Engaging Higher Education Learners With Transmedia Play

Abstract

<jats:p> This article documents the application of transmedia play in a higher education business context, providing a case study of how transmedia play can be infused into an undergraduate marketing course. We share our findings regarding learner experience and engagement, detailing results from structured interviews with 22 course participants. Evidence shows that the transmedia approach has value and can be successfully enacted in an undergraduate course to create connected learning opportunities and elicit cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement. However, we note that the participatory nature of the pedagogy did create challenges for digital novices. In order to transition digital novices from peripheral to full participants in a transmedia learning community context, further research is warranted. </jats:p>

Teaching Maths within a Transmedia Learning Approach. What Is It and How Sustainable Can It Be?

“…We also detected that most of the experiences linked to the PBS Kids project [20] are born with a clear vision of using technologies with a low technological profile (in consumption), such as video with a clear vocation of universality and accessibility, at the service of social cohesion objectives in unfavourable socioeconomic contexts. As a consequence of the technological development mentioned in the introduction, the authors propose to take advantage of the potential of the different media at their disposal: different resources are offered for different moments and in different situations [8]. These are very interesting elements from the point of view of both universal design and the scalability of digital educational experiences [26,55].…”

“…In fact, it is striking the absence of explicit references to the importance of transmedia storytelling (or being more precise, to a narrative): students do not unfold a story as a learning challenge but perform different learning activities in different media and different moments. This 'changing-media' sequence is what makes the authors consider them transmedia experiences, and this absence of narratives does not offer the students the possibility to produce their own materials, to become prosumers (not only costumers): in part, students do not jump into production precisely because they do not have to develop the narrative [7][8][9][10]. Finally, the results of the research carried out in these contexts are undoubtedly promising (but still to be generalised in a more systematic way): improvements in learning outcomes and in the engagement of both students and families [46,55].…”

“…Thirdly, as we mentioned above, there is the question of narrative, which is partly what always ends up being linked to a large extent to the field of language learning [8,16,18,20,26]. Regardless of whether a didactic objective of this type is pursued, the narrative always accompanies transmedia learning experiences in such a way that, although we cannot always say that it is a storytelling process, it is story-driven learning indeed, even as it is created in step with this narrative (fictional or not), whether we are the ones who formulate it or the ones who let ourselves be carried along by it when we learn.…”

“…However, what is understood in the literature by transmedia learning? Maybe one of the key ideas to start this analysis is to begin from one of the specific latest reflections on the matter when Dickinson-Delaporte et al [8] focuses on the difficulties of defining the concept of transmedia in the educational sphere: every text recognises Jenkins' conceptual framework, and the inspiring ideas of media convergence and participatory culture, but there are numerous modes of understanding transmedia in general and in its (conscious and motivated) educational application. As an example of this, these authors highlight the existence of multiple transmedia interpretations (transmedia storytelling, branding, performance, ritual, activism or spectacle), and something similar would happen when we talk about transmedia learning experiences.…”

“…Regarding the learning paradigm, the elements that are pointed out, beyond the socio-constructivist positioning, place the student as the centre [8,[11][12][13] and call for using elements of everyday life that not only make learning more significant (because of their greater transfer potential) but also link more directly to elements of daily life [14], which should have a direct impact in terms of engagement (one of the opportunities commonly suggested when approaching TL) [15,16].…”