It’s Going to be Amazing: Exploring Children’s Game Play and Making

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of a game-based learning study that had a twofold purpose: first we sought to find out what our study participants (ages 10-13) could tell us about their video game play habits at home and second to explore students use ofSuper Mario Maker 2 software on the Nintendo Switch Lite to design their own games. The study took place in two schools, one middle school and one elementary school, in the suburbs of a medium-sized city on Canada’s West coast. Two grade 6 classes participated in the study (n=44), and played Super Mario Maker 2 over 9 days, in pairs. Overall, the study found that all students had prior gameplay experience, meaning that no students struggled with the controls, nor did they need much assistance to build their own games, even though only a handful of participants reported having prior coding and/or game design experience. We also found that gameplay was a common leisure activity for most participants, with girls demonstrating significant skill and familiarity with games, challenging previous gender disparities in game play. This short intervention demonstrates how a commercial off the shelf game can be used to support students’ design-based thinking and making, with all participants managing to design a playable level by the end of the study.