Enhancing educational designs with gaming principles: an inquiry into playing and making interactive digital narratives

Designing digital learning with gaming principles was examined in the context of creating several artifacts including a literature review, a website, a Choose Your Own Adventure activity and a Google Form survey. Gaming in education was found to innovate teaching when developing literacy and storytelling skills based on real-world experiences. Incorporating gaming in education required a design-thinking and a system-thinking approach using digital tools such as Google Drawings and Twine. Ludology (gamification) and narratology (gaming) are discussed as two sides of the same coin where play exists between them. Together, these findings about role-play, eSport, and social emotional learning are useful when designing literacy instruction. Applying Francis’ four-part model as a framework with Gee’s affinity spaces and design principles suggested that digital gaming in education has a positive effect on learning and on the future of education. It is suggested that emergent narrative experiences require agency, while playing and making digital games is unique to other media genre in English Language Arts (ELA). When skillfully combined, effective mentorship, digital gaming, and emergent narratives can support ELA curricular goals. The results were used to inform design decisions and make future recommendations. How can 'new' digital media develop more expressive narrative forms and genre?