A peek behind the scenes
A peek behind the scenes
Enrolled students experienced a transformation this semester: They came in as game players and they left game designers.
Embedded Files
Over the course of 7 learning labs, 4 design labs and a play-test game jam with middle schoolers, students developed and refined their games. Labs were inspired by Prf. K'.s deep read of the serious game literature, Zimmerman's design book "The Rules we Break", Games For Change Educator Resources, ithrive Games resources and Prf. K's experience volunteering with Pixel Arts: Game Education PDX. It's been quite a journey. Enjoy the snapshots below featuring some of our notable learning moments.
Early semester labs involved playing familiar games and dissecting them to study their pieces, parts, and and mechanics as we simultaneously dove into the literature on wise interventions, self determined motivation, and the underlying mechanisms of play and fun (e.g., Ian Bogost's "counterintuitive take on fun") along with examples in the literature of effective game based learning interventions.
Over the semester labs transitioned from game dissection to tapping into our creative energies and meaning making processes. See below snapshots from the "Social Play" (e.g., the "question and answer game") and "Surrealist Play" (e.g., variations of the "exquisite corpse" activity) Lab. Humans are natural meaning makers and it doesn't take much for patterns to emerge. Learning this lesson through play was a blast!
After reconnecting with their creative energy, we started to flex our nascent design skills. Pictured here: the "Found Objects" design lab. Students took the materials provided and made games out of them!
Next up: "Design with a theme." Students were provided with some warm-up activities, a list of themes to choose from and more "found objects."
They took it from there, creating on the fly some nicely thematic games that had them all laughing!
In Lab 7 we turned back to examining existing games designed for "serious" purposes.
Students played:
Breaking it Down
This unique set of games offered us much food for thought and rich discussion about what it can look like to blend games with cultural messaging, beautiful artwork, community building, and supporting racial justice
From there students started working in earnest on their own games. An important peice to the design process is play-testing. Luckily for us, we have a local middle school group who LOVES games and who were willing to come do some play testing for us!
What an invaluable experience, hosting a game-jam for 50+ middle schoolers!
With valuable insights from the first play-test game jam students put the finishing touches on their games.
For our final exam, we hosted another jam to play our games with members of the Pacific University Community.
What's in store for the future of these games?
This academic year we are testing the effectiveness of a game developed in the 2024-2025 academic year [Crusaders for Change] and are pretty excited with our preliminary results. We will be doing the same with a couple of this year's games too: refining and then assessing their effectiveness in the 2026-2027 academic year. If you are interested in learning more about the outcomes of our assessments, feel free to contact Prf. K. [eko at pacific u dot edu] or check out the Media Matter's Lab Website [i.e., once it's up an running: the website is currently under construction]
Page updated
Report abuse