Let’s Create Our Own World! Fostering Cooperation, Creativity, Empowerment and Intrinsic Motivation in Design Thinking Processes through Edularp Co-Design

Paper Title

Let's Create Our Own World! Fostering Cooperation, Creativity, Empowerment and Intrinsic Motivation in Design Thinking Processes through Edularp Co-Design

Publication Info

• Topic area: Educational live-action role-playing games (edularps) in design thinking and participatory design.
• Keywords: Edularp, co-design, participatory design, creativity, collaboration, empowerment, intrinsic motivation, design thinking, computer science education, future skills.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Traditional design thinking processes and computer science education (CSE) often lack innovative, inclusive, and creative methods to foster collaboration, creativity, and empowerment. Current methods risk reproducing dominant narratives and fail to engage diverse perspectives.
• Significance: Empowering learners and participants in design processes is crucial for fostering future skills (creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, communication) and for addressing equity in participatory design (PD) and co-design (CD).
• Motivation and related work: Prior research highlights the potential of live-action role-playing games (larps) in human-computer interaction (HCI) and education but lacks exploration of co-designing edularps as a tool for fostering creativity, collaboration, and empowerment. This study builds on calls for innovative approaches in PD, CD, and education, particularly in CSE.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Co-designing educational live-action role-playing games (edularps) as a method to foster creativity, collaboration, empowerment, and intrinsic motivation in design thinking processes.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduction of edularp co-design as a novel tool for fostering future skills in educational, participatory design, and co-design contexts.
  2. Evaluation of edularp co-design workshops in both high school and university settings, focusing on creativity, collaboration, empowerment, and intrinsic motivation.
  3. Exploration of edularp co-design as a flexible, inclusive, and low-tech method adaptable to diverse educational and design contexts.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted three studies: a teacher survey on creative methods in CSE, a university-level edularp co-design workshop, and high school edularp co-design workshops.
  • Developed and iteratively refined a structured edularp co-design workshop model.
  • Gathered qualitative and quantitative data through surveys, interviews, participant observations, and recorded reflections.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • High approval among teachers for creative, artistic, and playful approaches in CSE (96.1% for creative methods fostering learning).
  • Evidence of collaboration, creativity, empowerment, and intrinsic motivation being practiced and experienced during edularp co-design workshops.
  • High school students demonstrated significant engagement, with some learning Morse code and encryption techniques independently to enhance their edularps.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Co-designing edularps enabled self-determined, creative, and collaborative learning experiences, contrasting with traditional, repetitive, and less engaging CSE lessons.
  • Intrinsic motivation was notably higher during edularp design compared to regular lesson planning.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Teacher survey (n=52) on attitudes toward creative methods in CSE.
  • University workshop with 11 graduate students in CSE teacher training, resulting in six unique edularps.
  • High school workshops with 45 students across two classes, producing nine edularps on topics like encryption and social media.
  • Data analyzed via qualitative content analysis and thematic coding.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited to Austrian educational settings and upper secondary/tertiary education.
  • No longitudinal data on sustained learning outcomes or skill retention.
  • Unclear transferability to non-educational PD/CD contexts.
  • Future research should explore edularp co-design in diverse cultural, educational, and professional settings, and assess its impact on specific learning outcomes and marginalized perspectives.

Summary

This paper introduces edularp co-design as a novel method to foster creativity, collaboration, empowerment, and intrinsic motivation in design thinking processes. Through three studies in Austrian educational settings, the authors demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of this approach for both students and teachers, highlighting its potential to enhance engagement and future skills in CSE. The findings suggest that edularp co-design could also be a valuable tool in participatory and co-design processes beyond education, though further research is needed to confirm its broader applicability and long-term impact.