This study reports upon students’ strategies for inquiry and resource use in a program of game design learning. The study highlights the need for understanding the relationship between project-based learning creative tasks involving student design of an artifact, and, the inquiry strategies that can best support these tasks. Findings offer pragmatic insights on design of information literacy scaffolds, and theory on guided discovery-based learning.

1. Inquiry and Resource
Use Strategies that
Emerge Among Middle
Schoolers
in a Guided DiscoveryBased Program of Game
Design Learning
ALISE 2014
Rebecca Reynolds, Assistant Professor
Xiaofeng Li, Doctoral Fellow
Eun Baik, Doctoral Student
School of Communication & Information
Library and Information Science
Rutgers University

2. Learning Management Systems Are
Coming to K-12

3. LMS Curriculum Management, Content

4. Course Management

5. Course Resource Sharing

6. Prima Facie Assumptions
Using LMS will improve teaching effectiveness and
learning outcomes at middle school and high
school level.
• Where are the data?
Questions of infrastructure:
• 1:1 teacher and 1:1 student computer
availability; printers; scanners

7. Prima Facie Assumptions
Teachers:
•
Questions of fit: Subject domain, topic, assignment, grade level
•
Teacher’s own digital and information literacy, individual differences
•
Organizational skills
•
Information architecture / user interface design capabilities
• Navigation, labeling, categorizing, language
•
What material makes sense to digitize, what makes sense to keep in print?
•
How to effectively incorporate their own and students’ LMS access and use
into precious school instructional hours: During class? After school? At home?
Homework?

8. Prima Facie Assumptions
Students:
• Age / grade level / developmental readiness
• Individual differences (gender, SES, ELL status, IEPs, struggling readers, etc.)
• Prior technology experience / expertise variation
• Home access variation
• Information and digital literacy:
•
Orientation to and navigation of hypertextual environment
•
Internet reading
•
Searching/Finding/Interpeting/Using

9. Inquiry, Collaboration, Creation during a
Game Design Course
My research investigates MS and HS student engagement in
collaborative information-seeking behavior, within a pilot game
design learning program involving a wiki-based LMS as a “coordinating
representation” and productive social media platform.
 Design affordances / constraints of the environment
 Student inquiry and collaborative processes
 Learning outcomes: successes, struggles / challenges
• This testbed environment and program is richly and deeply
integrated into the schools in which it is being piloted.
• Research is eliciting understandings that are generalizable to wider
LMS proliferation, and may have implications for their successful
implementation.

10. INTERVENTION: Guided discovery-based game design program
and curriculum offered by the World Wide Workshop. MS, HS
teachers and students gain experience and expertise in a range of
agentive digital practices.

11. Globaloria is currently active
in 4 U.S. states: CA, TX, NY, WV, >2000 students

12. Learning Management System
as Information System

13. Learning Management System
as Information System

14. Learning Supports for Students and Educators:
Flash software, Wiki Environment, Curriculum,
Tutorials
“Hands On” Training Sessions (virtual, local)
• Globaloria Academy – In-person, intensive trainings (3)
• Online Mini Webinars - Web-based workshops (7)
Globaloria Mentors Program
Experienced educators take on a leadership role by
supporting other educators
“24/7” Virtual Support
• Expert Support via wikis, blogs, email, WebEx
• Educator Community Development – private
educators community wiki, peer-to-peer mentoring, weekly
educators newsletter, sharing teaching & learning reports
Rewards and Recognition
•Teachers: Stipends and Graduate credits are earned
•Students: Nationally-Recognized Game Design
Competitions

15. Domains of Learning and Expertise
•
Game Example
•
Constructionist digital literacy (skills needed in knowledge economy =>
6-CLAs)
•
Computational thinking through game design in Flash and programming in
Actionscript
•
Core curricular subject matter:
o When game subjects are linked to core curriculum and students deepen
knowledge about topic through online research and design
•
STEM career interests: Technology & Engineering; Computer Science
•
Motivation, Affect, Attitudes, Life Choices, New Possibilities and Horizons

16. Research Questions, Methods
(Reynolds, Hmelo-Silver, Sorenson, & Van Ness, 2013; Reynolds, Baik, Li, 2013).
o “What collaborative information behaviors do middle school
students evidence when given the chance to self-organize
their game design task-driven teamwork?”
o Step 1: Categorical analysis
o Data sources:
o video recorded face-to-face and virtual interviews with
student teams, transcripts, coded in 2 waves in
Dedoose
o Step 2: Case study analysis of 4 distinctly dissimilar
teams (Firestone, 1993)
o Data sources:
o wiki log files, wiki history, teacher quarterly progress
reports, game design evaluation results, and individual
student blogs

17. Collaborative Information Behavior Research Findings in
Globaloria
(Reynolds, Hmelo-Silver, Sorenson, & Van Ness, 2013; Reynolds, Baik, Li, 2013).
o Primary TASK categories that students engaged in during
class were identified as:
o game design
o game domain narrative development
o game programming
o Students engaged in resource uses on the wiki to support
these primary tasks
o Collaboration & information seeking are meta processes
supporting the primary game design task

18. Collaborative Information Behavior Research Findings in
Globaloria
(Reynolds, Hmelo-Silver, Sorenson, & Van Ness, 2013; Reynolds, Baik, Li, 2013).
Collaboration:
o Teams of 2-4 collaborate to complete a game (& some indivs)
o Unstructured collaboration practices
Inquiry:
o LMS provides information / organizational scaffolds for game
planning, programming, creation
o Unstructured inquiry practices

19. Findings
Wiki LMS Resource Uses:
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Review of Worked Examples of Existing Games
Assignment completion
Use of Tutorials
CMC
Review One’s Own Earlier Work
Information seeking for programming solutions to emergent problems
Unsuccessful Attempts.

20. Findings
o “… we always go back to the wiki and read it
over again…”
o “we can use other people‟s games from past
semester files and get ideas from them.”
o “sometimes I look and can‟t find the
information.”
o “sometimes the wiki doesn‟t have answers to
the exact problem we have.”

21. Findings
Wider Internet Resource Uses:
o
o
o
o
o
o
Internet – text
Internet – video
Internet – games
Internet – images
Evaluation of sources: strategies, challenges
Synthesis of information: how they use it, challenges
“I went to Google and I saw the oil spill, was thinking why did it
happen…I was thinking from my teacher, I need more like what
happened with an oilspill at Yellowstone River, but went to
YouTube, and I put in oil spill in Yellowstone…I ended up
picking the Gulf Mexico instead of the Yellow Stone cause the
Gulf has more information…I was doing separate search to
think „what is better, Yellow Stone oil spill, or the Gulf coast?‟”

22. Findings
Non-internet based human resources:
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Peer help,
Giving help
Help desk
Teacher expertise
Alternative resources
Engagement @ Home
Other classes
Mainstream media
Exemplifies: Collaborative information seeking
“I just ask someone, could you please check on work, and then
they would go „yea can you check mine,‟ and we check it, that‟s
how we know what we are doing wrong.”

23. Knowledge Building as Conditions to
Cultivate in Instructional Design
Reynolds & Hmelo-Silver. (2013). Areas of Convergence in Constructionism,
Knowledge Building and Guided Discovery Based Learning in the Globaloria
Game Design Initiative. Presented at AERA 2013 in San Francisco, CA.
Scardamalia & Bereiter (2006) describe knowledge building conditions in brief :
 Knowledge advancement as a community rather than individual
achievement
 Knowledge advancement as idea improvement rather than as progress
toward true or warranted belief
 Knowledge of in contrast to knowledge about
 Discourse as collaborative problem solving rather than as argumentation
 Constructive use of authoritative information
 Understanding as emergent
Knowledge building is afforded, but not guaranteed

24. How does Globaloria structure and scaffold students?
(Reynolds, Hmelo-Silver, Sorenson, & Van Ness, 2013; Reynolds, Baik, Li, 2013)
o Little scaffolding for effective discovery-based engagement
with the LMS (e.g., minimal information literacy instruction;
no inquiry circles (Kuhlthau, Maniotes, Caspari, 2007)
• This result may generalize to other present and future LMS
implementations with middle school and high school
students
• Signals strong need for information literacy skills instruction
• Signals strong and growing role for school librarians to
develop and implement scaffolds for more effective
“collaborative information literacy”

25. How does Globaloria structure and scaffold students?
• Guided Inquiry model of Kuhlthau is informing ongoing
modifications for information literacy; collaboration (e.g.,
more explicit information literacy instruction; transportation to
transformation in SYNTHESIS AND USE; reciprocal
teaching / inquiry circles)
• Quantitative research is investigating role of instructional
design factors and individual differences among students as
contributors to outcomes (for instance intrinsic motivation)
• The more intrinsically motivated, the more successful
• Inquiry process may actually move the needle on some
students’ motivation – opportunity for inquiry creates
awareness of personal agency

26. Scaffolding Information Literacy and Collaboration
• Leverage agency inherent to inquiry; cultivate agency in
students
• But don’t lose the learning and knowledge production needed
during the inquiry process
• Creating information literacy modifications in Globaloria
• Help students track sources, find and use information more
effectively
• Delicious; NoodleTools; others?
• Ross Todd: “Transportation vs. Transformation”
• Internet reading comprehension literature; Donald Leu
• School librarians can help; professional development of SLs
as information literacy experts and curriculum developers =>
Common Core emphasis on non-fiction information texts;
digital environments

27. Thank you!
Rebecca.reynolds@gmail.com
Rutgers University website
http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/directory/rbreynol/index.html
Thanks to IMLS!
Thanks to my partners!
Globaloria.org
Worldwideworkshop.org

28. References
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Reynolds, R., & Chiu, M. (2013). Context matters: The effect of formal and informal context differences
upon pre- to post-program changes in student engagement in a program of game design
learning. Journal of Learning, Media & Technology.
Reynolds, R.; Baik, EB & Li, X. (2013). Collaborative information seeking in the wild: Middle-schoolers’
self-initiated teamwork strategies to support game design. Paper presented at the annual convention of
the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), 2013.
Reynolds, R., & Chiu, M. (2013). How sustained engagement in game design and social media use
among diverse students can mitigate effects of the digital divide. Paper presented at the annual
convention of the American Education Research Association (AERA), San Francisco, CA, April, 2013.
Reynolds, R., Hmelo-Silver, C., Sorenson, L., & Van Ness, C. (2013). Interview findings on middle
schoolers’ collaboration in self-organizing game design teams. Poster presented at the International
Conference of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, July 2013, Madison, WI.
Reynolds, R., and I. Harel Caperton. 2011. Contrasts in student engagement, meaning-making, dislikes,
and challenges in a discovery-based program of game design learning. Educational Technology
Research and Development 59 (2): 267–289.
Reynolds, R. (2011). Children's game design learning in discovery-based contexts: Contribution of
intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations to student outcomes. Paper presented at the annual
International Communication Association (ICA) conference, May 2011, Boston, MA.
Reynolds, R. (2012). Changes in student attitudes towards 6 dimensions of digital engagement in a
program of game design learning. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Education
Research Association (AERA), April 2012, Vancouver, Canada.
Reynolds, R., & Chiu, M. (2012). Contribution of motivational orientations to student outcomes in a
discovery-based program of game design learning. Paper presented at the annual conference of the
International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), July 2012, Sydney, Australia.