The Effects of an Alternate Reality Game on Students’ Sense of Belonging and Student Engagement

Craig Hargraves

doi:10.25907/00801

Student engagement has been a focus of universities for several decades as a key to student retention and academic success. Likewise, the concept of belonging has been positively associated with student success and closely linked to student engagement frameworks. Gamification, the use of game design concepts and techniques in non-game contexts, has become a popular technique for increasing engagement in a range of industries including education. Alternate reality games (ARGs) are a form of gamification that have been used to support student engagement in higher education. This research documents the design of an alternate reality game, Against The Authority, which aims to improve student engagement by intentionally targeting and supporting the students’ sense of belonging via the students’ connection to their fellow students, the tutor, and their academic discipline. The ARG was delivered as part of the curriculum of a higher education game design course. As well as analysing the impacts of the game on students’ sense of belonging and student engagement, this project also sets out to identify the game elements from the ARG which impacted the students’ sense of belonging to better inform future design principles of educational ARGs. This research used a design-based research methodology and studied the ARG over its first two iterations. Qualitative data, primarily drawn from focus groups and researcher observations, were analysed for evidence of the game’s impact on the students’ sense of belonging and student engagement. The game and its design and development have also been described to help inform the future design of educational ARGs. The ARG was found to have benefited the sense of belonging and through it student engagement in some students. The students’ connection to other students was impacted by the ARG encouraging student-tostudent communication, providing opportunities to admire other students and value their skills, and allowing students to observe other students prior to course group work. There was also evidence it may have helped form a collective identity among the students. These impacts were contributed to by the ARG’s cooperative gameplay pattern, puzzles, narrative, online messaging forum, achievements, opportunities for passive participation and the antagonism provided by some of the game’s characters. However, it was reported and observed that the presence of the game in the classroom could have had some potentially negative impacts for some students and was not valued as a method of learning by all students. The students’ connection to the tutor was impacted by the cooperative gameplay allowing the tutor and students to be perceived as interacting as equals within the game. The presence of the ARG on the course’s online messaging forum allowed for a more casual style of interaction between the tutor and the students. And the presence of the game itself was perceived as evidence of the tutor’s engagement and efforts in the course by the students. However, the use of the ‘This Is Not a Game’ leitmotif did contribute to some confusion about the tutor’s role in the early stages of the ARG for some students. The students’ connection to the academic discipline of serious game design was benefitted by the ARG itself standing as an exemplar of a serious game for the students to experience firsthand. The ARG’s narrative also motivated some students to put more consideration into creating a serious game for assessment. In conclusion, this research shows that an intentionally designed ARG can be effective in supporting student engagement in higher education by promoting the building of students’ sense of belonging. It provides a description and documentation of an ARG for other educators and designers interested in using ARGs in a similar way. However, it also shows that game-based classroom interventions such as this are not necessarily effective for all students and points to the need for further research into the negative impacts that such interventions can potentially have for some.

The Effects of an Alternate Reality Game on Students’ Sense of Belonging and Student Engagement

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