A Student-Centered Method of Incorporating Computer Games into School: A Study in Singapore

Abstract

The paper intends to develop a student-centered and school-based method to incorporate computer game play (GP) and game design (GD) activities into school by discovering students’ views about why and how to incorporate. The paper first critiques the current GP and GD activities, which are designer-centric on a touch-and-go basis, falling short of making student-centered pedagogy a long-term version of usage. Activity theory is adopted as a framework to formulate and conceptualize our research questions, specifically, what are students’ perceived significance and projected ways of integrating GP–GD activity into school? The report here discloses the qualitative data of four focused groups with 20 students, extracted from a larger 3-year project. Students are exposed to either the GP or GD activity, are interviewed about their perceived outcomes, and project the purposes of their next participation if they are given free choices. The findings identify that the significances are complementary but the purposes are in synergy with teachers’ didactical approaches. On the basis of the findings, the future pedagogical implications of incorporating GP and GD activities into school contexts similar to the Singaporean context are suggested.