It Takes Three: Re-contextualizing Game-based Learning Among Teachers, Developers and Learners

Appropriation of e-learning applications in the class mainly depends on three actors: developers, teachers (experts interested in authoring or using applications), and learners (pupils or students who will play to learn or to express their knowledge). This paper addresses the problems facing primary and secondary school teachers in the technology-enhanced classroom. First we identify three teachers' attitudes towards learning games and apps in the classroom. These attitudes determine how the teacher will contextualize the chosen technologies in the individual (teachers' own appropriation of technologies), interpersonal (interaction and activities in class-guided participation) and community plane (school system and pedagogical goal-apprenticeship). This contribution is based on studies conducted in different Danish schools in the past two years, including primary and secondary education, and classes with special needs students. Our second contribution results from a broad survey of learning applications and game authoring environment for non-programmers, which provided a classification and allowed us to explicitate the roles of different actors in the technology-augmented classroom. We adopt an inclusive perspective on the design of e-learning solutions, based on Rogoff three planes of analysis. The insights from our 2 contributions lead to a tripartite architecture for the creation, sharing and managing of learning games, supporting three actors, and an early prototype of a CMS, currently under development.