How Science Fiction Worldbuilding Supports Students' Scientific Explanation

Matuk, Camillia; Hurwich, Talia; Amato, Anna

doi:10.1145/3311890.3311925

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Likewise, another team was prompted to research the science behind bird evolution and DNA recombination in order to justify their choice to have a winged character in their game (Figure 11). Our study of this student team's process showed how the performative storytelling practices inherent in worldbuilding also encouraged practices that are critical to scientific explanation, such as giving and receiving peer feedback and integrating new information into existing ideas (Matuk, Hurwich & Amato, 2019). Such examples point to the promise of transmedia game design for creating rich and unlikely opportunities for learning.…”

Section: What Did We Learn About Collaborative Design?mentioning

confidence: 82%

“…We also wished to create and refine principles and activity structures that might be reusable in other contexts and with other youth participants, and that would inform others' similar design efforts. These efforts have led to conference publications and presentations (e.g., Hovey, Matuk & Hurwich, 2018;Matuk, Hurwich & Amato, 2019;Matuk, Levy-Cohen & Pawar, 2016).…”

Section: Design Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Iterations on a Transmedia Game Design Experience for Youth’s Autonomous, Collaborative Learning

Matuk

Hurwich

Prosperi

et al. 2020

IJDL

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Transmedia design, which involves extending a narrative from one medium to another, offers a context for potentially rich, interdisciplinary learning. We explored these opportunities by creating a week-long workshop to guide 7th-grade student teams in designing games based on comic books about viruses. This design case describes the framework and rationale behind our design choices. It illustrates our experiences by drawing on field note observations and audio recordings, student-generated design artifacts, student and facilitator interviews, and planning documentation from across two iterations of the workshop. We reflect on our experiences in attempting to balance (1) the dual focus of the workshop on science learning and game design through our choices of comic and game genres; and (2) the ability for students to be both autonomous and to receive necessary guidance through our enforcement of design constraints and interdependent team roles. We also reflect on the contextual factors that mediated our work, including students’ existing interests and peer relations, their teachers’ involvement, and our own team’s shifting expertise as membership changed from one iteration to the next. Among other things, our experiences highlight the importance of designing to allow for change, particularly as learning through collaborative transmedia game design can occur in unanticipated ways. Finally, we reflect on plans for future iterations of this workshop.

show abstract

Section: What Did We Learn About Collaborative Design?mentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Design Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%