Renewable open game-based resources

This project is offering a solution to the problem of disengaged learners, since the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic. In my country, South Africa, a very large proportion of the population is disadvantaged, with steep poverty rampant throughout the nation. Due to the poor infrastructure at most rural schools, learners struggle to appropriately engage with their learning materials. Approximately 55.5 percent (30.3 million people) of the population is living in poverty at the national upper poverty line. This solution would assist learners in rural schools, who could create open game-based resources that could be shared with other learners for years to come. Due to the shoestring approach used in this project, learners will not require high-end technological equipment, but the artifacts themselves could be uploaded to digital repositories (the team will do this) for other schools to use. These artifacts may also be made as multilingual artifacts, to serve the official 11 languages in South Africa.

The renewable open game-based solution that I am proposing looks at learners or students creating games, either board or card games, that relate to specific school subject content. The approach will require learners to collaborate and engage with each other, to decide the game's rules and how the subject content will be infused into the game itself. The novelty comes with the open pedagogy, where the games themselves will be shared digitally with other schools across the nation, to assist the most destitute schools. Learners in the proceeding years will be able to access and engage with these games, and be able to adapt them. Open pedagogy is the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it. It's a form of experiential learning in which students demonstrate understanding through the act of creation. The products of open pedagogy are student-created and openly licensed so that they may live outside of the classroom in a way that has an impact on the greater community.

The team will be targeting university students at first using a design-based approach, so that we can also research the efficacy of the solution before going to schools. The team will be expanding the solution to schools across the country, where learners from all different backgrounds can engage and share in designing open game-based resources that could lead to re-engaging learners and developing their self-directed learning. The learners at schools, as previously mentioned, are underserved, as the poverty dilemma leads to poor infrastructure at the schools themselves, where teachers are forced to use traditional teaching methods that do not allow for engaging classroom environments. The game-based approach is favored due to its prevalence in modern culture as a form of entertainment. Numerous benefits exist such as:

• Helps problem-solving — Game-based learning can help students solve problems by fostering skills like understanding causation, logic and decision making they can use in life outside of school.
• Encourages critical thinking — Research has shown that GBL can improve students’ critical thinking skills, “including the development of independent beliefs prior to engaging in collaborative discourse and providing opportunities for guided reflection.”
• Increases student engagement and motivation — A 2019 research paper found when teachers incorporated digital game-based learning elements such as feedback, choice and collaboration into their instructional design, students become more engaged and motivated to learn.
• Introduces situational learning — Learning doesn’t only occur in our heads; it in fact, it’s a fundamentally social process. Proposed in 1991 by Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, a computer scientist, situated learning helps students understand new concepts in the context of their social relationships.
• Addresses special education needs — GBL positively impacts special education classrooms, too, according to this 2020 literature review. Researchers found that for students with individualized education plans, “game-based learning is a must to help guide instruction, create a positive environment, and generate academic success… [And students] with autism [are] more successful and motivated when using computerized games for academic lessons.”

Dr. Bunt is situated in a town that has a diverse cultural background. Several "informal settlements" are located around the urban and suburban center of Vanderbijlpark. Due to the end of Apartheid in my country, the legacy of the racial segregation laws still persists. Economically, the African population of South Africa is the most adversely affected when it comes to poverty. Dr. Bunt has been in the field of teacher education for the last 11 years, and have visited several schools in order to assess student teachers. He has built a relationship with several principals of schools, and knows their challenges with disengaged learners. Regarding the co-development of the project, he has been in consultation with these schools, and their inputs have allowed me to conceptualize the solution as outlined previously. Collaborators from the Mahikeng campus of the North-West University also assist in this project, namely Prof. Jako Olivier, who has extensive experience in the fields of OER and multimodal education. Prof. Sacip Toker, from Atilim University in the USA, will also join the team. He has experience in Information Systems Design, E-commerce, and M-commerce, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Instructional Design, Developing Sustainable Evaluation Frameworks, Using Statistical Procedures to Assess Business Impact as well as E-Learning. He will assist in data and statistical analyses, as well as structuring the project in terms of instructional design. Prof. Meltem Baturay, from Turkey, is also a team member. She is the founding leader & president of LET-IN (LEarning & Teaching INnovations) R&D Group, with experience in  Instructional Technology, Distance Education, Blended Learning, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. Prof. Baturay will assist with the instructional technology used to upload the games to repositories.

This solution would require some technical expertise in terms of analyzing statistical data, which will be collected from the initial research phase of the project. We would also possibly require some funding in order to digitize these games, or even possibly patent them for sale, in order to assist the schools financially. Marketing the solution would also be of tremendous value, as we would prefer to get as many schools on board as possible.

The approach to using open game-based learning in South Africa is novel, as it has not been done before, as indicated from a literature review done by the team leader. This approach could be the catalyst for change, as the results and impact could be shared with governmental departments of education, which could lead to systemic change.

2022- We aim to run the pilot of the solution at a university, and to collect artifacts of the games and upload them to an open repository. We will also collect research data, such as survey responses as well as interview data. The embedded mixed-method experimental research design has qualitative data embedded within an experimental design (Creswell, 2014). The priority of the design is established by the quantitative, experimental methodology, and a qualitative dataset that is subservient within the methodology (Creswell, 2014).

2023-2025 - We aim to spread this solution to schools within the wider Vanderbijlpark area, to destitute and poverty-stricken schools. Schools will employ the solution, wherein artifacts will be collected, including the games themselves. The games will also be uploaded and shared to an OER repository, where other schools across the nation can adapt and modify the original games, creating value and meaning for the participants.

2022- Quantitative pre- and post-test data (n=50) by means of the SDLI
instrument, prior to and after the implementation of intervention
will be collected only in relation to the students’ perceptions of their
SDL. Qualitative, descriptive, observation data of students playing the
OER games will be gathered in order to examine the nature of the
development of SDL, during the implementation of the intervention. The
intervention will entail a 4 month long collaborative and co-operative
learning approach, in which groups of students will design either a
board game or card game on specific History topics. The students will
design these games as OERs and will upload these games and their rules
to OER repositories. Once completed, a peer assessment approach will be
used, where the groups will play each other’s games. These games will
then be used again in the following year, where the new cohort of
students can adapt and improve upon the previous year’s students’ games.
Qualitative interview data will also be collected after the intervention to follow up on the experiences of the participants after completing the intervention.

2023-2026 - This solution will be diffused 20% of schools in five years, and we are planning to collect at least two artifacts from each school, which are
more specific and measurable goals.

The theory of change for this project will be Ubuntu. It is defined as a collection of values and practices that people of Africa or of African

origin view as making people authentic human beings. While the nuances
of these values and practices vary across different ethnic groups, they
all point to one thing – an authentic individual human being is part of a
larger and more significant relational, communal, societal,  environmental, and spiritual world. As the team will be employing this solution in informal settlements that have been influenced by poverty, we hope to re-engage these learners through the open game-based approach. Allowing students to socialize and learn from their peers, by making meaning from their experiences in a fun and creative approach will enable value creation and make learners aware that they are connected to their communities, especially when it comes to sharing their creations.

The core technology that will be used in this solution entails the use of broad audiovisual media, such as digital photographs or videos of the open game-based resources that will be created. These audiovisual media will be uploaded to an OER repository, where it can be shared with the broader community. The other technology would entail using mobile and software applications to connect to the internet, where these shared games can be accessed.

The team is composed of multiple ethnicities and genders. In the future, once the solution has been branded and marketed, we would be open to working with anyone from any background that would be interested in using the open game-based resources approach. Every individual in the team knows and understands their role in our culture. We encourage all our participants to identify and celebrate their differences and find ways to use those differences to add value to their open game-based resource.

The more people work together and learn from each other's experiences while working on our project, the more inclusive the environment becomes. It can also help build a sense of community or Ubuntu in the schools we will be working in. That’s why we prioritize collaboration and teamwork in a diverse society.