What Can Game Design Tell Us About Learners' Agency in Higher Education?

On 5th February 2025, Dr John Lean delivered an invited talk to the Computer and Information Science research group at Northumbria University. Titled ‘What can game design tell us about learners' agency in higher education?’, John’s talk covered what Gee (2007) might call ‘learning principles’ derived from design for player agency in videogames, and how these principles speak to the concept of learner agency in higher education. John used his leadership of the development of Man Met’s Rise programme as a case study for this, but also looked more fundamentally at the design of higher education experiences as a whole, and how policy and practice connect around the concept of agency.