PhD Journal Articles

I'm pleased to announce I now have two more papers published on my PhD research. The first article, "Game-Play Breakdowns and Breakthroughs: Exploring the Relationship Between Action, Understanding and Involvement" is in Human Computer Interaction and focuses on the case studies I carried out how they resulted in a theory of the relationship between learning and involvement within the context of games. The theory is represented as a set of 14 claims that relate to: micro and macro involvement; breakdowns and breakthroughs in action, understanding and involvement; progress; and agency, meaning and compelling game-play. In particular, the paper emphasises the ways in which players experience learning via breakthroughs in understanding, where involvement is increased when the player feels responsible for progress. We also argue that supporting the relationship between learning and involvement is vital for ensuring the success of commercial and educational games. (You can also find out a bit more about the methods I used in my 2013 DiGRA journal paper: "Making sense of game-play: How can we examine learning and involvement").

The second article, "The Gaming Involvement and Informal Learning Framework" is in Simulation & Gaming and provides a good overview of the three studies I carried out in and also presents the GIIL framework as the culmination of all my findings. Essentially, the framework is able to account for both how and what people learn from gaming while also highlighting the influence of player identity. Further, the iterative relationship between identity, involvement and learning is emphasised: the more strongly someone identifies themselves as a gamer, the greater their micro and macro-level involvement and the more likely they are to learn from their gaming experiences. This is represented in the figure below (taken from my PhD thesis and also reprinted within the article).

Technically these articles are still in press but both journals have put them up online before print. It's great to have them out there and see all that hard work come together :-)

My PhD thesis

My thesis is finally available via ORO: Digital Games: Motivation, Engagement and Informal Learning.  I've included the abstract below though please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or comments :-)

This thesis investigates the relationships between motivation, engagement and informal learning, with respect to digital games and adult players. Following the reconceptualisation of motivation and engagement (as forms of micro and macro level involvement respectively) three linked studies were conducted. In the first study, 30 players were interviewed via email about their gaming experiences. The resulting set of learning categories and themes drew attention to learning on a game, skill and personal level, which arose from micro-level gameplay and macro-level interaction with wider communities and resources. The second investigation consisted of eight case studies that examined how involvement and learning come together in practice. Participants were observed in the lab during two gameplay sessions and kept gaming diaries over a three week period. A method for categorising game-play breakdowns and breakthroughs (relating to action, understanding and involvement) was developed in order to analyse several hours of gameplay footage. The previous categories and themes were also applied to the data. The findings suggested a relationship between macro-involvement and player identity, which was further investigated by a third survey study(with 232 respondents). The survey helped to establish a link between identity, involvement, and learning; the more strongly someone identifies as a gamer, the more likely they are to learn from their involvement in gaming practice. Four main contributions are presented: (1) an empirical account of how informal learning occurs as a result of micro and macro-involvement within a gaming context, (2) an in-depth understanding of how breakdowns and breakthroughs relate to each other during play, (3) a set of categories that represent the range of learning experienced by players, and (4) a consideration of the role player identity serves with respect to learning and involvement.