View Content #27772

Stephanie Knight, CASLS Assistant Director

For the past few weeks, we’ve been discussing the idea of escape rooms and breakout boxes and how, when articulated with critical content in mind, these gameplay genres constitute Complex Learning Scenarios (check out this Topic of the Week and this Topic of the Week). Given the abundance of realia and ongoing interactions inherent in these genres, a single experience could yield hours of classroom inquiry, interaction, and learning.

Educators wishing to use CLSs in the classroom are urged to examine each interaction within a particular experience and to discern the critical content at play: grammar, vocabulary, and strategies (both language learning and pragmatic strategies). After making this distinction, teachers should think critically about what content needs to be highlighted in wrap-around activities in teh classroom. For example, upon completing a puzzle in which learners have to listen to a weather report to discern a target location, the teacher may ask them to reexamine the same weather report for a different purpose (e.g., deciding what to wear) to model and engage in enhanced practice related to the skill of listening for key details. The key with these activities is to revisit the media used in the puzzles to examine them and to consider what they teach about communication in real-world contexts. As such, teachers are urged not to pick apart all of the content included in the original CLS, but rather to highlight what in the experience is most salient for communication and proficiency development.

Another consideration for teachers implementing CLSs is that of timing and sequencing. Most CLSs include more than 10 interactions with targeted realia and media. As a result, the cognitive load associated with manipulating these artefacts varies from step to step. As such, teachers should employ a varied approach to timing and sequencing. Sometimes, it may make sense to do the first interaction (or a series of interactions) as a group in order to model the strategic thinking required through a think-aloud protocol. Other times, it may make sense to allow learners to work independently for as long as they can without interfering (other than to provide direction and feedback when the learners become frustrated). The key consideration at this step is to figure out ways to scaffold the tasks for learners in lieu of making them easier (for example, Oviatt, Coulston, and Lunsford (2004) suggest that learners may want to employ multimodal communication strategies among themselves as cognitive load increases. Teachers can encourage this shift as learners encounter difficulties). Doing so protects the active creation of meaningful and complex schemata and engagement in higher-order cognitive and social practices.

In accordance with this overt focus on higher-order engagement, it is also critical that educators provide a space for learners to reflect. This reflection can be part of the CLS itself (e.g. ask learners prodding questions that require them to articulate their lines of thinking, inquiry, knowledge, and struggles) as well as included as part of a sequence of wrap-around activities that engage learners in analysis of the target content and skills at hand. Here, a good rule of thumb is to help learners identify strengths and use what they can do in order to solve problems as they arise. Doing so will likely increase motivation (see Janssen, de Hullu, and Tigelaar (2008) for research about the relationship between motivation and reflection related to strengths).

CLSs are rich and immersive. Given their play orientation, they have the potential to help learners acquire critical skills and content and language compentences (Chik, 2014; Honeyford & Boyd, 2015; Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robinson, 2006; Jensen, 2017). Teachers can capitalize on these affordances by using the realia associated with the CLSs not only to provoke play, but also to provoke ongoing, in-depth learning through wrap-around activities. This week’s Activity of the Week provides a concrete example of one such activity.

References

Chik, A. (2014). Digital gaming and language learning: Autonomy and community. Language Learning & Technology, 18(2), 85-100.

Honeyford, M.A. & Boyd, K. (2015). Learning through play: Portraits, photoshop, and visual literacy practices. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 59(1), 63-73.

Janssen, F., de Hullu, E., & Tigelaar, D. (2008). Positive experiences as input for reflection by studnet teachers. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 14(2), 115-127.

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Clinton, K., Weigel, M. & Robinson, A. J. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Chicago, IL : MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved from www.newmedialiteracies.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/NMLWhitePaper.pdf.

Jensen, S. (2017). Gaming as an English language learning resource among young children in Denmark. CALICO Journal, 34(1), 1-19.

Oviatt, S., Coulston, R., & Lunsford, D. (2004). When do we interact multimodally? Cognitive load and multimodal communication patters. Proceedings on the 6th International Confernece on Multimodal Interfaces, Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.94.4523&rep=rep1&type=pdf.