Developing Digital Literacy Through Design of VR/AR Games for Learning

Digital literacy is becoming accepted as part of the necessary 21st century skills for students in many countries all over the world. Although there is consensus about the necessary 21st century competences, there is a need to operationalize and examine how students may reach these competences. This design-based research study investigated how the design of digital games for learning could support students in developing specific digital literacy competences. Based on the hypothesis that students can become digitally competent by developing educational games, this project examined a new curriculum for digital literacy proposed by the Ministry of Education in Denmark. In the present project, K7-K9 students used a game-based learning design to create educational VR games using the CoSpaces Edu (2020) tool, which is an interactive 3D application. The students were guided through iterative design phases and discussions as they created educational games for their peers with the help of two game-based learning design frameworks. Next, an analysis was conducted on the elements in the students' digital game design processes that contributed to them reaching specific learning goals of the new digital literacy curriculum. The findings of the analysis indicated that by going through the various design and development phases of creating digital games for learning, the students were able to develop 14 out of the 17 learning goals of the new digital literacy curriculum.