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More than any other project considered in this chapter, the Rabble Room Arcade
project articulates the more developed rhetorics of play. The students are clearly
advocating 'play for the sake of play' which would be in line with the expectations
of the frivolous play rhetoric. Not only are the students promoting frivolous play but
are simultaneously poking fun at the societal norms associated with game culture
and utilising their arcade to enhance social interaction and emphasise the physical
importance of play. It is clear that the students are attempting to share their view that
the world is a place full of potential and paradox and that this can be explored
through a shared play experience. This confi rms that these students have also
adopted more advanced play selves by demonstrating the capability to integrate
multimodal and multidimensional elements across contexts in service of humanity,
or in this case a social grouping. Such characteristics would tend to be associated
with the dynamic player.
3.5
Summary: The State of Play
We have described a representative sample of student projects from the BCT degree,
all of which exhibit some degree of play or playfulness. Whilst any universal defi ni-
tion of play or playful behaviour remains elusive, an analysis of the projects sug-
gests that as students progress through the degree, the nature and character of their
play change. It is important to emphasise here that we do not present play as a
purely instrumental approach to learning. Our observations indicate that students
are undergoing a developmental journey that extends their creative capabilities and
their potential to contribute to society. Such anecdotal evidence is in accordance
with other research that suggests that play can contribute to the social capital of
adult learners (Gordon and Esbjörn-Hargens
2007
; Harris and Daley
2008
). Whilst
play may seem fanciful, the projects outlined in the previous section can be mapped
to the expected characteristics of the graduate profi le. A number of generic graduate
attributes have been excluded; however, the mapping to relevant attributes is shown
in Table
3.2
. Whilst there is only partial coverage, it is important to bear in mind that
each project only constitutes a single semester of study. Whilst gaps and anomalies
exist, the projects at the higher levels of study show the highest degree of achieve-
ment in terms of demonstrating the attributes stated in the graduate profi le. This
suggests that as students develop through the degree that they are more capable of
undertaking work of suffi cient scale and complexity that demonstrates this achieve-
ment. Interestingly, few of the projects discussed address issues of sustainability
though many other projects not included do consider this.
Whilst demonstrating achievement is important, we also encourage students to
'play' with their own university education and test boundaries. Playing with one's
own education changes the perspective of learning as being taught into an active
process driven by one's own interest and curiosity. More specifi cally, we aim to cre-
ate conditions in which students learn to use play, interaction and games to develop
both exploratory and performative ways of operating in the university environment.
