Alan Amory

Tool-mediated authentic learning in an educational technology course: a designed-based innovation

This design-based research project is concerned with the design, development and deployment of interactive technological learning environments to support contemporary education. The use of technologies in education often replicates instructivist positions and practices. However, the use of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (C), authentic learning (A), and educational technologies as tools (T) to mediate learning provides an integrated CAT framework to design and use learning experiences that transform not only individuals but also their world view. The work reports on the design, redesign, and evaluation of an honors course on the use of information communication technologies in teaching and learning. Analyses identified a number of design principles useful in conceiving learning tasks to support the theoretical framework. The CAT framework fosters the use of learning mediation through the use of educational tools that support collective knowledge construction of individuals and their communities, rather than replicate the use of technology for instruction.

Instructivist Ideology: Education Technology Embracing the Past?

It is argued that against the background of a neo-managerial and market-driven global education system, the production and use of technology to support teaching and learning perpetuates hegemonic behaviorist values. Activity theory, as a lens, is used to explore the power relations that are integral to the development and use of Reusable Learning Objects, Learning Management Systems, blended learning and computer video games. The analyses show that education technologies are often designed to support masculine hegemonic behaviorist instruction practices. As an extension, education technology is used in the classroom as the object of instruction to support fundamentalist values rather than a tool to mediate knowledge construction. However, collaborative solving puzzles that are part of complex computer video games, or interactive learning environments, can be used as a means to mediate contemporary learning practices. Apart from managerial rules, management authority and expert authority, power associated with individuals can disrupt activity systems in order to support their own individual epistemological positions.

Gendered Play and Evaluation of Computer Video Games by Young South Africans

Abstract This study investigates the preferences and attitudes of young South Africans who play and evaluate computer video games. The quantitative data reported here is part of a partially mixed concurrent quantitative/qualitative research design. Seventy-eight participants (14 to 24 years old) took part in game play workshops that lasted for five days, after which they answered a survey. Results show that young South African women and men like similar games, identify with female game characters, dislike cognitively challenging games, and rate their competitiveness in a similar way. It is argued that participants performed their gendered stereotypes based on prior social experiences in and expectations of the patriarchal and heteronormative masculine South African society. The study also discusses the implications for the use of games in the classroom.

Pre-service teacher development: A model to develop critical media literacy through computer game-play

Abstract The primary objective of this study was to investigate the use of game-mediate learning with pre-service teachers, with the view to evaluating the use of a socially mediated knowledge construction to develop appropriate classroom pedagogical practices. Two instrumental case studies are presented in order to explore how pre-service teachers understand the use of computer games in teaching and learning. These cases are part of a collective case study to advance the theory of the use of video games in learning and teaching. Different groups of pre-service teachers participated in the study. The first group included third-year undergraduate education students who played a computer game on the biology of diseases. The second group of participants, postgraduate students reading for their teaching qualification, played computer games designed to address misconceptions related to genetics. The introduction of game puzzles into a learning activity acted as an explicit mediator of learning, and discussions...

Development, evaluation and use of an assessment instrument to measure learning skills

In order to evaluate the usefulness of computer-based games as viable learning tools, it is necessary to be able to measure the effects of game-play on player skills. The objective of this study is to design and evaluate an assessment instrument that directly measures Literacy (visual, logic and mathematical) and Communication (reading and writing) skills, as defined in the Persona Object Model (POM), in order to provide information that could contribute to the design of appropriate game-based learning tools. The POM, previously developed to define a typical player in terms of the Game Object Model (GOM), which incorporates modern educational theories to support the conceptualization and design of educational games, provides the theoretical underpinning for the development of an instrument to appraise literacy (visual, logical and mathematical) and communication (reading and writing) skills. This paper reports on the design, testing and use of this instrument, in order to quantify the skills of 5 groups of young South African learners (school students from Buhlebemfundo, Qhakaza and Tholokuhle, and first year students from the University of Zululand [UniZulu] and University of KwaZulu-Natal [UKZN]), prior to game-play. Results indicate that majority, except most of the UKZN sample, lack appropriate visualization, logical, mathematical, reading and writing skills. Analyses of the results suggest that poor performance might be related to language skills and socio-economic factors. Educational games for South African learners therefore need to include appropriate interfaces, content representations and puzzles that support different literacy and communication skills.

Learn to Play to Learn: Activity System as Reflection

In order to explicate patterns pertinent to educational video game design and to evaluate the relationships between games and learning, Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is used to investigate games and the associated theories developed over the past decade. Analyses show that computer video games are the product of social collaboration and function as Objects (during their design and creation) and as Tools (foundation for the development of other Tools, and as learning and entertainment artefacts). However, the idiosyncratic and homological ideologies of Actors often work against underlying educational principles to advance their own gender, race and belief hegemonies. In addition, educational video games, as part of socially constructed learning, support active, transformational meaning making. The use of the CHAT lens to reflect on game development supports the constructs that CHAT, as prime unit of analysis, is a collective, artefact-mediated and Object-orientated activity; always includes multiple points of view; is shaped over time; and includes contradictions that are the source for all change and development.