Introduction to Game Design Class - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 129

Figure 8.17
Recursiveness through prior stages.

With the first instance, the game of Senet has been selected for the students, and Lee s interac-

tion with the groups of players is more overt. He walks around the classroom, guiding and refo-
cusing the students as they play (stage 1). With the second instance, the students are taking
Lee

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s role, becoming the more knowledgeable others. They have selected the game, and they
are responsible for facilitating the activity (stage 2). Finally, the familiarity of playing the game
is removed, and students focus on the skills of writing a game analysis (stage 3). Stage 4 is
reached when students start working on the creation of their own game.

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Figure 8.17, derived from work by Gallimore and Tharp (1990), provides a visual representation of
the process.

Lee s gaming of the syllabus is a form of discovery learning, an inquiry-based, constructivist

approach proposed by Jerome Bruner, that thrives on problem-solving situations: The students
draw from their own experiences and knowledge to discover facts and relationships. They interact
with the world, real or imaginary, by exploring and manipulating objects and situations, wrestling
with questions and challenges, and performing tasks and experiments.

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Here, the syllabus becomes more than a piece of paper with placatory words stamped onto it. As
Bruner states in TheProcessofEducation:

The first object of any act of learning, over and beyond
the pleasure it may give, is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us
somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.

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Bruner argues that, in order to
enable the transfer of thinking processes from one context to another, students need to learn the
fundamental principles of a subject matter rather than just master the facts.

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As Bruner suggests, Lee encourages his students to construct hypotheses, make decisions, and
discover principles by themselves. He has organized his content, identified the skills required, and
illustrated the theories to be learned in ways that allow his students to build their new knowledge
on their existing experiences. Lee facilitates a recursive learning process that is strengthened by
scaffolding. This powerful, constructivist approach results in students that are actively engaged,