Aims to determine how multiple play styles and use of “outside” materials can be successfully taken into account when designing user experiences in educational digital games.
Abstract
Purpose
Aims to determine how multiple play styles and use of “outside” materials can be successfully taken into account when designing user experiences in educational digital games.
Design/methodology/approach
This research draws on over two dozen qualitative interviews and an open‐ended survey of an additional 50 game players with a wide range of gameplay experience.
Findings
Findings suggest that players have different skill sets, and different beliefs about what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable help in a variety of games. These findings are analyzed to argue for different ways to enhance the educational gaming experience for players.
Research limitations/implications
As with all qualitative research, the relatively small sample size makes it difficult to draw broad generalizations from the data. However, the research does suggest that there are many ways to play games, that players use many items and information “outside” the game to help them play or enhance their experience, and such things can be fruitfully used to improve educational games.
Practical implications
Designers of educational games should take into account the materials surrounding games, such as walkthroughs and codes, as ways to enhance the game and educational experience, rather than detract from them.
Originality/value
Very little research has been done examining how players perceive items and information related to game play, as well as how they use such things. This research investigates that area and relates the knowledge to ways to improve educational games, and education.
Details
Keywords
Seeks to exemplify and discuss how students’ use of weblogs can prepare them for a networked world where writing has consequences outside grades.
Abstract
Purpose
Seeks to exemplify and discuss how students’ use of weblogs can prepare them for a networked world where writing has consequences outside grades.
Design/methodology/approach
Experiences using weblogs with university students are critically discussed with reference to related theoretical and practice‐based work.
Findings
While many students were wary at first, the experience of writing in public provided an important learning opportunity, and many of the most skeptical became enthusiastic and proficient webloggers during the course of the semester.
Research limitations/implications
The empirical data are from a single course and therefore limited.
Practical implications
Students should practice writing in public and on the network, yet ethical issues must be considered.
Originality/value
An increasing number of teachers and professors are using weblogs with students. In addition to a critical discussion of the ethics and pedagogical value of weblogging, this paper gives educators specific advice on how to encourage students to use their weblogs actively and productively.
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Keywords
Mia Høj Mathiasson and Henrik Jochumsen
The purpose of this paper is to report on a new approach for researching public library programs through Facebook events. The term public library programs refers to publicly…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on a new approach for researching public library programs through Facebook events. The term public library programs refers to publicly announced activities and events taking place within or in relation to a public library. In Denmark, programs are an important part of the practices of public libraries and have been growing in both number and variety within recent years.
Design/methodology/approach
The data for the study presented in this paper consists of Facebook events announcing public library programs. In the study of this data, grounded theory is used as a research strategy and methods of web archiving are used for collecting both the textual and the visual content of the Facebook events.
Findings
The combination of Facebook events as data, grounded theory as a research strategy and web archiving as methods for data collection proves to be useful for researching the format and content of public library programs, which have already taken place.
Research limitations/implications
Only a limited number of Facebook events are examined and the context is restricted to one country.
Originality/value
This paper presents a promising approach for researching public library programs through social media content and provides new insights into both methods and data as well as the phenomenon investigated. Thereby, this paper contributes to a conception of an under-developed researched area as well as a new approach for studying it.