Keywords

1 Introduction

Personal contact and individual feedback becomes increasingly challenging as funding rates decline, teaching staff is reduced and student numbers rise. Especially for mandatory, bachelor-grade classes with huge numbers of participating students, motivated educators are continuously intent on developing and deploying new teaching strategies. The goal is to get the students to engage with the course materials on a deeper level that is on the one hand appealing to learners and on the other hand - at least for now - not easily circumvented by the widespread usage of generative AI. Gameful approaches have shown promise to be used as learning tools for students to reflect on various topics [2, 8, 11], however, finding fitting games that deal with exactly the problems discussed in specific lectures is difficult [4, 10]. Facing this challenge and knowing the widespread problem space also from other university contexts, an innovative approach has been chosen. Since there were only a few applicable games available at the time, a collaboration between learners and educators started out to develop new practice based and engaging games.

In the summer semester of 2023, Purgathofer and Luckner offered the course Gameful Design, in which 32 students enlisted in Bachelor and Masters programs of Media and Human-Centred Computing created board games specifically aimed at the topics of the interactive lecture called Ways of Thinking in Informatics [5]. The course is mandatory and offered primarily to first year bachelor-grade computer science students of the curriculum “BSc. Informatics” at TU Wien. The work developed during the Gameful Design course resulted in seven game prototypes created by groups of students over three design iterations. The course focused first on gameplay and game mechanics; then on learning goals and learning transfer. It also included the creation of a framework to be used for deeper reflection regarding the specific “way of thinking”. Finally it focused on testing and balancing the games. The detailed course concept along with in-depth descriptions of these prototypes will be published at a later date. Five of these game-based learning prototypes were selected and, along with a number of additional games designed in other contexts but for the same purpose, refined and professionally produced to be played by nearly 700 students as part of the “Games and Labs” exercise of Ways of Thinking in Informatics in the winter semester 2023. Additionally, some already existing digital games and board games were selected to widen the students’ choices.

Next to a selection of preexisting digital games that could be played alone or in groups, students had the possibility to either borrow from a number of board games to be played at home or participate in large in-person game events where individual students and teams could sign up for a spot to play all of the offered board games in a hosted environment. Each of the participating students played a minimum of two games within a two hour session. The publication at hand will focus on the reception and insights of these participants, who, as part of their coursework, reported on their experience with the exercise, the games, the game event, their learnings and takeaways. This paper will present lessons learned from the initial investigation of this collected pool of data as well as the authors observations.

2 State of the Art

The benefit and intrinsic value of gaming has been widely researched in the past. The topic spans a variety of professions, from psychology to education and sociology. The positive impact of playful learning in young minds has lead to increasing interest within different age brackets. One of the first scholars extending the scope of gamification to youth and learning was Piaget [12]. His ideas and the psychological groundwork was utilised by numerous scholars and translated in K-12 and higher education setting [2, 8, 11, 14, 16]. As teaching styles progressed into modern forms, new technologies and artefacts were introduced. A lot of the groundwork to gamification and game based learning (GBL) was developed by Resnick et al. [13]. As stated by Subhash and Cudney: “In the field of [higher education], gamified and game-based learning and teaching systems have shown their effectiveness in the promotion of student engagement, motivation, and performance” [15]. Interestingly, despite the large number of publications on the topic of game based learning, a stable definition for a “game” is hard to find. For this work Juul’s definition [7] has been the main guide, with the finding that every game needs these six distinct features to be viable: (1) games are rule-based, (2) have variable, quantifiable outcome, (3) offer value assigned to possible outcomes, (4) players invests effort to influence the outcome, (5) they are emotionally attached to outcome, (6) and the consequences are negotiable (see Juul 2003 [7]).

As research progresses and enables new insights, Maratou et al. [9] concluded that the “advantages of analogue [game-based learning] benefit both educators and students. [...] analogue GBL promotes a variety of soft skills that otherwise are hard to induce using traditional methods of teaching. These skills could include collaboration and communication, creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making” [9].

3 Research Setting

This case study was conducted at TU Wien, in Vienna - Austria. The university has 26.110 students, 6.000 in the informatics faculty. Each year around 700 of them (including around 120 female and diverse) go through the mandatory course Ways of Thinking in Informatics (course number 187.B12Footnote 1). This course has a learners workload of 5.5 ECTS which amounts to 140 working hours for the students. During the “Games and Labs” exercise participating students needed to select one of these eight discussed “Ways of Thinking” as their main focus: Scientific Thinking, Computational Thinking, Design Thinking, Responsible Thinking, Critical Thinking, Criminal Thinking, Policy Thinking, Creative Thinking. Every student had to play two games related to this specific “Way of Thinking” during a play session of at least two hours. Students could either lend games to be played at home or join public in-person game events, which were held in the main building of the university.

A diverse pool of data concerning the students’ experiences was collected based on their perception, and perceived content retention. Students filled out one survey in the beginning of the exercise, collecting basic data. For each game they played, they filled out one survey regarding their perception of games impact and their experience with it. This quantitative research design was based on bloom’s taxonomy [3]. Additionally, each student wrote a long form report about playing games and what they learned from them; was asked to formulate two questions other players could asked themselves after playing the game to boost learning transfer and reflection; give explicit feedback about the merit and pitfalls of this type of exercise; and finally write a reflection about their personal takeaways.

Since providing this data was part of their grade, students had to hand in their answers paired with their student identifications. The exercises were graded by someone else as to not make them identifiable by the authors of this paper and were then downloaded without identifiers for the purpose of evaluation. Thus, all data was evaluated anonymously, without students needing to fear repercussions or a negative impact on their grade due to “bad feedback”. Due to the short time-frame between data collected throughout the semester and the publication of this paper, we only present results of the initial investigation. The data was collected in German, direct quotes where translated for this publication.

4 Evaluation and Lessons Learned

In this section the authors give insights into findings from the data analysis along with lessons learned, operational adaptations that were implemented throughout the semester, as well as (so-far untested) strategies formulated to improve setup, reception and students’ experiences in upcoming semesters. The section is structured to first discuss the game selection itself, then focuses on the students’ experiences with the exercise and their coursework, and finally outlining the organisational framework underlying the exercise.

4.1 Purposeful Board- and Card Games

Many of the board games utilised in this study were created by teams of students in a prior lecture, Gameful Design. This will be the topic of a forthcoming publication, but for future reference, the mode that we created groups of Bachelor and Master students who worked together on game prototypes was intensely fruitful. The Bachelor students were still closer to the content of the lecture and could better emphasise with the needs and wants of first semester students. The Master students, however, had a more detailed overall knowledge and feeling in how far the content of Ways of Thinking in Informatics supported, impacted and colluded with other courses in their studies, and thus, which aspects they found to be valuable to be put into the games.

However, it is important to select a variety of game format and styles, as some students still struggled with the selection of games available. With a large number of learners it is important to allow for a variety of play styles, interests and account for preexisting knowledge. According to the survey, 6.1% of students play board games “very often” and around 50% “often and sometimes”. As a result, a lot of students liked the simple rule set of memory while others felt it was too boring for this purpose. Some found the level of dealing with the lecture topics that the games afforded to be sufficient or surpassing their expectations: “I appreciated the selection of interesting games and the fact that I could choose the games myself” or “I could see that the games were created with passion and highly appreciated this exercise, as it brought variety in the often monotonous study routine”. Others found the games’ level and challenge superficial: “The games should not be this superficial when it comes to the topic.”, “I found the games were drab and would have needed more freedom for the players”, “I would have wished for a wider selection of board games about my way of thinking” or “The game was easy, I would have wished for it to be more challenging”. To mitigate these shortcomings, students suggested additional exercise modes where they could propose other existing games to add to the pool or create their own games instead of playing pre-selected games.

During the semester it also became apparent, that some game manuals and rule sets lacked detail, were confusing or too long: “The basic idea of the game was good, but reading the manual kept interrupting the flow.”, “Some of the terms in the manual were too specific and not explained well” or “The rules were too complex to understand the game within one hour”. Additionally especially but not exclusively in regard to the self-designed games, the authors redesigned some rules on the fly, seeing options to improve the rule-set to better support the anticipated impact. Thus, one unexpected downside of analogue games was the necessity to develop, regularly update, print, fold and distribute the games’ manuals. For future iteration, digital manuals are developed and included in the games in the form of QR codes, as the need to update the game manuals further over time seems inevitable.

4.2 Surveys and Reports

The initial investigation shows that participants appreciated the game-based format as a change: “The format was very entertaining and pleasant, I was able to pick up a lot because of the gameful approach”. Students rated the knowledge transfer particularly positive as the game-based approach enabled interaction and peer-level reflection: “I appreciated spending time with new people and learning something new at the same time.” and “I experienced the format as very neat and found it great, that I was able to work on my understanding of the subject matter and meet new people at the same time. We had a lot of fun, despite the fact that I didn’t know anyone beforehand. I have no complaints”. A majority of students (74%) recommended to utilise the approach in other higher education settings and courses as well: “At the game event the atmosphere was very enjoyable and positive and the games are a great opportunity to elaborate on the lectures content. First, I was sceptical if such a balance could be maintained, but all games were well structured and offered a good mix of fun and learning. I would wish for more courses to apply this [game-based learning] concept at such a high level.” and “I find this format very useful, as there are good reasons to use games and entertaining content for learning. In my opinion, not using this format would be a step backwards (well aware that it is not the norm [in other courses and learning environments])”. Experiencing the course topics in this palpable fashion also led to so-called “light bulb moments” or insights, in which students grasped aspects of the course content that they had not realised before: “I made connections [to ways of thinking] during playing, but in reading more about my ‘way of thinking’ afterwards, I then actually experienced aha-moments”, “I had no notion about policy thinking before, but during the game it suddenly made click” or “In my opinion I learned a lot [in this exercise] and some things only sink in, if you find the mistake yourself along with having to find a solution for it”.

The collected data overall shows a positive impact of this practical approach of engaging with different “ways of thinking” and allows for playful engagement from unexpected perspectives. Learners that were confronted with a game-based approach challenged each others prejudices and reflected on their own understanding of their distinct “ways of thinking”: “The question I asked myself [during playing] was how to objectively rate other peoples’ opinions as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, if every person and every society [...] has a different concept of ‘good’ or ‘bad”’.

Especially the analogue, game-based approach was immensely helpful to foster engagement and discussions among students. It allowed for diverse groups to form and engage in (mostly) positive exchange - be it in cooperative or competitive game settings. Of the 197 students who reported on having met new colleagues, 191 indicated positive interactions and only 6 had negative experiences. This can also be seen in the recorded reactions, with one particularly striking set of answers to the event’s survey: While overall 84% of students agreed that game-based learning is useful in higher education. Diving deeper in these results it seems that the minority groups of female and diverse students especially gained from the benefits of this game-based approach. Within this subgroup around 94% of learners agree with its usefulness, see Fig. 2 in comparison to Fig. 1. This effect has been shown in other studies as well and implies a strong correlation between the alternative teaching methodologies and agendas towards more inclusivity in higher education, especially in computer science and engineering curricula [1].

Fig. 1.
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Students perspective on the viability of game-based learning in higher education (n = 426).

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Fig. 2.
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Female and diverse perspective on the viability of game-based learning in higher education (n = 88).

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4.3 Game Distribution and Game Event Organisation

Organising a system in which up to 700 students get access to a selection of relevant board and digital games over the course of one semester is not a trivial matter. While access to digital games was mostly problematic due to licensing issues for paid games, but otherwise organisationally irrelevant, this section will concentrate on the board game distribution, outlining two tracks of access to board games along with lessons learned and options for improvements.

The lecture team offered two tracks: students could either lend out physical board games or they could join one of four live gaming events. Data collected from 495 students showed that 258 students participated in one or more in-person gaming events, while 240 lent out board games or played digital games. Due to the limited number of copies the physical games that were lent out to students had to be returned within three to seven days.

In-person gaming events were designed to allow for random interactions between first year students and were distributed throughout the semester. This section discusses some relevant aspects, which influence the setup of an operational system to offer games that need to be played by 600+ students. This evaluation will report on the practical insights and issues with running these two tracks and thus include some specific advice for other institutions.

Track One: Game Pickup

One way to access the board games was to use the “game pickup” track. Students could come by the institute, lend out games and return them within an arranged amount of time. The three main factors, relevant for making this system work, were the time investment for the lecture team generated by regular office hours, the game’s availability, as well as tracking and retrieving the lent out games.

Office Hours. In the beginning of the semester, two two-hour time slots twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays) were offered by the authors during which students could pickup and return games. In the beginning of the semester, students had to return the games within 3–4 days since it was feared that availability would suffer with the limited number of copies of each physical game. However, the team highly overestimated the need for students to lend games, resulting in more effort than actually needed. Thus, later in the semester, office hours were reduced to once a week and in a few cases additional time slots were offered by request, if a students could not come by during the specified office hours.

Availability. Students had already decided which games they wanted to play at the beginning of the semester by selecting a specific “way of thinking” for this exercise, which gave us an overview, which games would be in higher demand than others. With an asset management system within the learning management system - in this case Moodle - in place, it was expected that students would individually sign up via the system and the lending out process would be managed digitally. Thus, the availability would be tracked and visible to students and the lecture team alike. However, due to a number of human factors this system became unusable as students did not manage to sign up, did not show up at the specified office hours or return the physical copies on the requested dates. Lecturers quickly lost track of the lent out games, a situation that needed to be mitigated immediately.

Tracking and Retrieving. Ultimately the team switched to an analogue “library system” to track incoming and outgoing games. For each game, students had to sign up with name, students ID, and telephone number, so that there was a chance to reach them in case they did not return a game. As luck would have it, one of the students who lent out two games, actually unregistered from their studies in the same week without returning the games first. Only the additional data from the sign up process, i.e. the telephone number, helped in retrieving said games. Later in the semester the pickup date as well as the planned return date were added to the library cards, to make students with their signature more accountable and make it easier for the team to track when to expect the games back and when to start asking for returns if they were late.

If game pickup is offered by an institution, as in this case, the overhead should be taken into account and minimised as far as possible for the students as well as the involved lecture team. Technological solutions of course are a viable option to handle this but need to be enforced and operated, a challenge that should not be underestimated during the planning phase.

Track Two: Live Gaming Events

The second option to access the board games was to join in-person gaming events. We offered four of these equally distributed throughout the semester, using a number of seminar rooms which were located in close proximity to each other for students to play games in.

Registration. Students needed to register in the lecture’s learning management system if they planned on joining a live gaming event, since the rooms only offered a limited amount of space and we only had a limited amount of copies available for each game (5–9 copies per game). Each of the gaming events was originally planned for 6 h with a room capacity of 80 students per hour. While we had a high amount of registrations for the first two live gaming events, 80% and 53% of the available slots were booked respectively, the six hours for the last two events were hardly needed. Thus, they were shortened to four and two hour long event slots, which were still only filled to 35% and 21% of the room capacity.

The authors have found two main issues with the registration process, both of which could have been fixed easily, if anticipated earlier. Sadly, the registration tool in Moodle did not provide an exportable and usable table for the registration that could have been used on-site during sign up, which made the administration harder than necessary. Additionally, in the registration there was no option to select which “way of thinking” the students intended to play. On the one hand, this made it hard to support the group building process or to keep an overview of which and how many games were needed. On the other hand, some students struggled, because they could not remember which “way of thinking” they had planned to play, thus complicating group building and game distribution even further.

Event Setting. The game events took place in four adjacent seminar rooms with movable furniture, which was important to create islands for students to sit around, to play and to create a more gameful atmosphere. One room was utilised as headquarters and show room, where games were laid out, participating students could sign in and the individual groups were organised. On average, about four people of the lecture team were present during each game event, so students were able to ask questions about the games, the rules, exercise modes, lecture content and everything in between. Thus, the in-person events additionally provided a low level means of interpersonal interaction between students and the lecture team. Some playing tables were also located directly in the headquarter room.

Throughout the event, students were organised in groups and there was a lot of coming and going as new rooms needed to be occupied or tables became available after groups had left the event. As students flocked in the rooms, the events changed their appearance a lot. Full desks and obviously entertained students led to a chain reaction in creating a playful mood and enjoyable experience. While the authors anticipated that their presence in the room would not impact the students’ gaming experience, observation showed that the atmosphere tended to be better and lighter in the other rooms in comparison to the headquarters. For example, the authors observed more chatting and laughing occurring in other rooms, whereas the main room tended to be quieter and more reserved.

This effect should be taken into account during the preparation stages. Events should be planned concise and short to fill up the available space. Full tables and rooms should be the goal of planning and some waiting-time for students is not detrimental, as eager learners engaged in discussions - especially when already placed in groups - while waiting for a spot to open up. To allow for the necessary space as well as the desired mood to be created, the authors suggest a physical separation between the organisational part of the event - handing out of the games, accounting for participation and answering questions - and the gameful interactions between the students. However, the rooms need to be in close proximity to lessen the organisational overhead.

Group Organisation. One of the major issues in organising these in-person gaming events was to create groups of students who planned to play games about the same “way of thinking”. Some students were well organised and had already put together groups to play with in advance. However, the majority of students were not yet well connected with their peers and came alone or in groups of two or three. This is partly due to that fact that Ways of Thinking in Informatics takes place in the very first semester of their bachelor studies, so many students are completely new to university and have not yet had the opportunity to get to know their colleagues.

Thus, some awkward interactions with students who showed up alone occurred. The main issue occurred when only a few students arrived at the same time and did not have matching “ways of thinking”. Often they could not be placed in existing groups and had to wait for other students with suitable “ways of thinking” to arrive. For some, the issue was resolved rather quickly while others had to wait around for 20 min and more and then had to be placed in groups that were already playing and half way through a game. Some groups ended up being composed of students interested in different “ways of thinking”, thus negatively impacting their potential takeaways: “My view on my way of thinking was not greatly impacted, due to the fact that I was in a mixed group and we did not play a game designed for my particular way of thinking”.

While this issue was not fully resolved, a set of ideas was formulated to be tested in the upcoming semesters: students have to register not only for a time slot but also for a “way of thinking” to provide for a better overview in advance and on-site; the gaming events can be organised by one or two specific “ways of thinking” - this approach creates a more homogeneous pool of participants who can better play with each other; students could be tasked with organising themselves and sign up in groups from the start, however, that just moves the awkward group building process to a different - possibly online - location and might not be easier for the individual students; learners could also be tasked to create teams on-site, before they come to the headquarters to sign up, again handing the responsibility for the group building activity to the students; some of the games can be adapted to be played from different points of view, thus making it easier to be played by groups of students who are working on different “ways of thinking”.

4.4 Preparation and Reflection

In Ways of Thinking in Informatics a variety of exercise types are offered throughout the semester. Each student can choose which of these exercises they will complete for the eight distinct “ways of thinking”, which are presented and discussed in the lecture. While learners can pick and choose, which exercise they will do for which way of thinking, most of these exercises can only be done after the specific chapter has been discussed in the lecture, creating a tight timetable over the course of the semester.

Playing and analysing the games is one of the only exercise types that can be completed at any time throughout the semester, the thought process being, that some exercises needed to have less restrictions to be able to better fit in, whenever students have spare time. While many students thus moved the exercise to the beginning of the semester, where they had more time - an effect easily noticed in the registration and event capacity - they reported on issues analysing the games in regards to some of the “ways of thinking”, e.g. needing to analyse a game from the point of view of “policy thinking” without having a clear understanding what “policy thinking” entails.

This issue is adjacent to issues around the game distribution and event organisation. On the one hand, educators could create more restrictions around the exercise type itself - when and how the game analysis can be done. On the other hand, students do appreciate the option to choose their own deadlines and pace of working and appreciate the freedom that comes along with it. Thus, teaching teams might need to point to more opportunities of independent study - giving a content overview for each chapter with pointers to what might be relevant for deeper reflective activities; providing more guided questions for reflection for each game and the accompanying “way of thinking”; and pointing towards specific resources that need to be read before playing the games.

5 Conclusion and Future Research

The authors are inclined to recommend this student-centred and game-based approach to other courses in higher education. At the university level, the utilisation of current, modern and innovative approaches is key to approach the diverse and heterogeneous set of students, higher education strives to teach and introduce to the scientific field and method. We found that, similar to existing studies, “over a quarter of the students are conscious that [game-based learning] sessions allowed them to learn while having fun [...] they do not understand playing as an unproductive or childish activity” [6].

A more diverse selection of exercises can, and in our case did, lead to an improvement in female students engagement; led to a great number of social interaction; and a deeper, more palpable insight in the courses content. Different “ways of thinking” could be practised, explored and discussed with the use of purposeful board games. The setting of in-person, analogue and multiplayer games gave space and time to an incredible amount of personal growth, as can be seen in the students feedback and impressions in the rooms.

This initial case study was a valuable experience that, while highlighting some issues and pitfalls in the selection of games, organisation and setup, also showed the promises of this type of coursework. Students became enthralled in the lecture topics and at the same time the easygoing in-person game events created the means of forming inter-personal, collegial connections and building communities of practice that, if fostered, could support students throughout their studies in higher education.