Emergent dialogue

Abstract

Games for Change (G4C) is a movement and community of practice dedicated to using digital games for social change 1 . However, a common model of persuasion built into most G4C, called Information Deficit, assumes that supporting children to learn facts will result in behavior change around social issues. There is little evidence that this approach works. We propose a model of game play, called Emergent Dialogue, which encourages children to discuss their values during interaction with factual information in a G4C. We summarize a set of guidelines based on our Emergent Dialogue model and apply them to the design of Youtopia, a tangible, tabletop learning game about sustainability. Our goal was to create a game that provided opportunities for children to express and discuss their values around sustainable development trade-offs during game play. We evaluate our design using video, survey and questionnaire data. Our results provide evidence that our model and design guidelines are effective for supporting value-based dialogue during collaborative game play.

Empathic Robot for Group Learning

“…By performing upgrades, the city can become more sustainable, and by skipping some turns the players allow the structures and upgrades they have chosen to implement, to get their full effect before advancing to the next level. This behaviour thus seems to indicate a more thoughtful design of the city, which matches with Antle's design principles for sustainability games [Antle et al 2015]. These changes in game play are not trivial, as children needed to move away from the traditional competitiveness of passing levels (a so-called traditional mind set of a game-play), to become concerned about spending less money and taking more advantages of the resources from previous constructions.…”

“…As a collaborative group learning activity, M-Enercities motivates players to discuss and decide together how to build a sustainable city, providing exactly the type of social interaction dynamic to foster communication and cooperation as means to learn about sustainability. In fact, according to scholars, sustainable education is all about having meaningful discussions in which multiple perspectives and trade-offs are exchanged by expressing personal values [Antle et al 2015;Fior et al 2010]. In light of how sustainable education should be taught, the M-Enercities game supports learning goals related with factual knowledge about sustainable development, raised awareness for trade-offs and multiple perspectives concerning sustainability, and the role of personal values.…”

“…Thus, instead of changing attitudes and behaviors, the learning measures were designed to capture children's awareness of different perspectives and the ever-present trade-offs around sustainability. Furthermore, according to Antle et al [2015], sustainability curricula for elementary schools "often focus on key concepts such as balancing conservation and consumption" [Antle et al 2015, p. 37], while ignoring the important role that children's personal values have in learning. They argue that sustainability education for elementary school-aged children should be modeled according to the Emergent Dialogue Model, especially in the area of digital media games such as Youtupia [Antle et al 2013].…”

Augmented Reality for Early Language Learning: A Systematic Review of Augmented Reality Application Design, Instructional Strategies, and Evaluation Outcomes

“…We suggest designers consider these aspects in their design. Designing strategies to support positive collaborative learning : Although several articles contained collaborative learning activities, most of the collaborative learning activities were limited to sitting and using the AR application together (Barreira et al., 2012; Vate-U-Lan, 2012) or holding a shared tablet to find certain real-world objects and words (Sytwu & Wang, 2016), from which we still could not know how much collaborative learning actually occurred and how equally each learner participated in the learning activity. Previous research has suggested the importance of equal verbal and non-verbal participation in a collaborative learning activity (Antle et al., 2014). We encourage designers leveraging various design strategies (e.g., jigsaw methods) and investigating whether and how these design strategies could support equal and in-depth discussion and effective physical interaction among students as well as the potential influence on students’ learning outcomes. Exploring AR design in various learning contexts : We also noticed a few articles attempted to cover the personalized use of AR applications, for example, learning styles (Hsu, 2017), and the uses of AR applications in various learning contexts (e.g., individual, small groups, classroom; Vate-U-Lan, 2012) and learning groups (e.g., readers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and Autism; Lin et al., 2016; Tang et al., 2019).…”

Developing science tabletop games: ‘Catan’® and global warming

“…Insights from current educational theory on play and learning indicate that well-designed tabletop games can help to stimulate dialogue around large-scale societal issues such as social class inequality [Carreiro and Kapitulik, 2010], religious tolerance [Roux, 2003], and health education [Bochennek et al, 2007]. Similarly, research in science communication has shown that tabletop games can be effective in raising environmental awareness [Antle et al, 2014;D'Angelo, Pollock and Horn, 2015] , but this has largely involved the creation of bespoke educational games for children, while our aim was to develop a game capable of generating dialogue around global warming for a more general audience.…”