Children's Involvement in the Design of Game-Based Learning Environments Cases Talarius and Virtual Peatland

This paper discusses the involvement of children in the design of two game-based learning environments, Talarius and Virtual Peatland. The aim of the study was to explore the experiences of both the children and the developers related to the children's participation in the development process and on the participation activities employed in the projects. The first project, Talarius, indicated that while the children enjoyed the project as a whole, there were problems with providing them with a genuine feeling of ownership and with the children recognizing their contributions in the final outcome. Hence, the framework of user involvement that was used as the basis of the Talarius project was further expanded by bringing in principles and practices from other disciplines. This extended multidisciplinary framework was applied in the second project, Virtual Peatland. This did not eliminate all the problems with the children being able to track the evolution of the application from the initial ideas to the final outcome, but especially the inclusion of content creation activities was very important to the children as it made their creations directly visible and thereby promoted their feeling of contribution.