Research based play

The design and concept of Drama Studio is built from the experiences and knowledge from The School at Play project.

Research into Drama Studio is ongoing. Results and papers will be posted here.

In a peer-reviewed article published in the Nordisk tidsskrift for pedagogikk og kritikk, Bente Meyer, an assistant professor at Aalborg University, examines the impact of using the digital platform Drama Studio and the concept of “hygge” in German language classes in Danish schools. 

ABSTRACT

Nordic perspectives on playful learning have been defined by values and preconceptions associated with play in schooling. However, playful learning also emerges in specific ways as part of the patterns of relations that form classroom teaching and learning. Patterns can be understood as sociomaterial relationships in practice that create rhythms which become constitutive for specific teaching and learning practices (Sørensen, 2009). In the paper, I identify and trace ways in which specific patterns are created by multiple relationships that enable and hold together playful learning activities. With a focus on patterns of relations, I draw on performative understandings of playful learning which are holistically defined by complex sociomaterial relationships. The paper explores how these patterns enact Nordic ways of doing playful learning that are defined by both specific materialities, moods, and rhythms of doing language learning in secondary schooling. The paper builds on observations and interview data from a project in which teachers and students from three Danish schools experimented with playful learning in the school subjects English and German. In the project, experimentation and didactic development were enabled through action learning processes involving the participating teachers and the researcher. Experiments were scaffolded through use of the platform Drama Studio, where students can create animated stories using avatars in multimodal drama production. The paper focuses on a specific case in which the teaching of German became part of doing hygge as a seasonal mood in the classroom during an unusually long, four-hour German session. In the dynamics of enacting German as hygge, multiple relationships emerged that both held together and transcended the apparently delineated activity of doing German through Drama Studio.

In a peer-reviewed article published in the Danish research journal Sprog Forum, Bente Meyer, an assistant professor at Aalborg University, examines the impact of using the digital platform Drama Studio in English and German language classes in Danish schools. 

The main focus is on how dramatizations, role-playing, and performance foster a playful, creative, and engaging learning environment that supports students’ language acquisition.

Key Positive Effects:

1. Multimodal Learning: Drama Studio allows students to create animated stories through role creation, directing, and scriptwriting, which provides a rich, multimodal learning experience. By combining audio, text, and animation, students are able to engage with language in diverse and interactive ways.
2. Increased Student Engagement: The platform encourages active student participation. Through role-playing, students can experiment with accents, emotions, and expressions, making language learning more enjoyable and immersive. For example, students in a 2nd-grade English class used Drama Studio to role-play family dialogues, which enhanced their vocabulary retention and made the learning process more fun.
3. Personalization and Identity: Drama Studio helps students express their identities in a language context by creating avatars and setting scenes that resonate with their personal experiences. This approach encourages students to use language more confidently. For instance, in a 4th-grade class, students created digital stage plays to present poems, making the process of learning poetry more personal and meaningful.
4. Collaborative Learning: The platform supports collaboration among students. In group tasks, students negotiate roles, decide on dialogue, and practice pronunciation together, fostering a sense of teamwork while enhancing their language skills.
5. Creative Use of Language: Drama Studio provides an opportunity for students to experiment with the target language in creative contexts, such as writing and performing poems or dialogues. This helps students develop both their oral and written language skills while also allowing them to explore different genres and forms of expression.
6. Safe Environment for Language Practice: Drama Studio provides a non-threatening environment for students, especially those who may be hesitant to speak a foreign language in front of their peers. By using avatars, students can distance themselves from direct performance, allowing them to focus more on language use and less on anxiety or self-consciousness.

Overall, the use of Drama Studio in language education promotes an engaging, multimodal, and collaborative approach that enhances both oral and written language skills through creative expression and performance.

• This study describes a 3 week intervention with game-based learning activities in eight lower secondary classrooms (N=190).
• The intervention combined the use of the co-op action role-playing game Torchlight II and analogue gamification aimed at including 32 students challenged by social difficulties and lack of motivation.
• The video game was used to create more inclusive classrooms by increasing students’ opportunities for participation through collaboration in teams. The students also participated in game-related Danish (L1) and Mathematics activities. Effects on social well-being, learning and motivational patterns were measured through teacher assessment combined with the Children’s Perceived Locus of Causality-scales (c-PLOC).
• The results show multidimensional effects including positive impact on at-risk students’ well-being and reduced experiences of external regulation to participate in Mathematics and Danish. The qualitative analysis confirms the positive findings, but also shows how the intervention created ambiguities surrounding the relationship between game activities and curriculum-related assignments.
• The findings indicate that the impact of game-based classrooms is not due to their fun element, but rather how they enable reframing of social participation and students’ engagement with the curriculum.