Designing for Learning and Play - The Smiley Model as a Framework: - Workshop paper

When seeking to create ideal learning environments for students and teachers, it can be a challenge to find a balance between facilitating learning processes at high levels of cognitive complexity [1] and creating playful and engaging experiences for students and teachers [2]. This challenge is relevant to the professional creation of small digital learning games as well as the big Game [3], that is, the learning and play situations that exist surrounding the use of small learning games, when students discuss, negotiate, develop, and decide what to do next inside the learning games. The desired balance is lost if the learning processes become shallow – at a low level of cognitive complexity – though it may be great fun [4]. Conversely, a game may facilitate good learning processes and many learning activities but result in low motivation among students because it is considered boring.
The difficulty in aligning learning situations with playful situations can be viewed as the typical difference in focus points between learning designers and game designers [5]. For learning designers, learning goals and learning processes are very important and are given a high priority. For game designers, learning goals may become secondary to the gameplay itself –game designers traditionally prioritize engaging gameplay [6, 7]. This represents two systems with different aims – learning and play. However, it is well-known that play and learning are deeply interconnected [8]. As game designer Raph Koster stated, “Fun in games arises out of mastery, it arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun. With games, learning is the drug.” [9, p. 40]. The research question that we investigated was whether it is possible to create frameworks that intertwine learning and play in a meaningful and successful way. Furthermore, we wished to determine whether it is possible to implement these frameworks in learning situations in a way that creates meaningful and cognitive complex learning processes.
This paper gives a brief description of a framework for designing engaging learning games. This overview is followed by an outline describing how this framework was used to build a Design-Based Research (DBR) project focused on teaching adult students through their design of curriculum-based digital learning games [10]. The students included in this study were engaged in the pursued of a full-time upper secondary general education at VUC Storstrøm, an adult education centre in Denmark.