Learning with Games in Diverse Contexts
Applications are open November 1 to February 1
Program Overview
Play is an integral part of human learning and development, and games are part of cultural practices across diverse contexts. This certificate engages participants in playful exploration of how people learn with games and how this understanding can inform the design of constructive learning environments.
Through four courses, participants will explore tabletop, digital, and physical games, their principles of learning and progression, and their roles as cultural artifacts. Participants will investigate game design from theoretical, practical, and critical perspectives, combining gameplay, analysis, design, and scholarly discussion.
Participants can bring the understanding, experiences, and designs developed in this program to PreK–12 schools, post-secondary institutions, public libraries, museums, science centres, industry training, and other design-related disciplines.
Program Details
The Summer course is blended and includes an on-campus component. Participants will play games, with a focus on tabletop and physical forms, and discuss theories of learning and gaming in relation to their experiences. The Fall, Winter, and Spring courses are delivered fully online. Specific on-campus dates will be confirmed.
- Explore how people learn through gameplay and game design.
- Analyze games as models, narratives, and cultural artifacts.
- Design and redesign games that integrate disciplinary knowledge and practices.
- Examine digital and hybrid analog-digital experiences for learning.
- Develop a framework for learning with games informed by critical perspectives, diversity, inclusivity, and transdisciplinarity.
This program is for people who design or examine learning experiences, including PreK–12 and post-secondary educators, instructional designers, administrators, industry trainers, educators in formal and informal learning contexts, and researchers in disciplines related to design, play, learning, and games.
A registration package will be sent to new students after they have been admitted. Registration for the summer term will be available in late winter. Fall and Winter registration opens in the spring. Your Graduate Program Administrator will send more information about registration to you.
Fee details are available through the University Calendar. An explanation of fees is available on the Faculty of Graduate Studies' website.
The University of Calgary offers multiple ways to meet the cost of your education. Please refer to the Awards, Scholarships and Bursaries page to learn more about options available to students. For additional information, please contact Student Financial Support.
Please refer to Admission Requirements for Master's Programs.
Program Schedule & Course Descriptions
- Program begins each July (summer term 1)
- Outlines are normally available 1-2 weeks prior to the start of term in D2L
- 3 units per course
Term 1 - Summer
Games as Models & Narratives
EDER 678.53
In this course, participants will explore theories of games through both actual game play and reading discussions. The participants will extensively play games with more focus on analog forms (i.e., tabletop, physical), analyze the components and mechanics of games, and critically observe play behaviors. They will interrogate how games they play model the designers’ perceptions of the world and create narratives about human and more-than-human interactions.
- Course project: game analysis, gaming observation report
- Role-playing, imagining, thought experimenting
- Concepts of games - dynamic models, systems, narrative creation
Term 2 - Fall
Learners as Players & Designers
EDER 678.54
This course will focus on understanding how people learn through play and design. In connection with the first course, the participants will read and discuss the scholarly work on playful learning, game-based learning, and designing games for learning in diverse learning contexts and various disciplines (e.g., mathematics, social science, arts, science, programming). They will explore how games could embody rich knowledge and complexity of the world and how they could design games for learning by integrating disciplinary knowledge and practices.
Key ideas and topics:
- Course project: game redesign
- Exploring tabletop game play and design for learning (accessible while rich learning tools)
- Integrating disciplinary knowledge and fostering interdisciplinary thinking through play and design
- Cognitive engagement: design thinking, systems thinking, spatial reasoning
- Model for game redesign process
Term 3 - Winter
Postdigital Gaming & Learning
EDER 678.55
While centering digital games, this course takes the “postdigital” perspective that recognizes how digital technologies permeate all aspects of our lives and how their social, political, and cognitive dimensions shape our experience. Participants will engage with seminal readings on digital games and socio-cultural activities and phenomena surrounding them, including learning, engagement, and even social harms. Participants will bring these perspectives to redesign their Course 2 games—reimagining them as hybrid analog-digital experiences or transforming them into fully digital ones—and arrive at new designs for learning with games.
- Course project: iteration of game design (in-person & digital combinations), design of learning
- Value and opportunities with digital gaming, material interactions, and embodied play
- Digital game-based learning
- MMORPG and online gaming community
Term 4 - Spring
Critical Perspectives on Games & Learning
EDER 678.56
This course will engage participants in critically reexamining disciplinary boundaries that may have been reinforced through previous course discussions and imagining transdisciplinarity for learning with games. Participants will read about critical perspectives on games and learning from both learning sciences and game studies and revisit previous course readings to theorize their own designs. They will engage in “re-reading” games they played and designed to co-create narratives and counternarratives that are personally and collectively meaningful. As a capstone, participants will develop a project proposing a framework for learning with games, connecting game design principles to pedagogical applications across diverse teaching and learning environments.
- Project: Concept paper on learning with games in relation to their designs
- Social impact games
- Expansive framing and transdisciplinarity of playful learning
- Diversity, inclusivity, and pluralism in learning with games
Curious about the University of Calgary?
Located in the nation's most enterprising city, we are a living, growing and youthful institution that embraces change and opportunity with a can-do attitude.