The complex nature of game design and development has been described as “like shooting a movie while simultaneously building the camera” (Schrier 2021, p. XIV), and within a pedagogical context such factors present many challenges in constructing well-scaffolded student curriculum and learning experiences. Less visible are issues in student access, that within remote learning contexts present significant barriers to entry before learning starts. Access to computer hardware, software licenses, setup, troubleshooting, and adequate learning environments place further responsibility on a student’s financial means and time availability, risking exclusion and loss of motivation. For educators, these challenges can be partially addressed through course requirements and careful surveying of technologies in relevance and access (Muscat 2020), however, in practice such variance often still requires direct intervention and the time to do so. In my own teaching I have adopted a distributed learning approach (Hutchins 1995; Engeström 2018) to negotiate this, involving class peer support, although this method has not been without its own challenges. Through this seminar I am hoping to shed further light on this and learn as to to how other educators consider and negotiate these challenges.
References:
Engeström, Y., 2018. Expansive learning: Towards an activity-theoretical reconceptualisation, in: Illeris, K. (Ed.), Contemporary Theories of Learning: Learning Theorists ... In Their Own Words. Routledge.
Hutchins, E., 1995. Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Muscat, A., 2020. Reorientating Level Design Education. Digital Media Research Centre Queensland University of Technology.
Schreier, J., 2021. Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry, 1st edition. ed. Grand Central Publishing, New York.