1.0 INTRODUCTION:

This reflective commentary outlines a learning activity for the Games Development cohort, outlining its planning to execution. The theme of the activity was titled Inclusive Level Design. This activity was planned to encourage students to understand their level designs' broader social, ethical and environmental impact with implications. This activity aims to help shift students’ inherent paradigm of designing game levels solely for personal enjoyment and consumption to catering to the wider gaming society to be enjoyed by a diverse range of individuals. [K2, V4]

1.1 WHY SOCIAL IMPACT:

What is education for? What is it intended to achieve? It is accepted that education can be categorised into four critical tenants. To train people for employment, to develop good citizens, to socialise people within a community and to develop happy, rounded individuals [V4] (Ferguson, 2017, p. 6). Although my teaching style/ pedagogy is predominantly centred upon Dual learning or “learner-to-earner”. I wanted to take this unique opportunity to promote accessibility and neurodiverse communities, an area in modern game design that has recently gained priority. [K1, V1, V4].

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1.2 PLANNING THE ACTIVITY:

When planning the activity, I wanted to include a gamified aspect to the session because according to Geoff Petty research on active learning pedagogies. “Learning and enjoyment need not be mutually exclusive.” I also wanted to get meaningful engagement from the students (Segan, 2018), which Petty attests to, saying in his book, “Games can produce intense involvement, and a quality of concentration no other teaching method can match. Moreover, the increase in interest and motivation produced by a short game-playing session can produce positive feelings towards the subject (and the teacher) which last for weeks.” I divided the session into two significant sections, with the gamified aspect included in the latter. (Petty, 2009) [K2, V3]

Firstly, I incorporated flipped learning by preparing PowerPoint slides to be released on Aula before the session, catering to students who prefer to read and access the course materials before the session. [V1, V2] (Bergmann, 2016).

After the slides had been presented in class, I planned to include a group discussion because I wanted to allow the students to learn from each other through discussion. This also presented a unique oppor-tunity for students and my opinions to be challenged through lesson discussion, mirroring current in-dustry practice where regular meetings like this are commonplace, also known as “scrum meetings”. (Bernard, 2022) [K1, V3]

I finally planned to use a portable gaming console to allow each student to interact actively with the topics covered in the lesson. I planned to select a wide range of students, from highly skilled and casual neurotypical students to neurodiverse skilled and casual gamer students [V2]. This aimed to add further tangible evidence to the earlier discussion and debate. [K1, V3]

With Co-constructivism in mind, I hoped that after the learning activity, the students would be better equipped to peer-to-peer self-evaluate the quality of the levels they have been working on for better accessibility and inclusive level design. I wanted them to want to do it, not because I told them to do it, but because they were part of the discussion and had evidence of the positive impact this could make with their peers in the immediate environment and society at large. [V3, K2]

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1.3 EXECUTION:

On the day of the activity, there were 14 students present. During the first section of the planned activ-ity, the students continued working on their projects from the prior week after around half an hour. I sent them on a break to allow them to recoup and prep them for the new information they were about to receive.

I then proceeded to go over the information I had planned in the slides.

During the presentation, I regularly involved the students in the discussion. I found the engagement to be higher than usual. The student responded to the questions I proposed. They were a mix of passion-ate responses. Some students were apprehensive of the impact that making games overly assessable could have on the Authorial Intent of the creator. In contrast, some students agreed that having more options is core to what makes games unique. I enjoyed this session as I found even my presumptions challenged by the student’s responses. During such moments I remembered Kathleen M Quinlan’s comments about “Treating students as members of the disciplinary community, inviting and respecting their contributions.” (Quinlan, 2016). [V1]

This was good practice for me, which I handled well. I was also aware of the broader context of this subject regarding how the link between accessibility and difficulty caused considerable debate within the gaming community in 2019. Quotes such as “You cheated not only the game, but yourself.” gained popularity. (Statt, 2019) As mentioned in my Learning Environments, one of my critical plans for creat-ing an effective learning environment is Culture. (Huthwaite International,2019).

I wanted the students to have a positive emotion towards this subject and not promote condemnation, allowing students room to fail and removing in-house competitiveness that could hinder sharing good practices and ideas. To combat this, I applied Quinlan’s suggestions.

Firstly, I targeted the student’s ‘relationship with the subject’. I emphasised how accessibility and inclu-sivity are prevalent aspects of current AAA game development, giving recent case studies. This helped the students see the relevance and value of the subject, “increasing their motivation and curiosity”. (Quinlan, 2016)

I then targeted the student’s relationship with the lecturer, me. Quinlan refers to research that suggests:

“When students perceive that their teachers listen and show immediacy through behaviours that generate a sense of closeness, they experience the class more positively, feel emotionally supported and can express their own emotions more authentically”. (Titsworth et al. 2010; Baker 2004 cited in Quin-lan, 2016 )

I listened thoroughly to each student’s opinion, ensuring I was not expressing negative emotions to views that were critical to mine. This helped create a positive atmosphere in the room.

Next, I paid attention to the students’ relationships with their peers. I ensured that I created various opportunities for the students to discuss their views on the topic informally with peers from diverse backgrounds who provided different perspectives on the key questions. (Quinlan, 2016)

Finally, the last aspect I was conscious of was the relationship between the student and themselves. I strategically also wanted to use this learning activity to present opportunities for students to test their limits, which, as Quinlan suggests, “is more likely to induce both emotional discomfort and a changed relationship with themselves.” (Quinlan, 2016) [V1, V3]

Amazingly I also discovered that my plan covered the three main ingredients promoted by (Mezirow & Taylor, 2009) for a transformative lesson. These ingredients are: “Students have an experience, critically reflect on that experience, and engage in dialogue with others about it.” [V1, V3]

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1.4 FEEDBACK:

The feedback I got from my peers and Virana was very positive, with Virna mentioning how surprised she was “by how much students had to contribute.” The main areas to improve were getting the students away from their work machines during the discussion portion of the activity to be entirely concentrated during the ‘input’ stage. [K2, V3]

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1.5 CONCLUSION:

Overall I enjoyed planning and carrying out this learning activity. Not only did the students enjoy and benefit from the lesson, but I also improved my emotional intelligence.  A learning activity focused on a social impact added a human element to the lectures, which was seen in the student’s high level of engagement. I plan to incorporate more sessions like these as I have discovered this could be vital for student development; having an environment where you can discuss issues like these seems to be be-coming rarer and rarer due to the social media algorithms favouring controversy rather than meaning-ful human conversations that encourage growth and compassion. I am proud of what PGCert has enabled me to accomplish teaching in such a short time.

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REFERENCES:

Ferguson, R., Barzilai, S., Ben-Zvi, D., Chinn, C.A., Herodotou, C., Hod, Y., Kali, Y., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Kupermintz, H., McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Sagy, O., Scanlon, E., Sharples, M., Weller, M., & Whitelock, D. (2017). Innovating Pedagogy 2017: Open University Innovation Report 6. Milton Keynes: The Open University, UK.

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Petty, G. (2009). Teaching today: a practical guide (4th ed). Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes
Chapter 19: Games and active learning methods (pages 247-257)

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Sagan, O. (2018). Playgrounds, studios and hiding places: an emotional exchange in creative learning spaces. In: D. Bahgat and P. O'Neill, ed., Inclusive Practices, Inclusive Pedagogies. [online] Croydon: CPI Group (UK) Ltd.
Available at: https://ukadia.ac.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/Inclusive_Practices_Inclusive_Pedagogies.pdf
[Accessed 23 Jan. 2023]
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Lave, J. (2019). Lave and Wenger on Situated Learning - New Learning Online. [online] Newlearningonline.com.
Available at: https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-6/lave-and-wenger-on-situated-learning
[Accessed 23 Jan. 2023]

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Bernard, M. (2022). Daily Stand-up Meetings for Dev Teams: The Ultimate Guide - Hatica. [online] hatica.io. Available at: https://www.hatica.io/blog/daily-standup-meetings/
[Accessed 23 Jan. 2023].

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Quinlan, K. (2016). How Emotion Matters in Four Key Relationships in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. College Teaching. 64. 1–11. 10.1080/87567555.2015.1088818.

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Huthwaite International (2019). Creating an Effective Learning Environment. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bza8kPKlx9w&ab_channel=HuthwaiteInternational
[Accessed: 19 December 2023].

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Statt, N. (2019). Sekiro’s difficulty debate results in incredible ‘you cheated not only the game’ meme - The Verge. [online] theverge.com. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/9/18302796/sekiro-shadows-die-twice-copypasta-you-cheated-not-only-the-game-memes
[Accessed 1 Jan. 2023].

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Titsworth, S., M.M. Quinlan & J.P. Mazer. 2010. “Emotion in Teaching and Learning: Development ad Validation of the Classroom Emotions Scale. Communication Education. 59(4): 431-452.

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