From Literature to Alternate Reality Games: Prerequisites, Criteria, and Limitations of a Young Adult Novel’s Transformational Design for Educational Purposes

Abstract

This study presents the process of the transformational design of a young adult novel into an alternate reality game (ARG) for educational purposes, creating this way, an affinity space for students. Since one of the primary objectives of literature’s curriculum is the cultivation of young people’s reading for pleasure disposition—whose rate is declining—such a project could be a challenge and at the same time could open up a potential prospect of enhancing the positive response of young people towards literature. At the same time, the project supports a multidimensional approach to the literary phenomenon as a means of promoting a wide range of learning goals. The contribution of this venture is that although ARGs have been used in the educational field before, there is no evidence for such a transformational process in the corresponding literature. Design issues, the main characteristics of the ARGs, the criteria and the motivational factors of successful ARGs, as well as the inherent limitations of such a project. The project was applied to the Greek young adult novel: Leros’ Code by Kostas Stoforos (Stoforos, 2016) and the derivative ARG was implemented during the 2018-19 school year in secondary education students in Rhodes, Greece as part of a postdoctoral research (ongoing). The whole project aimed to examine how an ARG could be compatible with the literary curriculum and the teaching mechanics and even more, how it could promote collaborative learning and literacy practices of the 21 st century. The data collection and processing will take place within the ensuing months, soon after which, we will be able to announce our final conclusions.