Students' expressions of learning on the move: Game-based learning and mobile devices in formal outdoor educational settings

The study reported here is part of a project that draws on research from mobile learning, game-based learning and the state-of-the-art view of childhood. These three strands of the wider field of learning meet in this short paper's intersection of students' expressions of mobile game-based learning in formal outdoor educational settings. It built on a mobile game-based learning approach that applied a commercial off-the-shelf game included in two teachers' planning of lessons in mathematics and social science. The study included students' expressions of learning while playing the game Pokémon Go during an excursion. The students carried spy glasses during the recording of data implying that they were co-producers in the data-collection. The expressions were collected through five focus group interviews, each involving 3-4 students. This data helped to answer the research question: What expressions of applying mobile game-based learning in formal outdoor educational settings have students aged 11-12 years? The preliminary analysis resulted in categories based on the students' expressions of various aspects related to the game Pokémon Go, the excursion lesson, using the smartphone, and how they consider learning and teaching at the school. From the preliminary results, the conclusion was that students found the lessons they participated in intriguing. The design of the lessons allowed them to have an open discussion about how learning occurs and to explore different cross-disciplinary themes that they otherwise not might have been able to explore. This conclusion is in line with results from state-of-the-art research within childhood studies. Therefore, the results from the current study suggest that mobile game-based learning in formal outdoor educational settings invited students to be co-producers of the content they were supposed to learn.