From ‘hands up’ to ‘hands on’: harnessing the kinaesthetic potential of educational gaming

Farley, Helen and Stagg, Adrian (2011) From ‘hands up’ to ‘hands on’: harnessing the kinaesthetic potential of educational gaming. In: 2011 Apple University Consortium CreateWorld Conference, 28-30 Nov 2011, Brisbane, Australia.

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Abstract

Traditional approaches to distance learning and the student learning journey have focused on closing the gap between the experience of off-campus students and their on-campus peers. While many initiatives have sought to embed a sense of community, create virtual learning environments and even build collaborative spaces for team-based assessment and presentations, they are limited by technological innovation in terms of the types of learning styles they support and develop. Mainstream gaming development – such as with the Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Wii – have a strong element of kinaesthetic learning from early attempts to simulate impact, recoil, velocity and other environmental factors to the more sophisticated movement-based games which create a sense of almost total immersion and allow untethered (in a technical sense) interaction with the games’ objects, characters and other players. Likewise, gamification of learning has become a critical focus for the engagement of learners and its commercialisation, especially through products such as the Wii Fit.

As this technology matures, there are strong opportunities for universities to utilise gaming consoles to embed levels of kinaesthetic learning into the student experience – a learning style which has been largely neglected in the distance education sector. This paper will explore the potential impact of these technologies, to broadly imagine the possibilities for future innovation in higher education.

Statistics for this ePrint Item

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Commonwealth Reporting Category E) (Paper)
Refereed:	No
Item Status:	Live Archive
Additional Information:	No evidence of copyright restrictions preventing deposit.
Depositing User:	Mr Adrian Stagg
Faculty / Department / School:	Current - Australian Digital Futures Institute
Date Deposited:	27 Apr 2012 06:17
Last Modified:	13 Aug 2013 02:31
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Kinect, Wii, educational gaming, gamification, higher education, kinaesthetic learners, distance education
Fields of Research :	13 Education > 1303 Specialist Studies in Education > 130306 Educational Technology and Computing 13 Education > 1301 Education Systems > 130103 Higher Education 08 Information and Computing Sciences > 0805 Distributed Computing > 080504 Ubiquitous Computing
Socio-Economic Objective:	C Society > 93 Education and Training > 9302 Teaching and Instruction > 930203 Teaching and Instruction Technologies
URI:	http://eprints.usq.edu.au/id/eprint/21183

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