Art and Design Commons^™

Playing To Grow. Roundtable Interview On Games, Education, And Character, Owen Gottlieb, Matthew Farber, Paul Darvasi

Articles

In this roundtable interview moderated by Paul Darvasi, lecturer at the University of Toronto and co-founder of Gold Bug Interactive, Owen Gottlieb and Matthew Farber discuss research and practice at the intersection of religion, character education, and games in schools. Gottlieb is an associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, founder and lead faculty at the Initiative in Religion, Culture, and Policy at the MAGIC center, and founder and director of the Interaction, Media, and Learning Lab at RIT, where he specializes in interactive media, learning, religion, and culture. Farber is an associate professor of educational technology and coordinator …

Build Your Own Body Mod: Empowerment Through Prototyping And Design, Anaiss Arreola, Katherine R. Ganim

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

When you don’t have a hand, what could you have instead? This article introduces the impact of inviting youth with disabilities to learn tools and technology to design their own solutions and advocate for their own future. This approach to programming is rooted in a mindset of designing WITH, not FOR. Not only are design outcomes improved when users are incorporated into the process, but this approach has been shown to improve confidence in creating one’s own solutions. These programs include hands-on “design-your-own-body-mod” workshops, as well as a budding inclusive design consultancy led by youth with disabilities. Through this programming, …

Minecrafting Bar Mitzvah: Two Rabbis Negotiating And Cultivating Learner-Driven Inclusion Through New Media., Owen Gottlieb

Articles

In 2013, a boy with special needs used the video game Minecraft to deliver the sermon at his bar mitzvah at a Reform synagogue, an apparently unique ritual phenomenon to this day. Using a narrative inquiry approach, this article examines two rabbis’ negotiations with new media, leading up to, during, and upon reflection after the event. The article explores acceptance, innovation, and validation of new media in religious practice, drawing on Campbell’s (2010) framework for negotiation of new media in religious communities. Clergy biography, philosophy, and institutional context all impact the negotiations with new media. By providing context of a …

Designing Analog Learning Games: Genre Affordances, Limitations And Multi-Game Approaches, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

This chapter explores what the authors discovered about analog games and game design during the many iterative processes that have led to the Lost & Found series, and how they found certain constraints and affordances (that which an artifact assists, promotes or allows) provided by the boardgame genre. Some findings were counter-intuitive. What choices would allow for the modeling of complex systems, such as legal and economic systems? What choices would allow for gameplay within the time of a class-period? What mechanics could promote discussions of tradeoff decisions? If players are expending too much cognition on arithmetic strategizing, could that …

Re-Playing Maimonides’ Codes: Designing Games To Teach Religious Legal Systems, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Lost & Found is a game series, created at the Initiative for

Religion, Culture, and Policy at the Rochester Institute of

Technology MAGIC Center.1 The series teaches medieval

religious legal systems. This article uses the first two games

of the series as a case study to explore a particular set of

processes to conceive, design, and develop games for learning.

It includes the background leading to the author's work

in games and teaching religion, and the specific context for

the Lost & Found series. It discusses the rationale behind

working to teach religious legal systems more broadly, then

discuss the …

The Lost & Found Game Series: Teaching Medieval Religious Law In Context, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context. The Lost & Found project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy. The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & Found …

Your Iphone Cannot Escape History, And Neither Can You: Self-Reflexive Design For A Mobile History Learning Game, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter focuses on the design approach used in the self-reflexive finale of the mobile augmented reality history game Jewish Time Jump: New York. In the finale, the iOS device itself and the player using it are implicated in the historical moment and theme of the game. The author-designer-researcher drew from self-reflexive traditions in theater, cinema, and nonmobile games to craft the reveal of the connection between the mobile device and the history that the learners were studying. Through centering on this particular design element, the author demonstrates how self-reflexivity can be deployed in a mobile learning experience to …

Statefulness And Tangible Interaction In Design Education, Alex Lobos, Tim J. Wood

Presentations and other scholarship

Interaction in Industrial Design is expanding from tangible realms to intangible digital experiences. In this new environment, Interaction Design provides logical sequences and behaviors that allow users to easily navigate through complex workflows. This paper discusses a framework in which interaction design provides an innovative approach to traditional industrial design. This includes the concept of ‘statefulness’, where the dynamic changes of complex systems are broken down into states that can be defined and manipulated in order to achieve a desired user experience. This framework goes beyond having physical components of a product control digital interfaces and develops experiences that jump …

Time Travel, Labour History, And The Null Curriculum: New Design Knowledge For Mobile Augmented Reality History Games, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the 'null curriculum'. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to …

Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context.

The Lost & Found games project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy.

The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & …

Alpha, Beta, Launch: A Newbie's Guide To Educational Video Game Development, Colleen Krahulik, Lori Goszczynski

Journal of Interactive Humanities

This paper details the process we went through to develop an educational video game, which includes: research on implementing video games into the classroom, vendor selection, video game design, and curriculum development. Throughout the video game development process, we faced challenges such as budget, time constraint, and varying areas of expertise. This paper serves as a guideline for similar organizations interested in educational video game development.

Play game on desktop or tablet: www.avma.org/videogame

Play within browser: https://www.avma.org/KB/K12/videogame/index.html

Benefits Of Video Presentations In Product Design, Alex Lobos

Articles

Product Design uses a human-centered process to develop solutions that solve unmet user needs. Because of the sequential nature of this activity, final designs are often presented in printed process books or digital slideshows, which visually communicate the development of the solution from start to finish rather than focusing just on the final result. Storytelling is a key element to consider when creating these process books in order to communicate the design solution as well as where it came from. An alternative to these presentations is the use of short videos, which offer the advantage of communicating the design process …