EXPLORING TEACHERS' EDUCATIONAL VIDEO GAME INTEGRATION PROCESS: FOUR EXPLORATORY CASE STUDIES

Abstract

Immersive educational games have continued to grow in popularity; however, there is a growing need in the field of game research to gain a clearer picture of the process by which teachers integrate these games to promote student achievement. The focus of this exploratory case-based research was to gain a clearer picture of the relationship between a teacher's desire to use an immersive game for a particular use and the process of realizing that purpose in his or her classroom through an implementation. Due to a lack of immersive game integration research, this study drew upon the large corpus of research on educational technology to conceptualize an immersive educational MUVE game as a type of instructional tool. The manner in which a game is used is largely influenced by a teacher's pedagogical preferences and classroom factors; therefore, this research has built a series of cases that observed and analyzed how four 7th and 8th grade teachers, working within a publicly-funded charter school, implemented the educational immersive game called Quest Atlantis. Video and interview data were collected each day teachers implemented QA in their classrooms. Video data was transcribed and coded using a grounded constant comparison method. The results of the analysis generated a number of themes that affirmed that teachers had a strong influence on how the game was used, and that a game implementation was a complex and brittle process. The conclusion of this study suggested that administrators and game scholars should shift their focus toward promoting the benefits of using games for teachers instead of students, and recommended that teachers are provided significant professional development and implementation support in order to realize the power immersive games can provide.