Literary education with narrative digital games: From formulating research questions to capturing the design rationale

This chapter presents a case study of a design research project. It discusses how the formulations of research questions developed and illustrates the exploratory design phase in which choices had to be made about how to capture design ideas as design principles, conjecture maps, or hypothetical learning trajectories. The knowledge gap is that hardly any research existed on such ludonarrative characters despite the need for good design and accompanying educational frameworks. Hence the research aim is to explore how the narrative video games and their ludonarrative characters can be used to teach literature in primary education. The author's idea is that together the answers form the basis for a local instruction theory on learning goals, learning processes, and how these are supported by the design. Design researchers typically formulate conjectures that they subsequently test and refine. The chapter argues that conjecture maps are useful for publication in journal articles that require concise summaries of a design idea.