Background/Purpose: Student designed games (SDG) embraces the games creation journey and encourages students to construct their own meaning by creating an environment that promotes innovation, creativity, and problem solving. SDG provides an environment for developing habitus and thereby challenging an individual's ties to their reality of yesterday. The purpose of the study was to investigate the development of habitus through SDG.
Method: A case study was adopted to describe, explore, and illustrate the SDG intervention. A total of 88 students and 6 lecturers from a university in the United Kingdom participated in the study. The 5 week (10 hours) unit was designed to create an environment where students experienced SDG through an ‘Olympics Athletics Challenge'. The unit was designed based on the four phases of SDG development (planning, modification, refinement, and finalization). Data were gathered from reflections, discussion groups, online forums, game templates, and game evaluation forms.
Analysis/Results: Thematic analysis of data identified 4 themes. These were labelled as: Building cohesion, pre-eminence of rules, experiences of learning and embracing the creative process. The themes are thoroughly discussed within the context of developing habitus.
Conclusions: SDG allows for the development of group habitus. A group of ‘like' people placed in a new environment opens the doors to safely question their reality of yesterday. SDG allows recognition of positives and negatives of being a part of a seemingly constructivist learning environment and highlights the need to further explore the specific roles of all involved.
Keywords: Students Designed Games; Creative Process; Habitus
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