Playful Partnerships for Game-Based Learning in International Contexts

This chapter examines the playful design and enactment of games for learning and details generative and provocative attributes of playful multistakeholder partnerships for information and communications technology-supported game-based learning in international contexts. Drawing upon the experiences of two educational technology research and design groups, the chapter first identifies four design principles that have guided various global – and playful – game-based learning partnerships in Jamaica, Oman, South Africa, and Switzerland. Such international partnerships were designed as opportunities to co-construct game-based learning by articulating the permitted, establishing collaborative presence, attending carefully to trust, and fostering third space. The second half of this chapter features a case study of ICT-supported game-based learning in Oman and describes different ways in which a playful multistakeholder partnership can be enacted in a cross-cultural setting. The subject of this case study is Place Out Of Time (POOT), a trans-historical simulation of a trial in which students play guests who come from a range of places and times throughout history to discuss some of the great issues of humankind and to bring the wisdom of history to a modern-day problem. Utilizing narrative methods, four vignettes from playing POOT in Oman are presented that convey the complex and sometimes contradictory characteristics of playful partnerships for game-based learning in a developing region. The chapter concludes by arguing for a more critical playfulness in game-based learning that can support all partners and players in confronting biases, celebrating difference, and creatively addressing local and global needs.