Game on for collaborative learning
Game on for collaborative learning
Game on for collaborative learning
June 15, 2022
By Matthew Harrison
Summary
Several years after my experience with the lunchtime gaming club, I embarked on a research project to investigate how cooperative video games could support children with social-emotional differences to develop targeted social skills.
Supporting students to become proficient in learning and using collaborative skills requires them to both acquire knowledge of the steps in performing the skill and an understanding of why each skill can be important, and then recognise when to perform the skill to benefit the team.
As part of my research, five students with a diagnosis of autism or Down syndrome participated in a 10-week collaborative gaming program teaching 15 targeted collaborative skills, ranging from "Taking turns" and "Doing our jobs", through to "Asking for help" and "Giving feedback".
During the first session none of the students was able to demonstrate the targeted skill of "Offering peers help", but by the final session, the skill was observed being used by members of the group on 10 separate occasions.
Filming the workshops provided us with ample footage that we could edit into video models for providing children and their teachers with explicit examples of how the targeted skills could be performed and the contexts in which they were useful during play.
Significant interactions during gameplay were also examined in greater detail, in order for the teacher-researcher to better understand what led to each child using a particular skill and their success in using the skill.
While the research provides a guide for how schools might implement a structured, social skills program to support neurodiverse students, more work is needed to establish whether the skills learned as part of a collaborative games-based intervention successful convert to real-world scenarios.
Reference
Harrison, M. (2022, June 15). Game on for Collaborative Learning. Retrieved June 22, 2022, from https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/game-on-for-collaborative-learning