Conversation games for digital transformation

Abstract

Digital learning must move beyond tools and skills to meaningfully engage people and help them understand digital technologies and AI in their everyday lives. This paper explores how conversation games can support data literacy development in adult learning education setting. Empirical examples are drawn from a case study conducted in a data literacy workshop attended by continuing education students from diverse professional backgrounds. The workshop used analogue games as a key learning activity to raise awareness about data creation, digital footprints and data types. The games can be characterised as conversation games because they utilise social interaction reflective dialogue as key learning mechanics. Students’ reflections on learning experiences were collected through paper questionnaires with quantitative and qualitative questions after playing the games. After thematic analysis of 62 student responses, three themes were constructed regarding the educational value of conversation games: (1) Inclusive and safe learning environment, (2) dialogic, two-way communication, and (3) social connections.

The key argument is that conversation games offer a potential for advancing digital learning due to their inherently social nature. Informed by sociomaterial and networked learning theoretical perspectives, learning is understood as emerging through everyday actions and activities situated within social and material contexts. This paper argues that the conversational and turn-taking format of analogue games created productive networked learning situations through encouraging social connections, and dialogic talking and thinking. The paper concludes that the rule-based interaction and informal sociality of conversation games represent a valuable and productive game-based learning modality for developing digital and data literacies, particularly because digital practices themselves are fundamentally socially embedded and motivated.