Call for papers
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Workshop on the Use of Learning Research and Theory to Inform the Design of Educational Games, at the British HCI conference 2015
Date: 14th of July 2015
Venue: University of Lincoln, UK
Website: http://hci2015.bcs.org/
Submission deadline: May 31, 2015
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In three of the last four NMC Horizon Reports (www.nmc.org), educational games have been identified as an emerging technology that is likely to enter mainstream use in schools within two to three years. This begs the question: why have educational games remained stubbornly in the 2-3 year adoption horizon? Or, put another way, why have predictions of the widespread adoption of educational games failed to materialize? Various reasons have been proposed: the inexperience of teachers in the use of games to support learning (Bourgonjon et al. 2013), HCI in games-based learning design that ignores the demands of real classrooms (Moser et al. 2013), and the repeated development of games that purport to be educational but that ignore learning research and theory (Wu et al. 2012).

This workshop will take learning research, educational practice research, and HCI research as its starting point, to consider a key challenge: how can novel approaches to the design of games-based learning, grounded in learning research and theory, lead to educational games that are more likely to be useful in classrooms?

The workshop will include a keynote presentation by Professor Nicola Whitton, Manchester Metropolitan University, author of ‘Digital Games and Learning: Research and Theory’.

Submission
People interested in the workshop are asked to submit a 2-page position paper responding to the workshop’s main question: How can novel approaches to the design of games-based learning, grounded in learning research and theory, lead to educational games that are more likely to be useful in classrooms?

Emergent themes will be identified from the submissions, which will be used to structure the workshop activities and discussions. Participants will be given the chance to present their papers.

Acknowledging the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, we welcome submissions from:
Researchers from computer science, HCI, and education who are interested in designing and/or using educational games.
Educational game designers/developers.
Practitioners/educators who have experience in using games in classroom settings.

Authors of successful submissions must register for the workshop using the conference registration system (http://hci2015.bcs.org/register/).

Important dates
Submission deadline: May 31, 2015
Notification of acceptance: June 22, 2015
Workshop date: 14th of July 2015

Submission system and format
Please submit your paper via email to Dr Wayne Holmes (w.holmes@ioe.ac.uk) or to Dr Shaimaa Lazem (shaimaa.lazem@newcastle.ac.uk). Please put [BritishHCI workshop: Educational Games Workshop] in the title of your email.

Submissions should use eWiC format and follow eWiC template (http://ewic.bcs.org/content/conmediafile/2988).


Organizers
Dr. Wayne Holmes, London Knowledge Lab, UCL Institute of Education, and the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol
Dr. Shaimaa Lazem, City for Scientific Research and Technological Applications (SRTA-City), Egypt, and Newcastle University
Prof. Nicola Whitton, Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University

References
Bourgonjon, J., Grove, F.D., Smet, C.D., Van Looy, J., Soetaert, R., Valcke, M., 2013. Acceptance of Game-Based Learning by Secondary School Teachers. Computers & Education 67, 21–35.
Moser, C., Tscheligi, M., Zaman, B., Vanden Abeele, V., Geurts, L., Vandewaetere, M., Markopoulos, P., Wyeth, P., Hofstätter, J., 2013. Let’s talk about failures: why was the game for children not a success?, in: CHI’13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, pp. 3199–3202.
Whitton, N., 2014. Digital Games and Learning: Research and Theory. Routledge, London.
Wu, W.-H., Chiou, W.-B., Kao, H.-Y., Alex Hu, C.-H., and Huang, S.-H. Re-exploring game-assisted learning research: The perspective of learning theoretical bases. Computers & Education 59, 4 (2012), 1153–1161.