This qualitative dissertation explores the use of an original table-top role-playing game as a framework for community-building among independent community educators who lack a central geographic nexus. The study utilized an action research approach, involving the creation and development of the game in collaboration with participants for a period…

This dissertation seeks to investigate how digital gestures connect to students' mathematical understanding when playing "From Here to There!" (FH2T). This investigation explores the intersection of three fields, game-based learning, embodied cognition, and mathematics education. I used three studies which break down the different…

Escape room games have emerged in the educational landscape over the last decade and are growing in popularity. Studies show that participants enjoy educational escape room games, however the data to demonstrate learning acquisition and behavior change is limited. This study addressed the research question: How effective are escape room games as a…

This dissertation narrates the data corpus of a 3-year autoethnography of a gaming community that created a history-themed esports event, the EU4 LAN. Descriptive writing and thematic analysis was utilized to illustrate the enacted roles of EU4 LAN community's (I)dentities across its affinity network. The aim of this research has been to elucidate…

The research underlying this dissertation consisted of a mixed-methods approach seeking to observe any changes in an adult learner's leadership behavior scores after participating in an online collaborative leadership exercise in the game Minecraft. After measuring the quantitative differences, it was discovered that participation in the online…