Game-making for learning
I study how game making can function as a learning method rather than only an output format, especially when learners design systems, rules, and feedback as part of understanding a concept.
Research
Research
This research profile centers on how learners make, participate, and build understanding through curriculum environments that are both creative and structured.
Research
This research profile centers on how learners make, participate, and build understanding through curriculum environments that are both creative and structured.
Systems thinking and curriculum design
I am interested in how curriculum can support systems thinking by helping learners trace relationships, feedback loops, and consequences across connected parts of a problem or environment.
Motivation, engagement, and participation
My work treats motivation as something shaped by pacing, challenge, feedback, and meaningful participation rather than as a fixed internal trait.
AI and educational design
I am also exploring how artificial intelligence can improve educational design in ways that are genuinely useful, pedagogically grounded, and attentive to learner experience.
Presentations
- Content Analysis of Motivational Design in Mathematics Curricula: A Study of Ontario and China — The 2nd Chinese Society of Education Annual Conference (2024)
- Content Analysis of Motivational Design in Mathematics Curricula: A Study of Ontario and China — Robert Macmillan Symposium, Western University (2024)
Ongoing work
- MA thesis: Learning Game Making vs. Learning Through Game Making — a systematic review of game making for learning curriculum for developing systems thinking.
- Manuscript under review: Cultivating Systems Thinking through Game-Making: A Systematic Review on Curriculum Design.
- Manuscript under review: Meaning & Purpose, Curiosity & Exploration: Motivational Rhetorics in China and Ontario Math Curricula.
- Manuscript under review: Have We Solved Them Yet? A Historical Analysis of Recurring Problem Constructions in Seminal Learning Design and Technology Literature.
Cultivating Systems Thinking through Game-Making: A Systematic Review on Curriculum Design
Manuscript under review · 2025
A systematic review examining how game making for learning curriculum can cultivate systems thinking through design, iteration, and participation.
Meaning & Purpose, Curiosity & Exploration: Motivational Rhetorics in China and Ontario Math Curricula
Manuscript under review · 2025
A comparative study of how motivational rhetorics are articulated in mathematics curricula in China and Ontario.
Have We Solved Them Yet? A Historical Analysis of Recurring Problem Constructions in Seminal Learning Design and Technology Literature
Manuscript under review · 2026
A historical analysis of how foundational texts in learning design and technology repeatedly construct a familiar set of educational problems across decades of scholarship.
Evaluation of Artificial Intelligence Tutoring System Based on the Octalysis Framework: Improving Motivational Design and Management within the System
Proceedings of the International Conference on Game-Based Learning · 2020
Examines an AI tutoring system through the Octalysis framework to improve motivational design and management within the system.