Constraints and autonomy for creativity in extracurricular gamejams and curricular assessment

Grey, Simon; Parker, David; Gordon, Neil

Abstract

The engagement observed by the players of the games that they play is a desirable quality that has not gone unnoticed in the field of education, leading to concepts such as gamification of education, game-based learning and serious games for training. Game designer Sid Meier is often cited as defining games as being ‘a series of interesting decisions’. The concept of choice implies an autonomous selection from a constrained set of options. This article reflects on the impact of autonomy and constraints, and extrinsic and intrinsic motivators on students’ software development work during both curricular and extracurricular activities. Finally, a model for the design of games for game-based learning is proposed in terms of autonomy and constraints with respect to learning outcomes.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: May 9, 2018
• Print ISSN: 2156-7069
• Electronic ISSN: 2156-7077
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Open
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Article Number: 2023
• APA6 Citation: Grey, S., Parker, D., & Gordon, N. (2018). Constraints and autonomy for creativity in extracurricular gamejams and curricular assessment. Research in Learning Technology, 26, https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v26.2023
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v26.2023
• Keywords: Learning; Gamejam; Extrinsic motivators; Intrinsic motivators
• Publisher URL: https://journal.alt.ac.uk/index.php/rlt/article/view/2023
• Copyright Statement: © 2018 The Author(s); This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
• Additional Information: This paper is part of the Special Collection: Playful Learning Conference, edited by Fiona Smart and Mark Langan.