Gameful and playful learning is a key part of the Disruptive Media Learning Lab’s (DMLL) activities. Through a process of design based thinking, the DMLL helps to facilitate the use of games and playful activities to develop active participation and engaging learning activities. The gameful and playful strand of the DMLL is part funded by the Higher Education Council for England (HEFCE). The core activities currently undertaken under the gameful and playful strand of the DMLL are;
Game Changers Open Course
The Game Changers open course is designed to provide staff and students the knowledge required to design, prototype, and pitch games through the employment of a design based thinking approach. The course is designed to be deployed in four sections, spanning weeks or months depending on the cohort.
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Game Design for Education
A core part of what we do is to help staff members develop games to embedd into their teaching and learning. These include educational escape rooms, card games, mystery boxes, and much more. Our team comprises of a number of researchers with backgrounds in game design who can provide support and help to develop games for teaching and learning.
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Game Design Sprints
The program also offers staff and students to opportunity to participate in Game Design Sprints to further develop concepts and ideas for educational games. These Sprints lead on from the open course, and are aimed to provide one-to-one support in the game design process, drawing on the expertise of the researchers and designers in the DMLL.
LEGO Serious Play
LEGO Serious Play is a methodology designed to foster creative thinking through teams building metaphors of their organizational identities and experiences using Lego bricks. A number of staff members at the DMLL have been trained as certified LEGO Serious Play facilitators and are always happy to help staff and students explore complex issue through playful methods.
Research
Alongside the development and implementation of games in teaching and learning, we are active researchers of playful and gameful approaches in education. Currently leading a number of large-scale research projects (H2020, Beaconing, Newton, HEFCE) the Game Changers team contribute to the wider academic community through publishing research papers on game based learning and playfulness, drawing on our experiences at Coventry University as well as those of the wider GBL community.
Contact the team:
Helen Keegan – [email protected]
Dr. Sylvester Arnab – [email protected]
Oliver Wood – [email protected]
Dr. Luca Morini – [email protected]
Samantha Price – [email protected]
