Game-based learning

Game-based learning is a teaching approach in which students receive instruction and context from the teacher concerning a learning objective, recognize the rules of the game, participate, and reflect to make explicit the relationship between their experience and the educational objective of the session (Garris et al., 2002; Pivec et al., 2003).

Solving problems in this environment allows students to understand how a system works and how they interact with it (Chang et al., 2015; Toprac, 2011). At the same time, it demands the staging of their skills, being faced with a challenging scenario to achieve the best possible result (Barnett and Koslowski, 2002). This model proposes an iterative learning cycle in which students, first, receive an initial context with the objective of the experience within the framework of their class; second, they face the experience proposed by the teacher; third, they develop a reflection guided by the teacher around what was lived in the experience; and finally, they participate in a closure in which they develop the concepts related to the formal learning content.

This process is repeated throughout the entire experience until the moment the teacher decides to end the session. It is important to keep in mind that it is not necessary to isolate oneself from the experience in any of the four moments, the second moment of reflection can even happen while the student is still in the experience, but making a brief guided pause based on questions that promote critical thinking and argumentative abilities (Noroozi et al., 2020).

The relationship between the gaming experience and the learning objective is facilitated by the very conditions of a game, defined as an activity that places the learner in an active role in which they must make decisions in a simulated scenario to meet a specific objective. (Brathwaite and Schreiber, 2009; Schell, 2008).

Self-efficacy in learning

Self-efficacy deals with the incidence of personal beliefs in one's abilities to perform a task (Bandura, 1977, 2001). In academic fields, self-efficacy has recently been used for two purposes: to predict the level of participation in an activity or to improve the attitude or way of thinking of students (Punyasettro et al., 2021).

Concerning game-based learning, this methodology has been shown to offer advantages for the acquisition of concepts or the improvement of processing skills (Anastasiadis et al., 2018). Along the same lines, Lu and Lien (2020) explain the existence of different factors that mediate the success of game-based learning when it comes to facilitating the internalization of learning content. For the authors, self-efficacy is a personal factor that, although it is not decisive in the learning process, has important effects since it facilitates the maintenance of attention and interest in the development of activities, which can translate into a better general understanding of academic content.

These results are consistent with those of Ellison and Drew (2020), who found that learning experiences with games allowed students to improve their confidence levels. Games make it easier for students to dare to explore possibilities and repeat situations that cause them problems in case they make mistakes (Carr-Chellman, 2016). In this sense, it is suggested that individuals with high levels of self-efficacy are more likely to remain linked to activity with games since the feedback they receive in their interaction with the game allows them to increase their self-confidence and therefore improve their motivation toward the activities (Lu and Lien, 2020).

Academic engagement

One of the aspects that are most favored by the use of games in learning scenarios is academic engagement, defined as the level of involvement of a student with a teaching practice from its cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions (Ochoa-Angrino et al., 2018).

Academic engagement is part of the field of motivation theories in education, in which issues such as learning while having fun, concentration on educational activity, interest in what the teacher proposes, or effort to achieve a learning objective, among others (Shernoff et al., 2014; Shernoff, 2013) are addressed. A learning experience with these characteristics has the potential to make it easier for attendees to face challenges that, in other scenarios, such as evaluations or class presentations, could generate anxiety and tension (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008).

Regarding engagement, research works such as that of Shernoff et al, (2014) underline the role of games as an ideal scenario to promote academic engagement and favor significant learning because games contain a series of attractive and challenging characteristics for students. The game scenario allows for failure without serious consequences, the player must make decisions, constantly evaluate a simulated system, and interact with others (Adams and Rollings, 2006; Brathwaite and Schreiber, 2009). Besides these characteristics, the literature refers to the importance of three components in games to promote academic engagement and learning: scaffolding, rewards, and learning tools (Abdul and Felicia, 2015; Tan et al., 2013). Scaffolding refers to the ability of games to guide the user through their experience through hints, guides, feedback, and the opportunity to go back to correct mistakes. The rewards are understood as the possibility of obtaining medals or achievements as the game progresses, which plays an incentive role that helps reinforce the feeling of achievement after working hard on a task. Finally, learning tools are associated with the potential of games to become artifacts for teaching, through methodological integrations that promote the demand for high-order skills such as systemic, creative, strategic, or critical thinking (Tan et al., 2013).

On the other hand, academic engagement and game-based learning have been connected with states of flow among students while performing educational activities. These states are understood as the period of constant concentration that is related to the enjoyment and understanding of the activity that is being carried out (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). The possibility that the student has of feeling in a highly immersive environment favors the different ways of interacting with the game and satisfaction (Admiraal et al., 2011).

Usually, the state of flow that games generate in students is connected to an improvement in the construction of concepts and knowledge. In this way, at the end of the session, it is possible to return to the game experience as an input to address the learning objective of the session and the associated concepts (Hamari et al., 2016).

Participation

Participation has received significant attention in recent years. In industry 4.0, user-oriented services take on a fundamental role (Raja et al., 2013). During the last two decades, it seems that interaction with users ceases to be a useful means of improving products and ends up becoming the product itself (Noguera, et al., 2013). Developments in the area of digital marketing have turned participation into a bargaining chip within a new economic paradigm and the necessary interactions for all kinds of social relationships, in transactions that go unnoticed by the subjects more and more frequently (Van Dijck, 2013). The growing participatory culture observed by Jenkins (2006, 2008), underlines the role of users in the creation of all types of content, media, and platforms, and encourages the emergence of a series of theories based on the birth of a new power thanks to the possibilities opened by mass self- communication (Castells, 2009).

However, authors such as Carpentier (2007), from a critical perspective, underline the need to distinguish participation from other phenomena, as an activity that seeks to have an effect and influence the actions of others. Beyond the repertoire of possibilities provided by technology, participation attends to the ability to influence decisions, with a focus close to studies on power.

Concerning the teaching-learning processes, the question of the students' ability to influence decision- making about what they learn, how they learn it, or how they are evaluated is crucial. All this in a much more horizontal process between students and teachers, guided by trust, solidarity, and reciprocity, which leads to a change of hierarchy between the parties.

Seen in this way, participation in a class goes beyond access as the possibility of having a presence in the classroom or as a collection of technical tools designed to facilitate interaction or to attract, motivate, or engage students. At the same time, it is important to distinguish participation, according to Carpentier (2016), from interactivity or interaction. The first is provided by the possibility that the media or platforms have to allow interactions, and the second is understood as a communicative process of exchange between users and a technical system, users, and content, or between users themselves.

In the educational field, participation frequently refers to the ability of individuals to intervene at certain moments of the process, mainly with their active involvement in scheduled activities (Zou and Zhang, 2016).

However, when we talk about virtual learning environments, participation acquires new dimensions as a central activity to reach knowledge through cooperative or collective work (Sánchez, 2017). Here, the findings derived from studies on collective intelligence are essential to understanding its scope, since information and communication technologies increase the possibilities for large groups of people to be able to solve tasks unthinkable for disconnected individuals (Malone and Bernstein, 2015).

Finally, research such as that of Rubio et al. (2010) make a call to overcome the behavioral theory to analyze the teaching and learning processes from other paradigms close to the constructivist theories of education, in which the participation of the students is essential, since the knowledge is created by them, and therefore, they must be involved not only in their learning process, but also in all stages of planning, development, and evaluation of the classes.

The design of the learning experience

Studies on digital culture suggest implicitly assuming the problem of participation as an essential characteristic of a society of active agents, capable of producing their own meanings (Deuze, 2006). However, the learning of this phenomenon often takes place in classrooms far from the encounter between humans and machines and their mutual influences.

In the same way, the concepts related to participation, interaction, or access can be seen in the academic field as abstract theories that do not solve in practice the problems faced by professionals in the development of digital strategies. For this reason, the learning experience designed for this research puts the student at the center. Instead of transmitting knowledge so that students understand the meaning of participation in online environments, it is decided to design an experience that facilitates the understanding and analysis of participation through the participatory practice itself.

The experiment was carried out on the downloadable world The Community, designed by Daniel Kwan, for the Welcome to the Community lesson, available in Minecraft Education Edition. The template was adapted according to the learning purpose of the course: to differentiate the possibilities and characteristics of access, interaction, interactivity, and participation in transmedia strategies. The students had to build a self-sustaining community, where each one had their own land to contribute with their construction to the community.

Before the game, the students read the text Participation, access, and interaction: changing perspectives (Carpentier, 2007). The experience was carried out on January 26^th, 27^th, and 28^th, 2022. The students had these three days to build a self-sustaining community, present their constructions, and raise postulates or premises as a group about the specific ways in which the access, interaction, interactivity, and participation processes were presented during the game. It is worth clarifying that these postulates were not part of this research. They were raised to address the development of concepts and definitions by students from the correspondence of the game with the theory. Thus, for example, a student states after the game: "To have access to Minecraft we need video game skills, therefore, access demands specific skills, besides motor skills" (J. Montoya, February 2^nd, 2022).

Students recorded their premises in a Word document shared on OneDrive in a synchronous class session through Microsoft Teams. The teacher posed guiding questions that gave rise to the students to propose their own logical reasoning from a deductive perspective, through which the students were expected to make direct inferences about the phenomena seen during the game.

The experience that lasted for three days ended with the discussion and analysis of what happened and a test of theoretical concepts in Quizizz. The questions, true or false type, were drawn at random from the postulates proposed by the students themselves.

Several platforms were involved in the design of this learning experience. Microsoft Teams, an institutional channel in which three class sessions lasting two hours each were held and in which the teaching and learning process was centralized; Minecraft Education Edition, a gaming platform; WhatsApp, a means of communication for the students, and Quizizz, an evaluation platform in the final session of the unit.

The objective of the learning activity was to improve the theoretical understanding of the concepts of access, interaction, interactivity, and participation by solving a real problem in a game and cooperating to achieve a common goal of creating a self-sustaining community. Therefore, rather than using Minecraft as a tool to teach participation, the learning experience sought to develop a meaningful link between what happens in the game and the participatory aspects of the game.

The group of students began community building with little prior knowledge of the game. Of the 20 players, only one had previous Minecraft experience. So the first synchronous class session was almost entirely devoted to learning about the ways players could move around in 3D space and what the tools were for building. After class, the world remained open for students to build for the next two days. This time allowed students to consult video tutorials, seek help, and improve their skills. WhatsApp communication was frequent during the gaming experience.

WhatsApp was a useful tool for the research because it allowed us to know how the actors see themselves, describe the game, support each other, and give an account of the context in which it was developed. In total, 266 interactions were collected, thanks to the fact that one of the researchers, with the informed consent of the students, was part of the WhatsApp group assuming the role of observer participant (Vela and Cantamutto, 2016). This role facilitated the access and understanding of students' social interactions.

In the last synchronous class session through Microsoft Teams, a guided tour of the community was conducted to learn about the different constructions, such as a school, a hospital, a farm, a hotel, a restaurant, a water treatment plant, and a civic center for the design of community solutions, among others. Some students built in pairs, others asked their children or relatives who were experienced Minecraft players for help. None of them assumed the role of general coordinator or leader and one student was unable to build because her computer was damaged during the week in which the game was developed.

Self-efficacy in learning

The students expressed various personal beliefs based on their previous motivational, cognitive, or affective experiences that conditioned their performance during the game. Those who declared in the interviews that they liked construction games were more willing to solve the problems raised and showed a high level of satisfaction with their achievements. Likewise, the student who had previous experience in the game was confident and sure of himself and his knowledge, even before knowing the objective of the exercise: "I had more possibilities because I knew how the game worked" (S. Escobar, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

While the students who did not know Minecraft or did not express an affinity for the games during the interviews, perceived failure more acutely with the problems presented: “I had never played and I am not a gamer. At times I felt so frustrated that at one point I didn't want to know anything about the game” (A. Henao, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022). “We are very used to the teacher at the center, giving a class, and when a methodology arrives through a game, one does not take it seriously and the first idea that comes to mind is that it is a waste of time” (S.D. Gil, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

However, it is noteworthy that, despite the diversity of perceptions related to motivation in the game, the students revealed that they had not learned less because they had no previous experience in the game. The data collected on WhatsApp showed that the lack of skills in the game prompted them to seek resources to solve the problems that were presented to them and support each other. A student went to work with a classmate at her house to find out together how to build. Another student, who is also a professor and is in Ph.D. training, asked his 9-year-old daughter for help with his construction and several students agreed to meet at the same time on the server and thus support each other with the construction.

Although several students expressed in the interviews and the WhatsApp chat that they were initially frustrated due to the difficulties with the Minecraft tool, they expressed a valuable level of satisfaction with their constructions and learning: “Not having experience in the game did not limit me. This was part of the learning process. I saw several tutorials, then I damaged things, even from my colleagues, then I had to repair them. I think that these obstacles are also part of learning” (L. Rodríguez, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

The prior ignorance of the game seemed in many moments to be assumed by the group as an opportunity for encounter and conversation, according to what was observed in the WhatsApp group. “That the group had not played Minecraft before was a challenge. This situation prompted the dialogue. Everything lent itself to talking and asking. These kinds of situations make you think more creatively and reflectively” (S. Escobar, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

The interviews also showed important differences concerning the confidence of the individuals to carry out the tasks and meet the goals: “When they told me that I was going to play Minecraft, I thought: finally, something that I have mastered. I felt safe because I knew the rules. I think I was able to be more creative than my colleagues because I already dominated the game” (S. Escobar, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

Regarding the understanding of concepts and the achievement of disciplinary learning goals, the synchronous class session in Microsoft Teams and the results in Quizizz express a high level of performance, even in those who had not played.

In the interviews, the students stated that the exercise allowed them to put into practice what they had read and actively reflect on their knowledge, even though they presented heterogeneous learning practices. “For me, it is very rare to learn by playing because my way of studying is reading, but I managed to appropriate the concepts and acquire them from my own experience” (A. Henao, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022). “My way of learning is from experience. I find it very important to be able to experience theory. I read, but without experience, I cannot internalize or question what I read” (D. Toro, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022). “I think that the game strips what you are learning. Facing what you don't know raises questions and you become curious. You build knowledge with the tool as you appropriate it” (M.C. Reusch, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

After the knowledge evaluation, the students agreed in the synchronous session in Microsoft Teams, after the game, that the practice made it easier for them to understand the concepts raised thanks to experiential learning. “Reading alone does not generate the same level of understanding. I felt that what I had read passed through my body” (L. Rodríguez, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022). “I now relate the concepts of access, interaction, and participation with Minecraft. I think it is easier because it is something experiential” (S. Escobar, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022). “The game makes the brain expand in its capacity. One thing is to read the concepts and another is to live them. From practice, understanding the concepts is very useful” (L.E. Gómez, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

Similarly, the subjective value placed on concept acquisition seemed to be increased by the game. This was the case of the notion of the digital gap, addressed in the reading that the students did before the game. “The digital gap made a lot of sense to me because I had not played before and I understood the weight of structural skills and I questioned myself” (M.C. Reusch, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022). Another student who did not initially manage to enter the platform said: “The first thing I thought was: I am in a gap and I understood the importance of the topic” (E.Gallego, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

Academic engagement

The engagement of students in academic contexts implies cognitive, emotional, and behavioral involvement. In the first stage, of an exploratory nature, the students carried out reading as a mechanism to find out about the theoretical definition of the concepts of access, interaction, and participation. Then, they played to link the theory with the phenomena that occur during the practical experience, and finally, they raised postulates that externalize the generation of new learning.

During the three days that the construction took place, the cognitive engagement was lower, compared to the last class session carried out through Microsoft Teams. When the collective validation of individual postulates, the review, and evaluation of learning through Quizizz were carried out, it was found that the average accuracy in the answers was 83% according to the results that the platform produced.

The instructional design thus prioritized the performance of disciplinary cognitive tasks for the end of the activity, while during the game sessions the search and acquisition of knowledge about the game prevailed. Likewise, it is worth noting that while the students advanced their constructions, they used the theoretical concepts to playfully narrate their experiences through WhatsApp.

This conversation highlights the affective engagement to learning, also characterized by enthusiasm and enjoyment of the game, as well as how the subjects elaborate on their own learning, develop an awareness of their actions, and associate theory with practice.

I saw how each one was building, and I wondered how place and space are defined through participation. I was thinking how can it be that a platform that is thousands of kilometers away gives you the feeling of a place. I think this helps to question oneself and everything takes on another meaning. (M.C. Reusch, personal communication, February 25th, 2022)

The engagement was also noted in the persistence of four students who stayed online two more hours after finishing the first class session. It was observed that, although in the first game session the stu- dents only acquired the minimum skills necessary to move and build, three days later, the whole group had achieved, thanks to personal and collective effort, constructions that they valued as very advanced for its level in the session in Microsoft Teams.

Participation

Each student had a plot in the world of Minecraft with a sign at the entrance indicating their name. In this way, even if a joint challenge was established (to build a self-sustaining community), each student enjoyed sufficient autonomy to build what they wanted. “I participated and I think I was important. I built a community social design center (…). Some colleagues had problems with the game, but together we helped them”. (L. Rodríguez, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022)

The division into individual plots did not prevent it from being perceived as a participatory community that learned through all the means that were part of the pedagogical strategy as a whole. Although some had problems accessing the game, they were also learning through WhatsApp. “I think I learned a lot during the game (…). There was a sense of community in the group because we all participated” (L. Rodríguez, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

The students expressed their problems freely, playfully, and without the feeling of failure, as can be seen in the figure above. None acted as a leader and the group did not discuss their general work plan. Each player moved around the world, explored each other's constructions, and came up with their own construction ideas to add to the whole. The lack of deliberative processes did not seem to affect the perception of participatory or collaborative work. What's more, one of the subjects even found the process useful for increasing group creativity, motivation, and engagement.

We learned and there was no need to debate or agree. As a whole, the small society we created was the result of the role that each one had. With a guideline, I wouldn't have been as creative. We would have been bored because it was imposed. (S. Escobar, personal communication, February 25^th, 2022).

These findings lead to a reflection on participation, frequently framed in deliberative processes typical of democratic systems. In the digital environment, the perception of participation seems greater the more possibilities of expression the individual has, the more control the user is granted over the final result, the content, or the medium that is being used (Carpentier and Grondin, 2018).

Following the notion of collective intelligence proposed by Surowiecki (2004), we find that the diversity of skills improves the final result of the community built in Minecraft, through a process of decentralization.

It is important to keep in mind that according to Surowiecki (2004), collective intelligence is not promoted by group interests, but by individual and independent interests. It is precisely this level of autonomy, which allows groups to solve problems intelligently not because there is a consensus led by a subgroup of them or a member, but because intelligence distributed among individuals, symbolic systems, and tools produced by them are activated (Herrero and Brown, 2010).

Unlike environments where arbitration is required to achieve a final goal, the game platform facilitated learning horizontally. “With these types of tools, the idea that the teacher sets up the class and has power collapses” (M. Reusch, personal communication, February 25th, 2022). It is remarkable in this reflection how students organize themselves and value autonomy. During the game they did not ask the teacher for help to solve their constructive problems, functionally displacing the usual role of the tutor in the classroom.