Sandra Elsom

The massification of higher education has seen increased diversity in students entering tertiary study. Contemporary university students may be under-prepared for the rigour of higher education, disengaged from formal study or managing work or family responsibilities alongside their study commitments. Proponents of game-based learning suggest that playful activities with learning objectives can provide an enjoyable way of engaging some of these diverse learners. This thesis is a multi-perspective analysis of a university course with an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) embedded in its curriculum to find out how it shaped learning. An ARG is a game that blurs the line between fiction and reality. These games use the real world as a platform to engage players in solving puzzles and challenges to advance a narrative. Participants pretend to believe in the fiction. Educators can embed activities with learning objectives into the game. Within an ARG, participants use real-world technologies and locations to carry out game-world tasks, emphasising the “reality” aspect. To evaluate student learning in this course, an exploratory case study was completed over two years. It applied a framework of situated learning – a concept which posits that learning is inherently situated in physical and social contexts (Brown et al., 1989). This framework was used to define what learning would look like in practice before investigation of how the game influenced learning. Data were generated through interviews, observations, and documents to analyse how, and the extent to which, students participated in the ARG; why many students did not participate; through what alternative avenues they were learning; and what learning the game supported. The ARG proved to be a helpful tool for encouraging students to get to know one another and work together. It engaged students with course theory and provided options for the instructors to customise feedback. However, the game significantly benefited a minority of students, with others finding it neutral, or a hindrance. The inclusion of non-participating and minimally participating students highlighted tensions between the structure of an ARG and the nature of learning in higher education and revealed problematic aspects of game-based learning. The theoretical framework applied to this research and related prior research offers insights into why the ARG struggled to engage participants and provides design recommendations for integrating ARG-based learning in higher education in ways that may prove more rewarding to educators and their students.

This chapter considers the many challenges and choices academics face in neoliberal workplaces. It highlights the authors’ individual and collective experiences as they make decisions that reject the intimidation of the neoliberal university. Embracing Harré et al.’s (2017) conceptualisation of the university as an infinite game, the authors have been repurposing neoliberal obligations and standards using an ethics of care and rest to guide them. Employing collegially supportive collaborative writing processes, the authors are learning how to make intentional choices that do more than tick neoliberal boxes, but which purposefully enrich their lives. In this chapter, readers are invited to join the quest and become ‘game masters’ of their own lives and work. They will negotiate obstacles and overwhelm, recognise and gather the resources that sustain them, and ultimately, face ‘The Boss’.

Game-based learning has been recognised as a strategy to increase students’ engagement in higher education. Alternate reality games (ARG) provide players with the opportunity to apply newly developed knowledge and skills, such as visiting important campus locations and completing relevant activities. The collaborative nature of these games means they have the potential to support socialisation in the new environment. This study used a mixed-methods approach to examine the experience of 13 students who participated in an ARG during orientation week at a regional university in Australia. Data were collected using an online survey implemented at three time points, and from focus groups which took place at the end of the semester. Results of the analysis indicate that participants who played the game, reported a more positive emotional state, greater familiarity with the university campus and engaged in more social interactions than their peers who attended orientation, but did not play. These results suggest that an alternate reality game can engender positive emotions in new enabling program students and help them to create friendships at university. This impacts their sense of connectedness, one of the factors identified as important for success in higher education.