The Open Data Newsroom: A Game Approach for Developing Open Data Competencies in Elementary School

Authors

  • Alejandra Celis Vargas Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9260-5802
  • Georgios Papageorgiou University of the Aegean, Greece
  • Rikke Magnussen 1Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Birger Larsen Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Ingrid Mulder Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1043-1341

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34190/ecgbl.18.1.2637

Keywords:

Open Data competencies, Open Data literacy, Authentic learning, Elementary school students, Game Design, Open Data Journalism

Abstract

Open Data refers to digital data that is made available to anyone with the legal and technical conditions to be freely used, reused, and redistributed. Although it has emerged as a new common with the potential to increase citizen participation and transparency, current literature suggests the lack of skills for managing data and participating in Open Data processes, as one of the main barriers to achieve these benefits. Integrating Open Data in school education has been recognized as key to fostering a larger community able to participate in Open Data ecosystems. This study showcases the design of a role-playing game grounded in authentic learning principles for the development of Open Data competencies in elementary school. The Open Data Newsroom is a game approach that immerses students in solving a mystery with data. In the game, students play Open Data Journalists engaging in a three-phase authentic process to get, understand and deliver data. The learning goal in the game is that students build open data competencies: data literacy and real-world problem solving. A design-based research methodological approach is applied to develop theory based and practically grounded educational designs. Two interventions in Danish schools have been conducted, each one with the participation of seventeen students in 7th to 9th grade and three teachers. Interventions are aimed at iteratively designing and testing the game. The discussion section elaborates on opportunities for redesigning and systematically developing the game as a learning design for Open Data competencies.

Author Biographies

Alejandra Celis Vargas, Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

Alejandra Celis Vargas is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD fellow at the Department of Communication and Psychology of Aalborg University, Copenhagen. Framed by the Open Data Ecosystems (ODECO) project, her current work addresses learning designs for Open Data competences in elementary schools. Alejandra has a background in industrial design, innovation, and strategic design, which helps her to address gaps between socio-technological innovations and people’s needs. Her main interests are learning design, user research, and research for sustainable futures. She is specially interested in human-centred approaches, gamification, and co-creation.

Georgios Papageorgiou, University of the Aegean, Greece

Georgios Papageorgiou is a researcher at the University of the Aegean and a Ph.D. candidate under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie scholarship agreement in the field of Data Journalism and Open Data. He is a graduate of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, School of Science, University of the Aegean, Greece, and a graduate of Internet Technologies and Enterprise Computing, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, United Kingdom. He worked for almost a decade as a software engineer in Greece and the Netherlands. His current research interests include Open data, Data Journalism, Fake News, Open Data as a News source, and Media Credibility.

Rikke Magnussen, 1Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

Rikke Magnussen is a professor in educational citizen science and sustainability education at Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. Her main research interest is in: Green Transition of Education, Citizen Science and Open Data. Her main expertise is in how digital learning design can open for new types of collaborative citizen science practice and innovation processes to change science education in school and science learning in in-formal settings outside school. She is particularly interested in citizen science and community driven research and how different types of communities can collaborate in solving sustainability challenges.

Birger Larsen, Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

Birger Larsen is Full Professor in Information Analysis and Information Retrieval at the Department of Communication, Aalborg University Copenhagen, where he is co-lead of the Purposeful Technology Lab research group. Birger has a passion for research that involves the activities, processes and experiences arising in the meeting between users, information, and information systems in a given context - with the goal of optimising these to empower users in their task and problem solving. His main research interests include Information Retrieval (IR), structured documents in IR, XML IR and user interaction, domain specific search, understanding user intents and exploiting context in IR, as well as Informetrics/Bibliometrics, citation analysis and quantitative research evaluation – and recently Big Data and Humanities, where he investigates the new possibilities and challenges arising from the application of large scale data collection and analysis techniques to Humanities research. In addition, he is an active consultant carrying out research-based scientometric evaluations for universities and governmental agencies. 

Ingrid Mulder, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Ingrid Mulder is an expert in transformative and social design. As an Associate Professor of Design Techniques at Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering and director of the Delft Design Lab Participatory City Making, she studies the city as a space for transition while experimenting with participatory techniques and systemic design approaches for scaling and infrastructuring social change. She has a background in policy and organization sciences (MA, University of Tilburg) and educational science and technology (Ph.D., University of Twente), and started her research career anticipating future technologies impacting society within the national Top Technology Institute on Telematics. As part of her previous readership in digital social innovation, she founded Creating010, a trans-disciplinary design-inclusive research centre addressing societal challenges in relation to the digital transformation.

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Published

2024-10-07

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2024): Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Games Based Learning

Section

Academic Papers