Turtles and Ethics: Experiential Learning through Game-making

Abstract

Experiential learning through games is becoming increasingly relevant as games exert an enormous influence on the imaginarium of newer generations. This paper details the use of a game-based learning process focusing on game-making in relation to ethical issues of digitalization for graduate education in digital service innovation. Within the context of a masters education, students from diverse knowledge backgrounds learned about and reflected upon ethical issues related to social media usage by playing, remixing and designing games using the Design Games Framework. This paper illustrates that game-making can enable non-designer students to work with ethical issues. There are good possibilities to explore ethics through designing tabletop games, and having diverse groups of participants can be advantageous. Using a qualitative approach based on observation and interviews, the paper contributes to the body of literature focusing on experiential learning through game-based approaches and to the consolidation of the Design Games Framework.