Deepening the knowledge of sustainability and game design through experiential learning

Background

In November 2023, I held the first implementation of the Gamification for Sustainability course at University of Oulu. The aims of the course were twofold: 1) to introduce students to the opportunities and challenges of sustainable development in general and especially in the field of human-computer interaction, and 2) to develop students' understanding, knowledge and skills in sustainable interaction design (Blevis, 2007) through the user-centred design of games and gamified applications for sustainability. I developed the course following the pedagogical model of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996; Lindblom-Ylänne & Nevgi, 2009, 138-155).

This model ensures that the learning outcomes and competence goals of the course are in line with the course content, teaching methods, students' activities, feedback, and assessment methods. Thus, the model ensures that students learn meaningful things in an optimal way. The model includes five iterative and interactive steps or features (Biggs & Tang, 2007, 92) that provide students with (1) a good learning environment, (2) a well-structured knowledge base, (3) appropriate learning activities, (4) formative feedback, and (5) reflective practice and self- monitoring of one’s own learning (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Constructive alignment model to guide teaching in such a way that students achieve the targeted learning outcomes and competence goals (based on Biggs & Tang, 2007)

When applying this model to course design, I started by defining the learning objectives and then gradually built the course content in such a way that the learning objectives can be achieved, demonstrated, and assessed. In planning the course, I used questions and answers. What do I want the students to learn and know at the end of the course? How can learning and knowledge be demonstrated? What do students need to know in order to complete their assignments? How to ensure that students are engaged with the course every week? Based on these questions, I formulated and defined the tasks, content, different activities, the assessment methods, as well as the learning environment, such as the Moodle workspace, and I thought more consciously about the learning atmosphere.

The learning theory underlying the design of the course is the experiential learning theory (Kolb & Kolb 2005; Lindblom-Ylänne & Nevgi, 2009, 206-209). It is a type of humanistic learning theory (Alaniska et al. 2022; Lindblom-Ylänne & Nevgi, 2009, 204-206) and its principles are active student learning, independent thinking and decision, interaction with others, and learning by doing. Therefore, I thought that project-based group work should be a significant part of the course's learning activities and requirements.

Reflection

Reflecting on the teaching experience and feedback, I consider the course a success. Students, peer teachers and my university pedagogy mentor have appreciated the usefulness of the course in the current curriculum, the interestingness of the content, the clarity, logical progression, flow, interactivity, pace and structure of the lectures, the well-designed activities and tasks, the feedback between teacher and students during the course, the interaction with and between students, the encouraging and inspiring learning atmosphere and much more. As a first implementation, there was also room for improvement, such as the timing of various activities and staying on schedule during lectures.

The students' performance in the course was generally very good to excellent. In addition to weekly individual assignments and learning diaries, the course work consisted of project-based group work, where a concept and possibly a prototype of a gamification- or game-based application promoting sustainability was designed. The students learned about games and gamification, game design, user-centred design, sustainable development, and climate change communication. The group work method activated working life skills, such as teamwork, communication, time management. I would like to emphasize here that group work was particularly rewarding for a group where students were from different academic backgrounds, so multidisciplinary teams are recommended for complex topics such as sustainability whenever possible. The course is included in the Sustainability Studies Network, so students from different universities in Finland are welcome to participate in the course thus increasing the cross-disciplinarity of teams and projects.

Another lesson from this teaching experience is that reflective practice helps the teacher to be constantly connected and aware of what is happening in the course and ready to make changes when necessary. In addition, self-monitoring of one's own learning in the constructive alignment model can mean, on the one hand, the teacher's learning about what works well during the course, what requires development, and even an increase in the teacher's own understanding of the subject and research in the area. On the other hand, it can refer to students themselves monitoring and reflecting on their own growth and understanding of the subject and interaction during the course. To activate these reflective skills of the students, I used learning diaries and weekly assignments which were integrated with the course learning objectives and project-based group work; these proved very beneficial for both students and the teacher.

Experiential learning for game design and sustainability

Finally, I would like to conclude with a few remarks about experiential learning. I found it a useful method for teaching, learning, and even designing games. In the course, experiential learning was briefly presented during the lectures as an underlying learning theory and a targeted generic skill and in the project requirements as a recommended game design approach.

According to Kolb and Kolb (2005), experiential learning emphasizes the learning process rather than the outcome (it is a constructivist learning theory). Accordingly, learners build their own understanding of the world or problem they encounter, and this understanding is built on various interactions with the environment (people, information, experiences, nature, tools, etc.). Learning takes place by adapting between different ways of experiencing: feeling, reflection/seeing, thinking, and action/doing. Thus, it is a holistic process that integrates various experiences, cognitive processes, and interactions with the world (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). I think the experiential model by Kolb and Kolb reflects learning in everyday life as well as in working life; it is like a (re)search process where actual experience (‘feeling’) inspires an answer or explanation (‘reflection’) and once this is formulated or theorized (‘thinking’), it is applied or tested (‘action’) in new contexts; the cycle repeats to further refine knowledge, adaptation to and understanding of the world.

In sustainable game design, the experiential learning model can be applied iteratively also as a group work using techniques such as brainstorming, cooperative learning, collaborative learning. In the first learning iteration or cycle, in the first phase (‘feeling’), a problem related to sustainable development is identified. In the second phase ('reflection'), the identified problem is discussed in the group about what possible solutions could be created; what can be changed and how? In the third phase ('thinking'), the students analyse and select the different methods, concepts, theories learned in the course in relation to the design solution; which theoretical and methodological approaches could work well in designing a solution and how can they be applied? Finally, in phase four (‘action’), students cooperate and collaborate to formulate, design, and test a game concept and prototype based on the theories and methods found appropriate in the previous phase. A game concept and a game prototype require different iterations to complete; these are performed in different experiential learning cycles. For example, in a new learning cycle, the experiences identified and reflected in the initial phases of the cycle (‘feeling’ and ‘reflection’) refer to the problems or questions of the current design and how to solve them.

References

Alaniska, H., Hurskainen, J., Kähkönen, T., Maikkola, M., Pihlaja, J., & Tauriainen, T. M. (2019). Pedagogisia malleja. Oulun ammattikorkeakoulu. 2022. https://vanha.oamk.fi/emateriaalit/wp-content/uploads/pedagogisiamalleja.pdf

Biggs, J. (1996). Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education, 32 (3), 347–364. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF0013887

Biggs, J., & Tang, C. 2007. Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student Does. 3rd edition. The Society for Research into Higher education & Open University Press.

Blevis, E. (2007). Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (503-512). https://doi.org/10.1145/1240624.1240705

Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential  learning in higher education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4(2), 193-212. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2005.17268566

Lindblom-Ylänne, S., & Nevgi, A. (2009). Yliopisto-opettajan käsikirja. WSOYPro, Helsinki. https://doi.org/10.31885/9789515150325

 

Kirjoittaja: Dorina Rajanen

 

Challenges in Teaching English for Professional Purposes

I did my teaching practice during the Spring Term 2020 for the course English for Architecture. This course is designed for first-year students of Architecture with the overall aim of developing their professional communication skills in English. The core content focuses on architectural building critique; the main objective is to teach students how to critique and describe architectural buildings or designs and what elements belong to that. These include, for example, the context of the building, the environment, the design idea, the function of the building, internal and external features, building materials, structural features, or technical parameters, such as light, color, and size. Each lesson focuses on a different aspect that is designed to enlarge the students’ professional vocabulary. Throughout the course, the students get to focus on developing oral and written English language skills, which enable them to follow developments in their own field of architecture and get along in an international environment with a sufficient level of proficiency. The course takes a student-centered approach in the social-constructivist tradition, and my classroom situation is similar to the following describtion: 

In the student-centered class, teacher talk has diminished drastically to give way to student talk, student-student interaction and student assertion. In this way students are encouraged to create and develop their own learning style. The teacher acts as a mediator and guide rather than as a main source of information. Besides promoting  peer communication, collaboration and active learning or learning through discovery, student-centeredness also aims at turning students into independent, autonomous learners by creating and developing self-motivation and self-regulation skills. (Boghian 29-30)

For my teaching practice, I had chosen three aspects which I wanted to particularly focus on, both in order to develop my own pedagogical skills and to improve the course: time management, digital pedagogics, and written communication. I improved with regard to all three aspects, though some with more limited success. The move from classroom to online teaching because of the coronavirus situation affected my plans to some degree, but it also  had a positive effect on some other pedagogical aspects. 

Time management during the first lessons has been somewhat of a problem when I taught the course in earlier years, because I often have too much material and too many activities planned. I wished to avoid having to rush the students through the exercises or having to move activities into the next lessons. While I improved a bit on this aspect, the problem still remained during the first 2 or 3 lessons. However, I realized that the time issue is not so much due to poor lesson planning on my behalf as to the fact that the students in this class have different levels of English. Some work faster than others; some need more guidance from the teacher. And it takes precisely those first three lessons for me to figure out a suitable pace for this particular class. However, I decided to cut some of the content for these lessons in the future and to take along the cut-out materials as extra materials for the faster students. That way, the slower students won’t feel that they are being behind the others.

Secondly, I had planned to include more digital pedagogics into the course, particularly the use of Padlet, which I had tested in the previous year and which was received very well by the students. I wished to include more Padlet-related activities as well as to test Kahoot and Flinga. In addition, I was using Moodle for the first time ever and wanted to use this particular course to test out as many of its interactive tools as possible. Moodle became a very useful resource, especially when switching to online teaching, and I discovered a lot of useful tools within it, especially the interactive quizzes, of which I will make even more use in the future. The use of Padlet, Kahoot, and Flinga had been planned mostly for the second part of the course after the skiing holidays, but the move to online teaching forced me to revise some of the activities. I managed to use Padlet only twice, but Kahoot and Flinga not at all. On the plus side, I thoroughly learned how to teach via Zoom, which will be of great benefit for the future. If Zoom teaching continues, I will try to find ways to combine it better with these other digital tools.

My third aim was to the develop the written communication aspect of the course and to align it better with one of the course’s assessment methods, which is a final essay on a building that the students have designed themselves. Written communication is one of the 4 core skills of language learning: reading, writing, listening, and speaking (cf. Harjanne and Tella 213-214). While the students get plenty of oral communication practice and listening and reading practice during the course, I have always felt that the written aspects falls a bit short during the lessons. The move from classroom to online teaching afforded me with the best opportunity in this respect. I turned some of the discussion tasks and pair activities which we would have had in the classroom into small individual writing tasks, and the students got to write opinion pieces and practice reflective and critical thinking/writing about architecture much more thoroughly. I also provided the students with individual feedback for these tasks and with tips on what to improve. Overall, I think that this prepared them much better for their final essay assessment. As described by educational scholars, Biggs’ model of constructive alignment “suggests an ideal synergy between the intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities which meet those outcomes, and assessment and evaluation which demonstrate the achievement of the outcomes” (Paskevicius 128). The bigger focus on written interaction during the latter part of the course helped creating a better synergy.

Overall, the feedback I received from the students for the course was very positive. They all had enjoyed the course and found that it had greatly improved their English skills. They also thanked me for my friendly and supportive attitude. The fact that everyone completed the course is also a sign that the overall teaching objectives were achieved. My comments from my mentor were also very supportive and encouraging, which gave me much confidence. She also gave me some useful advice on various aspects of language didactics, for example, on how to practice the students’ pronunciation. While this is not a specific aim of the course, my mentor had a good point there; after all, improving your pronunciation is part of improving your English communication skills. These are things that I will more consciously pay attention to in the future.

Question: Do you have any tips and tricks for teaching classes in which students have a different level of skills/knowledge?

Sources:
Boghian, Ioana. “The Didactics of English Literature from the Perspective of Student-Centered Strategies.”  Journal of Innovation in Psychology, Education and Didactics 16.1 (2012): 29-36.

Harjanne, Pirjo, and Seppo Tella. “Foreign Language Didactics, Foreign Language Teaching and Transdisciplinary Affordances.” Foreign languages and multicultural perspectives in the European context; Fremdsprachen und multikulturelle Perspektiven im europäischen Kontext. Dichtung – Wahrheit – Sprache, edited by A. Koskensalo, J. Smeds, P. Kaikkonen, and V. Kohonen. Berlin: LITVerlag, 2007. 197-225.

Paskevicius, Michael. “Conceptualizing Open Educational Practices through the Lens of Constructive Alignment.” Open Praxis 9.2 (2017): 125-140.

Kirjoittaja:

Katrin Korkalainen

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