Games+Learning+Society 11 Conference

Walking and Talking as a Group: Interactional Practices for Playing an Augmented Reality game on a Mobile Digital Device
Steven Thorne, John Hellermann, Adam Jones, Danny Lester

To better understand the use of mobile digital technology for place-based language learning, and more generally as a factor in human interaction, this paper describes the methods used by small groups to accomplish quest-type tasks in an augmented reality (AR) game. The ARIS game (arisgames.org) was available on mobile devices (iPhones) and played outside the classroom. Video-recordings of each group were made using two head-mounted cameras and one hand-held camera. Analysis focused on the groups’ orientation to the device as they accomplished game activity. Results show that the device and the holder of the device were frequently oriented to for instruction and leadership via verbal and non-verbal communication. We outline communicative practices used by the groups, how participants made information from the game publicly available to one another, and how they interfaced cartographic resources and the physical environment in way finding activity.


Digital Media, Early Learning, and the Impact of Mediation on Child Learning Outcomes
Danae Kamdar, Megan Silander, Naomi Hupert, Savitha Moorthy, Sarah Gerard

Digital games and media resources are often designed to teach particular skills or concepts, and mediation can have an impact in supporting those intended learning outcomes. We refer to mediation to describe the role that an adult plays in supporting, guiding, and demonstrating game play as well as curation, or the sequencing or grouping of game play activities in targeted ways. We examine and describe ways in which educators, parents and families can mediate children’s game-play and media use that can support positive learning outcomes in formal and informal learning environments. We also discuss how the curation of digital media experiences for children that are engaging and that integrate elements of a particular skill area can promote learning. To inform this discussion, we draw from multiple studies examining preschool-age children’s use of digital media and the impacts on learning.


Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems in Dota 2
Jeffrey Holmes

Teaching and learning are often distributed across many different sites and across time, and teachers and learners can intentionally create and customize trajectories through these encounters. However, we often tend to focus on one site or design for learning. Furthermore, we often fail to recognize the teaching acts used by games and only focus on the rich learning. This paper argues that we can think about “Big ‘T’ Teaching” (using Gee’s “Big ‘G’ Games as a model) where teaching is a distributed system; this view allows us to trace an “ecology” of teaching and learning systems (borrowing from Jenkin’s approach to media). Using the game Dota 2, this paper demonstrates one way of thinking about the way teachers and designers can make compelling, distributed systems of teaching that extend through and even beyond the game, and how players and learners can customize their learning experiences.