Elizabeth Caravella & Rich Shivener
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
As students turn to composing more multimodal and digital pieces in their writing courses, a number of writing instructors have employed the process known as gamification, or, the application of game-like elements, to their classrooms. Through this activity, students will learn to also utilize such practices, especially those relying on gameful design, to better understand and execute the often messy research process. Especially because most students are more familiar with games than research, these parallels not only provide students with research terms and concepts in a way they’re more familiar, but also help illuminate for students the advantages of experimentation and unconventional approaches when performing research. As students are being asked to compose more multimodal pieces, this essay aims to help them start thinking about the research process as a kind of design process, allowing students to more readily move from traditional writing processes to those necessary for effective digital composing. Especially as writing classrooms become gamified more frequently, and as students are asked to compose more and more digital pieces, seeing how video game designers tackle the research process helps students learn to think gamefully so that they may bring these innovative processes into their own work in the writing classroom.