game and it is expected that he learns different subject-matters (history, geography, literature, arts, musics and ICT). We situate our case study within the framework of the Joint Action Theory in Didactics (JATD; Sensevy, 2012, 2014). The JATD investigates the teaching-learning process as transactions (Dewey & Bentley, 1976) between a teaching pole and a learning pole about the knowledge at stake and from an actional point of view (Tiberghien & Sensevy, 2014). We also work within the fields of comparative didactics (Hudson & Meinert, 2011) and interdidactics (Lozi & Biagioli, 2012). Indeed there are several subject-matters embedded in Antipolis. We analyze what students learn of their relationships and how the learning of one subject-matter might promote another.

Method

We collect a complex set of data: teacher and students' interviews, videotaped teaching sequences, digital traces of students' plays, students' pre-test/post-test and questionnaires. We follow a clinical and experimental approach to ordinary classes (Schubauer-Leoni & Leutenegger, 2002) to analyze them. The experimental part of our study consists in the implementation of a serious game in the investigated classes. The clinical part refers to a methodology of building a body of evidence from qualitative analyses (Foucault, 1973; Bulterman-Bos, 2008). We use discourse analysis (Schiffrin, 1994; Gee, 2014) to analyze our different verbal data. We also cross these analyses with intra sample statistical analyses (Shaffer & Serlin, 2004) in a qualitative-quantitative continuum (Ercikan & Roth, 2006) and following Chi's guidelines to code our verbal data (Chi, 1997). These statistical analyses don't aim at generalizing our results but at providing additional warrants to qualitative results by testing them. To analyze our video data, we use a progressive refinement of hypotheses (Engle, Conant, & Greeno, 2007) and conduct our analyses throughout different timescales of analysis (Tiberghien & Sensevy, 2012).

Expected Outcomes

With this case study, we pursue two goals: to enhance the didactic quality of a serious game and to contribute to the didactic research on the uses of serious games in the classroom. For the research part, we expect three different outcomes from this case study. From our analyses, we first expect to characterize the dialectic between succeeding in the game and learning subject-matters embedded in the game. We are also scrutinizing the modifications of the functioning of the didactic system {teacher, student, knowledge} with the implementation of a serious game. Last but not least, the investigated serious game is multidisciplinary and we are working on results about the interactions between multiple school disciplines in the teaching-learning process.

References

Bulterman-Bos, J. A. (2008). Will a Clinical Approach Make Education Research More Relevant for Practice? Educational Researcher, 37(7), 412. Chi, M. T. H. (1997). Quantifying Qualitative Analyses of Verbal Data: A Practical Guide. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 6(3), 271‑315. Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. (1976). Knowing and the Known. Wesport: Greenwood Press. Engle, R. A., Conant, F. R., & Greeno, J. G. (2007). Progressive refinement of hypotheses in video-supported research. In R. Goldman, R. Pea, B. Barron, & S. J. Derry (Éd.), Video research in the learning sciences (p. 239–254). Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum. Ercikan, K., & Roth, W. M. (2006). What good is polarizing research into qualitative and quantitative? Educational Researcher, 35(5), 14‑23. Foucault, M. (1973). The Birth of the Clinic. London: Tavistock. Gatayatech. (2014). Antipolis: the mystery of Athena. Sophia-Antipolis: Gayatech. Gee, J. P. (2014). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Hudson, B., & Meinert, M. (2011). Beyond Fragmentation: Didactics, Learning and Teaching in Europe. Portland, OR: Barbara Budrich. Lozi, R., & Biagioli, N. (2012). Complex Systems in Education: International Study of Multidisciplinary Interactions for Promoting the Learning of Mathematics and Science. In Proceedings of European Conference on Complex Systems, 3-7 September, Brussels. Schiffrin, D. (1994). Approaches to discourse. Oxford: Blackwell. Schubauer-Leoni, M. L., & Leutenegger, F. (2002). Expliquer et comprendre dans une approche clinique/expérimentale du didactique ordinaire. In Expliquer, comprendre en sciences de l’éducation (F. Leutenegger & M. Saada-Robert., p. 227–251). Bruxelles: De Boeck. Sensevy, G. (2012). About the Joint Action Theory in Didactics. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 15(3), 503–516. Sensevy, G. (2014). Characterizing teaching effectiveness in the Joint Action Theory in Didactics: an exploratory study in primary school. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(5), 577‑610. Shaffer, D. W., & Serlin, R. C. (2004). What Good are Statistics that Don’t Generalize? Educational Researcher, 33(9), 14‑25. Tiberghien, A., & Sensevy, G. (2012). Video studies: Time and duration in the teaching-learning processes. In Handbook « The World of Science Education » (J. Dillon & D. Jorde., Vol. 4, p. 141–179). Rotterdam/Boston/Taipei: Sense Publishers. Tiberghien, A., & Sensevy, G. (2014). Agency and Knowledge. In R. Gunstone (Éd.), Encyclopedia of Science Education. Berlin: Springer.

Author Information

Jérôme Santini (presenting / submitting)
University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis - ESPE Académie de Nice, France
I3DL - CAPEF
La Seyne-sur-Mer
University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis - ESPE Académie de Nice, France, France
University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis - ESPE Académie de Nice, France, France
University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis - ESPE Académie de Nice, France, France
University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis - ESPE Académie de Nice, France, France

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