Investigating the Role-Play Technique in Educational Game Designing Process

This study investigates whether structured role-play can surface the tacit design knowledge that primary school teachers and professional game designers hold when creating educational games. Its central argument is that teachers are usually cast as gatekeepers rather than co-designers in educational game research, and that interdisciplinary exchange of this kind has gone largely undocumented in Australia. The author positions role-play as a fast, low-cost method for bringing this knowledge into the open.

The empirical work consists of three paired co-design workshops conducted over Zoom with six Australian participants, in which teachers and game designers swapped roles. Teachers articulated requirements centred on curriculum alignment, differentiation for diverse learners, immediate positive feedback, progress tracking, and student autonomy, while designers contributed expertise in mechanics, narrative, and interface. The first role-play showed designers drawing out specific teacher requirements such as positive reinforcement and gradual progression, suggesting that the two professional groups hold complementary forms of knowledge.

The findings are qualitative and drawn from a small, purposive sample, which the author acknowledges limits their generalisability. Role reversal initially produced hesitation among participants, but it ultimately gave way to reciprocal negotiation, a result the author treats as a meaningful indicator of the method's potential. The study's scope is therefore exploratory: it covers a narrow geographic and professional slice of educational game design over a single set of sessions rather than a broad survey of practice.

The study rests on a scholarly foundation drawn from participatory design, serious games, and learning theory, including prior work on participatory game prototyping, game-based curriculum design, and the involvement of students and teachers in instructional redesign. Its contribution lies in demonstrating a practical, replicable technique for interdisciplinary co-design rather than in producing definitive conclusions about educational game development.