Corrigendum: The Art of Tacit Learning in Serious Location-Based Games

A Corrigendum on
The Art of Tacit Learning in Serious Location-Based Games

by Sheahan, J., Davies, H., and Hjorth, L. (2021). Front. Educ. 6:686633. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.686633

In the original article, there was an error. The name of the project “Pet Playing for Placemaking” was inconsistently used.

A correction has been made to Case Studies, Pet Playing for Placemaking: A Mobile Location-based Game (2020 - Present), paragraphs 1, 2.

Developed by Jacob Sheahan in partnership with the Cherished Pets Foundation, Pet Playing for Placemaking is a location-based game created to support the social engagement of vulnerable older pet owners in a post-pandemic reality. Funded with a Community Connections Grant through the Give Where You Live Foundation to reduce social isolation and support the social participation of vulnerable community members.

Pet Playing for Placemaking is primarily a social and supportive experience. Responding to the isolation and social restrictions on vulnerable and older members of the Ocean Grove pet-owning community due to the COVID19 pandemic, this serious location-based game takes an innovative approach to the support and education of pet ownership in the community. The game invites older pet owners and local community members to partner up and compete in treasure-hunt style gameplay. Older pet owners, limited in mobility and vulnerable to the virus, must complete digital puzzles which reveal locations where their play partner (typically a volunteer or neighbour) can walk their pet and discover more challenges that lead to other places (Figures 6–8). Co-operation is critical, with each player supporting the other with their limitations. For example, older pet owners may have low technology literacy and require support to learn these features on their devices. At the same time, their fellow player may need local know-how and guidance to find the hidden locations and look after the pet in their care. The gameplay presents playful scenarios as content through digital-physical mechanics, encouraging players to explore such themes through play and engage with others in their local community.

In the original article, there was an error. The name of the project “Pet Playing for Placemaking” was inconsistently used.

A correction has been made to Discussion, paragraphs 2, 6.

The three cases studies presented above illustrate the varying ways in which tacit knowledge can be cultivated through serious location-based games. Discussing the experiences of wayfinding and placemaking that each game provokes, we outline how these games deliver tacit understandings of space and encourage players to reconfigure their relationships with the people and environments around them. For example, in TIMeR, participants sought further engagement in First Nation places and stories, in WayFinder Live, participants took on new perspectives of familiar city street and in Pet Playing for Placemaking, players connected with local communities through intergenerational and interspecies exchanges. These games, we argue, provide handles to explore both how the world is and how the world could be.

In this way, serious location-based games hold the potential to reorganise how values and relationships are developed and transmitted. As such, they follow Flor Avelino and colleague's notion of game-changers, macro-trends that reconfigure the rules of “how society is organised and defined by today's understandings, values, institutions, and social relationships” (2017, 1). Evidence is already emerging of how location-based games have influenced people's movements and localised activities during the pandemic (Laato et al., 2020). Likewise, Jacob Sheahan's Pet Playing for Placemaking (2020 – Present) and Troy Innocent's recent endeavour 64 Ways of Being (2019 – Present), public art trail Me and UooUoo (2021 – Present) are examples of community-based and researcher-led effort to explore a return to the urban environment from restrictions and see transformative social innovation in times of COVID crisis. In recognising current issues and responding to them, serious location-based games contribute to the tacit understandings made through these game-changing events. These outcomes might not readily fit into the classroom curricular but instead offer players the opportunity to develop informal knowledge and manage the increasingly embodied and political nature of engagement with their environments.

In the original article, there was an error. The name of the project “Pet Playing for Placemaking” was inconsistently used.

A correction has been made to Abstract, 1

Over the past two decades, location-based games have moved from media art fringes to the mass cultural mainstream. Through their locative affordances, these game types enable practices of wayfaring and placemaking, with the capacity to deliver powerful tacit knowledge. These affordances suggest the potential for the development of location-based games in educational contexts. This paper presents three cases studies—TIMeR and Wayfinder Live and Pet Playing for Placemaking—to illustrate how each uses elements of wayfaring and placemaking to bring new opportunities for education through a tacit knowledge approach.

In the original article, there was an error. The name of the project “Pet Playing for Placemaking” was inconsistently used.

A correction has been made to Case Study, 1

Case Studies

In this section, we discuss three location-based games that encourage tacit knowledge and encourage social and community inclusion. The three projects—TIMeR, Wayfinder Live and Pet Playing for Placemaking—have involved the authors to varying degrees from co-design, development, delivery, or participation. The creation of these serious location-based games is informed by international workshops with experts like Colleen Macklin to indigenous collaborative games with key elders such as N'Arweet Carolyn Briggs and collective decades of locative and pervasive game production experience. In pursuing tacit knowledge, we recognise the limitations to this approach-specifically that tacit knowledge is qualitative and, by its nature, difficult to express or evidence via quantitative or even interview-based insights. Nonetheless, we attempt in each of the case studies to trace its existence through discussions with players. Through these conversations and analysis, we reflect upon some of the learnings around the future of location-based serious games.

The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

References

Laato, S., IslamNajmul, A. K. M. N., and Laine, T. H. (2020). Did location-based games motivate players to socialize during COVID-19? Telematics Inform. 54:101458. doi: 10.1016/j.tele.2020.101458

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