Exploring the Potential of Alternate Reality Learning in Educational Contexts
Place of Study:
London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, University of London.
My Initial Research Question
How does children’s engagement in the active production and critical consumption of Alternative Reality Games help shape their literacy skills across the media in which they are written and played?
Supervisors:
Andrew Burn: Reader in Education and New Media in the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education.
Diane Carr: Lecturer in Media and Education Studies at the London Knowledge Lab at the Institute of Education, University of London.
What is Alternate Reality Gaming?
Alternate Reality Gaming challenges notions of games, gaming and stories by using ubiquitous communication technologies to immerse gamers in fictional gaming adventures which digitally augment everyday reality. Game design can pervade players’ everyday lives, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction and engaging them in problem-solving in both virtual and physical environments. Story-lines unravel as players investigate leads generated through their engagement with online and offline explorations and problem-solving. Games incorporate a vast array of modes and media which may include innovative web-based content, phone messages to players, links to film and television, billboards, posters and playing cards, real-life drama events and face-to-face meetings. Many of the challenges posed by these games are difficult or impossible to solve independently and require collaboration between participants. They are sometimes referred to as a type of scavenger hunt, whereby the players must work together to find clues and information to solve a mystery that emerges whilst playing the game. Henry Jenkins identifies three areas of modern technological culture which are encapsulated by the ARG form: Convergence, Participatory Culture and Collective Intelligence. In an interview with Game Set Watch, Henry Jenkins explains convergence as a term which describes “a world where every story, image, sound, brand, and relationship gets played out across the broadest possible number of media channels.” He goes on to explain participatory culture as one in which user generated content enables “everyday people to take media in their own hands” and collective intelligence as a term which describes “a world where nobody knows everything, everybody knows something, and what any individual member knows is accessible on demand to the group as a whole.” Indeed he believes that ‘Alternative reality games are, in a sense, the perfect illustration of all of the principles which I see shaping the media landscape at the present time.” [1] Could these games enhance the education in our classrooms?
What Learning?
Whilst there has been considerable research into the potential uses of digital games in the classroom, there has been less investigation into the educational value of Alternate Reality games (ARGs). Unlike console or computer games, in ARGs the game-world is constructed through a combination of on- and off-screen media, and is created and shaped through dynamic dialogue between the designers and players. Therefore to create and play an ARG, children are not required to develop programming skills or negotiate gaming software. Instead the players and designers of ARGs are able to construct the ludic space through the creative and inventive use of communication technologies.
What is so powerful about literacy and learning during the authoring of ARGs, is that the modes of telling and playing the game have real-world applications, yet in the playful adaptation of their use, in creating and responding to a fictional world, the children gain a sophisticated understanding of the media practices and texts with which they are engaged. In addition to this, in designing and ultimately playing ARGs, children’s actions are driven by a purposeful collaborative union. This alternate reality gaming experience is an incredibly powerful example of situated meaning-making. It is during this playful engagement, in the movement between the game and real world, that a participatory culture is created in which collective knowledge and understanding are applied for the purpose of achieving a common motivating goal.
Educational Context
Popular culture, new technologies and young people’s engagement with them constantly challenge concepts of education. Roy Pea and John Seely Brown suggest that “In changing situations of knowledge acquisition and use, the new interactive technologies redefine – in ways yet to be determined – what it means to know and understand, and what it means to become ‘literate’ or an ‘educated citizen’.” [3] With the emergence of ‘web 2.0’ and user-led and created content children have access to new exciting and informal ways of knowing and learning which are not always recognised in formal class teaching environments. Many children are used to collaborating with others in out of school environments in online games, sharing ideas and views on message boards, being critics of others’ work and websites. This culturally and socially-situated learning Etienne Wenger views as an essential component to applying and understanding knowledge in meaningful ways. As a teacher I cannot hope to replicate children’s informal learning practices in the classroom; school is too official and pedagogical for that to be very effective or even desirable. However I recognise that the school community of practice is made up of young people who have their own communities, with their own practices in which they learn effectively. I believe that ARGs offer means to frame children’s learning in fun and meaningful ways which at least have the potential to resonate with and utilise the tacit knowledge and abilities they have developed in learning practices outside school. [4] In the past these games have been predominantly aimed at the adult market and have been used as marketing tools; in fact, interest in this form of gaming has increased significantly amongst the advertising industry in recent years. Although a few ARGs have been designed by adults to be played by young people, I became interested in investigating the type of learning that might take place if children were given the opportunity to design and play an ARG with and for their peers. I wanted to discover more about the way in which this type of peer-to-peer game-play might help to generate the excitement of oral, collaborative story-telling in the classroom. So, through an ethnographic study, I decided to explore the ways in which the players’ understanding of stories, games and social networks across media informed their construction and consumption of such improvised narratives.
Methodology
As part of ongoing PhD research I have undertaken two term-long field studies over two years, in a large South London primary school. In both the first and second year I worked on a term-long multi-media literacy project with the children in my Year 6 class. I challenged them to design a game for the Year 5s, based on a carefully selected novel written by Philip Ridley: Kindlekrax in the first Year and The Mighty Fizz Chilla in the second year. They were invited to ‘bring the story to life’ for the Year 5s by setting a trail of clues and problems that, if discovered and solved, would lead the Year 5s to a strange beast on its way to the school. In this endeavour the children used the same resources to design and produce the game as were then used to play it. These included message boards, web cams, phones, books, maps and letters. In addition to these, the game design also made creative use of found objects and artefacts such as rocks and ‘potion ingredients’. During play, in order to find and tame the beast, the Year 5s engaged with a variety of online and offline cues and clues around the school, and recorded their emerging ideas through a range media. The Year 6s responded to the Year 5s calls for help by ‘writing in role’ on the message boards. In this way the Year 6s could guide and prompt the Year 5s without ever revealing themselves as the game designers. They thereby used the media to disguise themselves, and to sustain the illusion and fictional narrative which would keep the Year 5s engaged. In this way, the game-world was shaped by the playful dialogue between the designers and players. During the design of this quest the Year 6 children were required to engage critically with both the form and content of Ridley’s novel and often elected to make significant changes to the plot and add characters of their own in order to enhance gameplay.
Data
The data collected during this project included interviews with designers and players, teacher observations and texts created throughout the planning, making and playing stages.
Initial Findings
Through analysis, issues pertinent to literacy, education and game design are being investigated. These include narrative and ludic construction, adaptation, notions of realism, and questions surrounding authorship.
Relevance
This research demonstrates that ARGs represent an innovative means for children to explore and develop their understanding and experiences of learning and literacies across media. In this project, the students made good use of their existing knowledge of games and the ‘affordances’ of various media and narrative conventions. Through the active production of ARGs, they explored the relationships between these forms, in new ways.
[1] Jenkins, H. (2006a) Interview on Game Set Watch blog: Henry Jenkins on the Responsibility of games. http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2006/06/gamesetinterview_henry_jenkins.php
accessed 29 July 2009.
[2] Jenkins, H (2006b) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press
[3] Pea, R. & Seely Brown, J. (1996) Preface to Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1996). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[4] UKLA Task Group response to the Rose Review available at www.ukla.org
