Questions..., questions... & more questions.....

Specifically I am interested in how digital games can foster social skills in our kids. I will work with the game developers engaged by School of Communication and Information, NTU, to design different genres of web-based digital games The goal of these games is to educate children of the age group of 10 to 12 years on how to develop social skills. These games are targeted for children that have not been diagnosed with mental health conditions. An assumption made is that learning through games will motivate children to interact with the application as well as increase their learning experience. The ultimate objective is to find game formats that are attractive to children and, at the same time, are suitable for learning particular concepts on mental health. I hope that the findings of my research will be able influence health authorities and educational practitioners in their efforts to come up with game s to promote social skills in children.



Currently I am taking this Advanced Qualitative Methodologies, designed for doctoral students. What attracted to me to this course I hope this course will provide me the avenue to have ongoing discourse with the 2 instructors, Dr Steve Zuiker and Dr Kate Anderson that are well-versed in game pedagogies and my classmates. I hope that it would ground me in the OEPTMm framework behind these qualitative research methodologies. However the going is tough as the readings raise many unanswered questions, doubts and fears.


I am now pondering on whether I should use a mixed method or just the qualitative approach. Should I adopt the case study approach in order get a better understanding about whether the game-based solutions is effective as according to Yin (1994), a case study is a good approach for answering ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ type questions, but not for answering ‘how many?’ type questions. Will this case study approach be suitable to examine complex phenomenon, such as the multiple factors and issues that influence a child when he or she interacts with the game world?


I hope I can receive some suggestions and help on my research design!


Games in Schools
http://games.eun.org/#