Sarah Le-Fevre is Chair of this panel session and she is joined by Dave Eng, Monica Cornetti and Antonios Triantafyllakis

The focus of the panel is using games to address wicked problems. Games are often used to create learning experiences (knowledge acquisition, examining values, exploring systemic issues) around wicked problems such as inequality, culture in organisations, the climate crisis – and I’m sure you can add many more. But today’s focus is a little closer to home, looking at wicked problems within learning itself. As learning professionals, we face issues around accessibility, content and quality all the time, so let’s examine just a few of these.

Covid19 has presented us with many challenges, but one of the greatest concerns for many learning providers has been managing the transition from the classroom to online. How might games or gamification play a part, either as content, frameworks for taking advantage of the additional functionality of ‘online’, or as part of our own design/translation processes?

Recent research from the National Foundation from Educational Research has shown that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to be engaged with remote learning, further damaging their prospects during lockdown. If games could be part of the solution to the engagement problem, how do we factor in, for example, unequal access to technology?

A final question, which is somewhat ‘meta’. Although there have been many innovations in platforms and software to help with online, it feels like the field is still so new, that we haven’t yet achieved reliable pedagogies, with firm theoretical and experimental bases. What could we do with games to help explore online learning to build our understanding?