Leona Bunting, University of Gothenburg

When the teachers said that they were probably not going to use Navigo anymore, we went to the schools and handed out the questionnaires to the students. Most students took the task quite seriously and deliberated over their answers. A first read of the students’ answers to the questions informed us that the most popular thing about Navigo was getting rewards and skins for their avatar. They also liked that it took a long time to play and that it was easy to understand. Less popular was that the same circuits in the game could appear, albeit with different content. Some also found it difficult to hear what Bat said (the voice in the game). However, the answers to this question were quite diverse, so there appears to be no real pattern here.

A child’s response to the questionnaire about Navigo.

In the spring term we recruited some new schools here in Sweden. As we did so, we decided that we not only wanted to talk to the teachers about their experiences with Navigo, but also ask the students. Throughout the evaluation process, we have been hearing what students have said, but we had not previously collected this systematically, something we felt was a shame. As a result, we put together a short questionnaire (in Swedish) for the students to complete. The first five questions were to be answered by marking a happy, indifferent or unhappy face. These questions were: Did you like playing Navigo? How did you like the story (grandma, the pyramid)? What did you think of the tasks? Did the game help you to move on when you made a mistake? Do you think you learned anything? Then followed two free-text questions: What in the game did you like the most? What in the game did you like the least?

Something that stands out here is that the answers from one of the schools are overwhelmingly positive, whereas from the other schools the answers are more mixed. A possible explanation for this is that the teacher in that first school is very positive to games and finds them to be a great complement to her teaching. She is a gamer herself and believes in the ludic power. It is quite possible that her attitude has affected the students.

A more thorough analysis of this data will undoubtedly reveal more insights of the students’ experiences of using Navigo, and hopefully we can share those with you in the future!