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The Teaching Game

Integrating HCI and SoTL Through Video Game Research Methods

This dissertation integrated two research traditions that rarely talk to each other: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The bridge between them turned out to be video games, and the methods developed for formally analyzing how they work.

A course has players, environments, rules, sequences, and ways of measuring performance. So does a game. Analyzing a course with the tools developed for game analysis opens up conversations about course design that don’t get stuck on content and assessment.

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Figures

A selection of key figures from my dissertation.

Chapter 1: Introduction

One of the pivotal conversations that led to the design of this dissertation involved a throw-away comment that compared these software-mediated teaching and learning experiences to those more commonly seen in video games (figure 1.2). If teaching and learning were experienced in similar ways to video games, perhaps the ways in which we design and analyze video games could be applied to informing our understand of teaching and learning as well.

Figure 1.2: One of the conversations that shaped the direction of this dissertation. AI-generated character portrayal provided by Stable Diffusion

One of the pivotal conversations that led to the design of this dissertation involved a throw-away comment that compared these software-mediated teaching and learning experiences to those more commonly seen in video games (figure 1.2). If teaching and learning were experienced in similar ways to video games, perhaps the ways in which we design and analyze video games could be applied to informing our understand of teaching and learning as well.

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Presentations

UCalgary Conference on Postsecondary Learning & Teaching

April 28, 2023, University of Calgary

Faculty of Science PhD Graduate Seminar

December 22, 2022, University of Calgary

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TL;DR

It’s a long, long document. Who has time to read that?

There’s a NotebookLM podcast summary available, and Claude 4 Opus generated this brief(er) overview with a focus on implications for course design in higher education. It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing. And if you want to go deeper, there’s the whole document for that…

AI-Generated Content via Claude 4 Opus

Summary: The Teaching Game - Integrating HCI and SoTL Through Video Game Research Methods

Core Thesis

This dissertation by D’Arcy Norman (University of Calgary, 2023) proposes a novel approach to understanding teaching and learning by integrating Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through the adaptation of video game research methods. The work demonstrates that course designs and classroom activities can be meaningfully analyzed using concepts from video game design and analysis.

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References

Adams, A., Lunt, P., & Cairns, P. (2008). A qualitative approach to HCI research. (Publisher: Cambridge University Press)

Adams, E. (2014). Fundamentals of game design. Pearson Education.

Alexander, B. (2017). The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media - Revised and Updated Edition, 2nd Edition. ABC-CLIO.

Al-Naabi, I., Kelder, J.-A., & Carr, A. (2021, August). Preparing teachers for emergency remote teaching: A professional development framework for teachers in higher education. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 18(5). Retrieved from https://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol18/iss5/4 doi: 10.53761/1.18.5.4

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Blogroll last updated on Friday, March 27, 2026

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