Playing With What We’ve Got John Lean / ESRI / Man Met University How pragmatic play can transform participation in universities
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Playing With What We’ve Got
John Lean / ESRI / Man Met University
How pragmatic play can transform participation in universities
Playing with What We’ve Got
Exam Conditions
Your candidate number is your birthday - DDMM
Centre Number 57311
You have 20 minutes
What Just Happened?
A Problem: Student Participation in HE
Influences from Games and Theory
Design Principles
A Work-in-Progress
University Participation: A Problem?
A social justice issue and increasingly a policy issue
Widening participation (WP) through:
Raising aspirations of school leavers pre-application
Induction and transition activities after students arrive
WP as an ‘industry’ (Burke, 2012)
Uncritical acceptance of universities’ categories - what does participation mean?
A ‘narcissistic element’ (Minter, 2001)
Can participation be encouraged just by providing good examples?
Is it enough to widen participation? What about transforming it?
Unknown Objects
Obstacles
Doorways
Tools
Super Metroid, Nintendo, 1994
Unknown Objects
Obstacles
Doorways
Tools
Super Metroid, Nintendo, 1994
Risk Legacy, Hasbro, 2011 Seafall, Ironwall/Plaid Hat, 2016
Risk Legacy, Hasbro, 2011 Seafall, Ironwall/Plaid Hat, 2016
Risk Legacy, Hasbro, 2011 Seafall, Ironwall/Plaid Hat, 2016
Risk Legacy, Hasbro, 2011 Seafall, Ironwall/Plaid Hat, 2016
Risk Legacy, Hasbro, 2011 Seafall, Ironwall/Plaid Hat, 2016
"Playing is negotiating a wiggle space between rules, systems, contexts, preferences, appropriation, and submission.” (Sicart, 2014)
PRAGMATISM
PRAGMATISM
PRAGMATISMJohn Dewey, 1859 - 1952
A Magic Circle
A Magic Circle
Play
Not Play
University
The ‘Real World’
Student/Academic
Other Identities
Design PrinciplesThink like John Dewey
• Learning happens in a community and a context
• Students existing knowledge and experiences will impact upon what they learn
Imagine the university as a Metroidvania level
• How can students explore and familiarise themselves with this ‘alien’ space?
• How can we provide opportunities for students to test the tools they have picked up?
Imagine education as a legacy game
• What happens when we treat familiar objects and routines in unfamiliar ways?
• What happens when we ask students to make permanent changes?
Imagine the university as a magic circle
• What happens when the boundaries between the university and the real world are blurred?
• What can / do students bring with them to the ‘game’ of university?
The ContextFoundation Year Education Studies 2017-18
Foundations of Academic Practice Course
Covering the ‘skills’ side of undergraduate life
Linked to personal tutor / pastoral groups
Activities over the course of two terms
The ConceptA playful reflective activity
Embedded into existing structure of the course - prescribing how students participate rather than what they participate in
Reflective ‘playful’ journals - deliberately ‘analogue’
Move from ‘traditional’ transition activities to more subversive / creative ones
Encouraging ‘communities of play’ (drawing upon Lave and Wenger)
Acknowledging that there is more to participation than learning ‘the skills’
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Read your next journal
article in the park.
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Read your next journal
article in the park.
Invent something.
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Read your next journal
article in the park.
Invent something.
What’s going on in the room
next door?
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Read your next journal
article in the park.
Invent something.
What’s going on in the room
next door?
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Read your next journal
article in the park.
Invent something.
What’s going on in the room
next door?
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
Read your next journal
article in the park.
Invent something.
What’s going on in the room
next door?
Sit next to someone new at a lecture.
My Research
Transforming participation?
Pragmatism
Critical Pedagogy
Playful Research?
Questions?
Any thoughts? Any suggestions?
On the activity
On the concept
Does this ring true in your context?
Or with your experiences of HE (from either side)?
Some References• Biesta, G. J. J. and Burbules, N. C. (2003) Pragmatism and Educational Research.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
• Burke, P. J. (2012) The right to higher education : beyond widening participation. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Gee, J. P. (2007) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Juul, J. (2008) ‘The Magic Circle and the Puzzle Piece’, Conference Proceedings of the Philosophy of Computer Games, pp.56-67
• Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Minter, C. (2001) 'Some Flaws in the Common Theory of "Widening Participation.".' Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 6(3) pp. 245-260
• Sicart, M. (2014) Play matters. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press.
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