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Center for Games & Impact

Games & Learning Research From Role Playing to Minecraft

Join the Center for Games & Impact for a lunch time brown bag talk on Wednesday, May 21, 2014 at Noon on the ASU Tempe Campus (location details provided below). We are kicking off the summer with a Brown Bag talk from international friends joining us from Denmark’s games and learning research community.

Speaker Details:

Thorkild Hanghøj

Redesigning and Reframing Educational Scenarios for Minecraft within Mother Tongue Education
By Thorkild Hanghøj, PhD, Associate Professor, Aalborg University – Copenhagen
The presentation will present preliminary findings from an on-going research project on the use of Minecraft Edu within MTE at four Danish primary schools. The findings both concern the teachers’ redesign of the game scenario and the students’ reframing of their scenario-based game experiences. My background involves more than ten years of research on games and learning across a broad range of different game formats. My current focus is on the educational use ofMinecraft, the use of games in teacher education as well as the development of a theory for understanding game-based learning as a form of scenario-based education.

Marlene Nielsen

Settlers and Disabilities – Board Games as Tools for Learning, Strategy, and Social Repositioning
Marlene Nielsen, associated researcher, Aarhus University
Everyday interaction can be challenging for people with disabilities as implicit rules of social interaction can be hard to comprehend and act on. Board games offer explicit rules and generate an understanding of interaction, creating a frame for inclusion. Egmont Højskolen is a Danish boarding school for adults. The school is home for approximately 160 students of which up to one-third have mental and/or physical disabilities. At Egmont Højskolen, the course ‘The Brain Twister’ is centred on playing games. Here the teacher of the course applies board games, such as Settlers, as a tool for teaching the students about the art of playing games but also about cognitive strategies and inclusive social portioning. Based on anthropological research, we have conducted six months of fieldwork on ‘The Brain Twister’. In my presentation I will present our preliminary findings from the field, along with future plans and outlook of the project.

Andreas Lieberoth

The role of episodic memory in learning from on-location games
Andreas Lieberoth, ph.d. fellow, Aarhus University
Theories from cognitive neuroscience suggest that one-shot experiences in unique settings activates memory processes neurologically separate from everyday semantic and procedural classroom activities. Here, we present preliminary analysis of experiential factors that predict the use of episodic memory in recalling content from an on-location “mobile urban drama”, and “unfreezing” of students’ assumptions about historical inequality and democracy in an educational role-playing game played at Copenhagen’s 100-year-old naval fortifications.

Event Details:

  • Date/Time: Wednesday, 5/21 @ Noon
  • Location: Payne West, Rm 129, Arizona State University (Tempe, Ariz. 85287)
  • Speakers: Thorkild Hanghøj (Department of Communication, Aalborg University), Andreas Lieberoth and Marlene Nielsen (Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University)
  • Session Description: The Vikings are coming, and they will share on games and learning! From role playing to Minecraft, Thorkild Hanghøj, Marlene Nielsen, and Andreas Lieberoth will present 3 works in progress related to educational gaming research.

*Light refreshments will be provided.

RSVP here: