Miss Ioanna Iacovides

Profile

I am a final year PhD student looking at digital games and learning, having previously completed a Masters in Research Methods here at the OU. My MRes dissertation was titled "Exploring the relationship between engagement and learning within seventh generation video games".

I did my undergraduate degree in Psychology at the University of Nottingham, before completing a Masters at the University of Bath in Human Communication and Computing. My MSc project consisted of a small scale evaluation of a game called Racing Academy (developed by Lateral Visions in conjunction with Futurelab) that was designed to teach about engineering and physics.

Afterwards, I spent just over a year working as a research assistant on the JISC funded project "Racing Academy: the large scale implementation of a racing car simulation game in further and higher education" with Richard Joiner at the University of Bath.

The aim of my PhD is to explore the relationship between motivation, engagement and informal learning through digital games. My first study involved carrying out a series of email interviews with adult games players to find out more about their game playing experiences and how they view learning in this context. The second phase of my research involved adopting an exploratory case study approach consisting of mixed methods. These include observation, interview, questionnaires, diaries and physiological data in order to build an in-depth picture of how motivation, engagement and informal learning come together in practice. I also completed a final questionnaire study looking at players game-related experiences and attitudes on a larger scale. My findings indicate the importance of overcoming breakdowns and achieving breakthroughs during play, the range of activities players engage in around play which support their learning, the variety of learning players experience as a result of their involvement with games and highlight the influence of player identity on these experiences.

I keep a blog about my own gaming experiences and research related thoughts here.

You can see a list of further papers here.

Publications