Teaching to Teach (With) Game Design: Game Design and Learning Workshops for Preservice Teachers

Engagement in game design tasks can help preservice teachers develop pedagogical and technical skills for teaching and promoting critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Through the design process, preservice teachers not only exercise critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, but also learn about an instructional method to support their future students’ problem-solving skills. Becoming comfortable with games and game design, however, requires firsthand design experiences, which teacher education programs hardly provide. Given the limited opportunities and research, this study attempted to gain insight into the implementation of a game design workshop to teach preservice teachers how to integrate game design in their future practices. In this exploratory case study, we analyzed reflections and lesson plans from four preservice teachers who participated in a game design workshop. Overall, the preservice teachers found the workshop to be effective in teaching them the intricacies of the game design process. However, both the participants’ learning experiences during the workshop and the level of pedagogical elements present in their lesson plans varied depending on their technology knowledge and teaching context. Digital game design (referred to simply as “game design” throughout this article) has been commended as an authentic and meaningful method of teaching students thinking skills (Akcaoglu, 2014; Anderson & Barnett, 2011; Li, 2012). Learning game design has also been linked with important learning goals, such as improvements in science knowledge (Hwang, Hung, & Chen, 2013), math concepts (Ke, 2014), and motivation to learn (Vos, van der Meijden, & Denessen, 2011). Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 16(1) 61 For young students, game design tasks have been found to be good contexts conducive to practicing and developing complex problem-solving skills, which are difficult to situate in K-12 learning environments (Akcaoglu, 2014; Akcaoglu & Koehler, 2014). Despite the scarcity of research and training opportunities, game design tasks can also help preservice teachers both to engage in critical thinking and problem-solving skills and to learn an effective pedagogical approach for teaching these skills (Li, Lemieux, Vandermeiden, & Nathoo, 2013). Integrating games or game design activities into regular classroom contexts is a challenging task and does not always lead to success due, in part, to the existing culture and perceptions surrounding games (Kenny & McDaniel, 2011). While students extensively engage in game-related activities outside of school, teachers tend to see games as noneducational rewards (Becker, 2007; Li et al., 2013). In addition, most teachers do not know the pedagogical potential and benefits of using games in education (Li et al., 2013). Similar to in-service teachers, preservice teachers fall behind in terms of their knowledge of games and game design. According to Kenny and McDaniel (2011), preservice teachers often feel negative about games. For instance, 75% of the preservice teachers in their study indicated that they would rather do other things than play games, and 60% did not see how games could be used in classrooms. As such, it would be unreasonable to expect preservice teachers to consider game design as a viable instructional method, especially if they lacked positive attitudes toward games and the awareness of their educational potential. Perceived value of instructional technologies determines teachers’ decisions to use them (Kenny & McDaniel, 2011). Initiatives in teacher education programs to use games and game design in classroom are, therefore, an important step to support the preservice teachers’ development in attitudes, pedagogical knowledge, and technical skills (Li et al., 2013). Considering that (a) preservice teachers are not very familiar with games and their potential in classrooms and (b) preservice years significantly impact future teachers’ teaching practices (Anderson & Barnett, 2011), future teachers should have opportunities to see how games and game design can be used to create effective instructional activities (Kenny & McDaniel, 2011). Earlier research indicated that game design courses may help preservice teachers develop more positive attitudes toward facing challenges, problem-solving, and design process (Li et al., 2013). However, how their experiences with learning game design may differ and how they might develop instructional strategies using game design are yet to be examined. In this study, a workshop to teach basics of game design and ways to integrate game design into various school content was offered to a group of preservice teachers as a means to familiarize them with both the process of designing games and the pedagogical affordances of game design tasks. The focus of this study was twofold: (a) examine preservice teachers’ experiences during a game design workshop and (b) evaluate the lesson plans they created to understand how effectively they were able to integrate game design into their courses. Given the limited research and educational programs preparing future teachers to teach (with) game design, our primary purpose was to provide insight into the implementation of the game design and learning workshop. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 16(1) 62 Review of Literature Learning Outcomes From Designing Games Design tasks make good contexts for complex problem-solving (Bonnardel & Zenasni, 2010; Goel & Pirolli, 1992). Solving complex design problems requires the problem solver to bring together a number of interrelated variables to produce artifacts (Simon, 1995). During this process, problem-solving, problem-finding, and inquiry skills are practiced (Kafai, Franke, Ching, & Shih, 1998; Smith & Boling, 2009). As engaging contexts to give students opportunities to practice design and problem-solving skills, game design activities have been increasingly used by researchers and educators as contexts to teach important thinking skills (e.g., Akcaoglu, 2014; Baytak & Land, 2010, 2011; Denner, Werner, & Ortiz, 2012; Hwang et al., 2013; Kafai et al., 1998; Li et al., 2013). Akcaoglu and Koehler (2014), for instance, conducted a quasi-experimental study in which a group of middle-school students participated in an afterschool game design course focused on designing games and solving complex design problems. Compared to a control group, the students who attended the workshops showed significant increases in their system analysis and design, troubleshooting, and decision-making skills. In another study, Denner et al. (2012) analyzed the games created by middle-school students and observed that game design activities helped students who had no programming backgrounds to acquire basic programming concepts. In a recent study, Ke (2014) found that through game design activities, middle-school students developed more positive attitudes toward learning mathematics. Further, the study by Vos et al. (2011) showed that students who actively worked on designing their own games had higher levels of intrinsic motivation and deep strategy use than did their peers who only played games developed by others. Despite the increasing attention from both researchers and educators to use game design to teach important thinking skills, research on how preservice and in-service teachers learn to use game design in their own teaching contexts is scarce. Research is especially limited regarding understanding and analyzing teachers’ experiences during their game design and learning process. Game Design by Preservice Teachers Although using game design has potentials and benefits in teaching, preparing preservice teachers to employ it in their future practices can be challenging. Even though preservice teachers could be considered enthusiastic users of new technologies (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; Dutt-Doner, Allen, & Corcoran, 2005), they rarely see how to incorporate them effectively in their future practices (Albion, 2008; Kumar & Vigil, 2011). Successful technology integration goes beyond technology knowledge but necessitates “a nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between technology, content, and pedagogy” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Effective technology integration requires an understanding of the affordances of technology and pedagogical strategies in relation to maximizing student learning. Expert teachers with such a developed understanding can often repurpose the use of technology to support their teaching approaches as a means to further their students’ learning (Mishra & Koehler, 2009, p.16). Novice teachers, on the other hand, are not likely to execute such effective teaching decisions due to their limited teaching experiences (Le Maistre & Paré, 2010). Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 16(1) 63 Using game design in lessons may even be a more challenging technology integration practice for future teachers for several reasons. First, only a few teacher education programs and limited resources are guiding future teachers’ game design activities (at least, that was the case when last documented by Becker, 2007), and gaming devices are among the least frequently used technologies by preservice teachers (Hur, Wang, Kale, & Cullen, 2014). Second, incorporating game design into educational contexts requires a complex technology-integration process (Akcaoglu, in press). As an innovation, game design is more than a technology but a learner-centered pedagogy that promotes design and problem-solving skills through the creation and representation of artifacts, rules, relations, and ideas in the form of a game (Kafai et al., 1998; Simon, 1995; Smith & Boling, 2009). These complexities likely add to the requirements of teaching with game design and call for further preparation of preservice teachers. For example, planning and conceptualizing games, knowing and teaching how to use sof