eJournals Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen 52/2

Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen
flul
0932-6936
2941-0797
Narr Verlag Tübingen
10.24053/FLuL-2023-0019
121
2023
522 Gnutzmann Küster Schramm

A certain degree of freedom: the challenge of learner autonomy in playful foreign language learning

121
2023
Caroline Cruaud
Playful learning has been shown to create engaging learning activities for students, giving them agency, or the illusion of agency, in their learning experience. But how is this aim of giving students more autonomy understood and valued by the students themselves? In this study, I analyse interview data with students after one school year of using a gamified application for foreign language learning, and answer the question: How have the design aims for autonomy been interpreted by the students in the interview data? A reflexive thematic analysis of the interview data reveals a surprising contrast between the designers’ wish to give students the opportunity to develop their autonomy, and the students suggesting the playful learning experience should be closer to traditional schoolwork. The findings of this paper show the challenge of combining a playful frame with the potential for the emergence of learner autonomy in the school context. This challenge has interesting implications for the design of playful learning situations and for further research on the intersection of the playful learning and learner autonomy research fields.
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DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-00019 52 • Heft 2 C AROLINE C RUAUD * A certain degree of freedom: the challenge of learner autonomy in playful foreign language learning Abstract. Playful learning has been shown to create engaging learning activities for students, giving them agency, or the illusion of agency, in their learning experience. But how is this aim of giving students more autonomy understood and valued by the students themselves? In this study, I analyse interview data with students after one school year of using a gamified application for foreign language learning, and answer the question: How have the design aims for autonomy been interpreted by the students in the interview data? A reflexive thematic analysis of the interview data reveals a surprising contrast between the designers’ wish to give students the opportunity to develop their autonomy, and the students suggesting the playful learning experience should be closer to traditional schoolwork. The findings of this paper show the challenge of combining a playful frame with the potential for the emergence of learner autonomy in the school context. This challenge has interesting implications for the design of playful learning situations and for further research on the intersection of the playful learning and learner autonomy research fields. 1. Background “Sometimes the beauty of play resides in the tension between control and chaos” (S ICART 2014: 83). In the last decades, control in the language classroom has been moving more and more from being the domain of the teacher to being shared with students. Control, as a natural feature of language learning, is closely associated with learner autonomy, a construct defined as taking control over one’s learning (cf. B ENSON 2011). Multiple works have been published on the topic of learner autonomy within the field of Foreign Language Learning (FLL). There seems to be a consensus as to the benefit of autonomous learning for students (cf. e.g., B ENSON 2011; L ITTLE 2007; M URRAY 2014). Indeed, the literature underlines the importance of autonomy for reaching learning outcomes and motivating students (cf. D AM / L EGENHAUSEN 1996; D AM 2011; O XFORD 2015). A recent systematic study in English as a Second Language (ESL) found however, that empirical studies are few (C HONG / R EINDERS 2022). In addition, * Address for correspondence: Dr. Caroline C RUAUD , Associate Professor, Unit for Digitalization and Education, University of South-Eastern Norway, Postboks 7053, 3007 D RAMMEN , Norway. E-Mail: Caroline.Cruaud@usn.no Research areas: Playful learning, Game-based learning, Educational technology A certain degree of freedom 15 52 • Heft 2 DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 the authors report the lack of empirical work “exploring how learners craft and experience their own journeys” (C HONG / R EINDERS 2022: 18). This article responds to the need for studies investigating students’ perspectives. If learner autonomy is a known field, at least theoretically, the intersection of learner autonomy and play is less researched (cf. H UNG et al. 2018). There is, however, a clear link between autonomy and play. Indeed, games are engaging partly because they give players agency or even just “the illusion of agency” (S YKES / R EINHARDT 2012: 19). In this paper I will explore the connection between autonomy and play, through the example of a gamified application for French as a foreign language (FFL), Spilltakulær. Previous studies of this application, which was used for upper-secondary school students in Norway for one year, showed that the playful design supported the emergence of learner autonomy by giving students more choice and more space to take decisions about their learning (cf. C RUAUD 2016, 2018a). However, these studies have not looked into how the students felt about the potential for autonomy offered by the design. In the present study, I will investigate the students’ perspective by answering the following research question: How have the design aims for autonomy been interpreted by the students in the interview data? Knowing more about students’ perception of the potential for autonomy within a playful learning situation will help inform future designs and develop our knowledge of the intersection of these two fields of research. 2. Learner and player autonomy Autonomy has been consistently defined in the literature as “the ability to take charge of one’s learning” (H OLEC 1979). Placing autonomy at an individual level, this definition focuses on a learner’s choice and control over the learning activities. Over the past decades, however, the understanding of learner autonomy has expanded to “include increased recognition of the importance of the social context and interaction in the learning process” (M URRAY 2014: 320). In this collaborative and interactive understanding, investigations of an individual learner’s autonomy also take into consideration other students and the context of the learning situation (L EWIS 2014), e.g., the classroom. In line with the Action-Oriented Approach presented by the C OUNCIL OF E UROPE (2001) and dialogic perspectives (cf. B AKHTIN 1986), an emphasis on the collaborative dimension of learning (cf. R OSEN 2009) is central to the present study. Empirical studies on mobile and online platforms for FLL have demonstrated the importance of the group, and of interactions among students and between students and teachers for the development of autonomy (cf. P ELLERIN 2017; Z OUROU / P OTOLIA / Z OUROU 2017). Similarly, a recent study on autonomy and English as a foreign language learning (EFL) showed that within the autonomous design, students performed better when they worked collaboratively (cf. S HADIEV / H WANG / L IU 2018). 16 Caroline Cruaud DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 52 • Heft 2 In games, autonomy is also linked to the concept of control and choice. Game designers are always in control of the content and the possibilities offered by a game. They create a frame within which players can take decisions. A player is then someone who can take charge of the course of their playing. However, “the most important thing about players and control is not their actual control in a game, but their feeling of control in the experience of play” (S ALEN / Z IMMERMAN 2004: 225, emphasis in original). Games give players limited choices, choices that can appear to be unlimited. This illusion of agency is crucial for players’ motivation to continue to play the game, even when their actual freedom is limited (cf. S YKES / R EINHARDT 2012). As mentioned earlier, empirical research on language learning and autonomy within playful learning is scarce. However, findings from previous studies investigating playful learning within FLL show that students appreciated the gamified systems because they could be in control of their own learning and decide which tasks they would work on and when (L OMBARDI 2015; P ERRY 2015). These findings relate to the concept of autonomy through the notion of control. In her study of gamers’ informal language learning through participation in online gaming communities, C HIK (2014) also shows the connection between autonomy and play. Gamers took control over their learning by consciously selecting activities and games that would help them learn the foreign language. The participants designed their own learning paths, another key element of autonomous learning. These studies show a connection between playful learning and learner autonomy. This connection, however, depends in part on how we understand play and playfulness, which in turn has relevance for the ways in which we design playful learning situations for the emergence of autonomy. 3. Spilltakulær: designing for playfulness and learner autonomy 3.1 A description of the application Spilltakulær This article takes as a starting point Spilltakulær, a gamified application for FLL designed to foster learner autonomy and create the opportunity for a playful interpretation of learning activities (cf. C RUAUD 2018b). This study and the design of Spilltakulær are taking a play-based understanding of gamification and shifting consciously towards a stronger theoretical focus (cf. C RUAUD 2018b; N ACKE / D ETERDING 2017). The consequence of this choice is moving the research lens from the effect of single elements towards a holistic approach of playful learning encompassing the designed artefact, the instructional design and the students’ perspectives. The web-based application is a platform where students can find tasks (either small activities or longer quests), communicate with other students and follow their team’s progress. The tasks themselves are solved outside of the application, as students can complete them in many ways using different media (e.g., oral, written, video). A certain degree of freedom 17 52 • Heft 2 DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 Fig. 1: Anonymised screenshots from the application Spilltakulær The application is divided in five main sections accessed through the menu at the bottom of the screen (see Figure 1). When opening the application, the students arrive on the Activités page, a message thread including the students’ short messages and notifications from the application. The tasks can be found in two categories: Quêtes, longer tasks grouped in different themes with several levels, and Check’ins, smaller permanent tasks that can be done daily or weekly. Solving all the tasks from a level will open up the next level, and in the same way, solving all the levels from a quest will give students access to a new quest. On the Groupes page, students can check the progress of all teams in the different quests as well as the total number of awarded badges. Badges can be earned as a group or personally. Half of the badges are auto- 18 Caroline Cruaud DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 52 • Heft 2 matically awarded by the application when a certain number of tasks or quests have been solved, whereas the other half are awarded by the teacher and focus on the quality of the students’ production or participation in class. The structure of the application and its use in the classroom stem from an understanding of play as a playful attitude. I will now review this concept and give examples of how it was operationalised in the design of Spilltakulær. 3.2 Playful attitude and designs Understanding play as an attitude (cf. H ENRIOT 1969), something that depends on the players’ mindset and not only the artefacts of play, emphasises the connection between play and autonomy. H ENRIOT (1969) defines play as the attitude a player takes towards an activity. This definition and its focus on the player represent a shift from more traditional definitions that instead look at play through the properties of its activities (cf. H UIZINGA 1949; C AILLOIS ,1958). For Henriot, play does not lie in the things we use during play. However, through cues in the design or in the situation, artefacts and activities can suggest a playful interpretation. As H ENRIOT (1989) argues, some situations have a higher degree of playability (i.e., they are more inviting of play) than others (e.g., a visit to the playground more than a job interview). Being in a social situation means constantly negotiating the rules of interaction through cues in the activity, the artefacts, or the behaviour of other participants. We unconsciously read the situation to know the expected behaviour. G OFFMAN (1974) talks about framing a situation, or answering the question “What is going on here? ” This negotiation, however, is not something explicitly pronounced or conscious. Players who decide to play and be playful, perhaps after interacting with artefacts or an activity with high playability, will not consciously and explicitly declare that they are playing. H ENRIOT (1969) underlines the paradoxical balance between the awareness of the play - knowing that you are playing as a necessary element of play - and the unconscious aspect of giving yourself fully to the game. Additionally, the actual decision of playing and being playful cannot be forced on a player. Play is always an intention before being an act (cf. H ENRIOT 1969: 80), and players are in charge of the decision of committing to play or not. A previous study of the Spilltakulær application has found that students did start to play in interaction with the learning environment (cf. C RUAUD 2016). Signs of playfulness in the data included for example language play or friendly competition. Spilltakulær was developed following H ENRIOT ’s idea of playability operationalised through S ILVA ’s (2008) four dimensions of play. In her framework, S ILVA describes playful learning situations in four playful areas: objects, structures, context, and attitude. In three of these areas, teachers and instructional designers can work to develop the playability of their learning activities and maximise the chances of a playful interpretation by students. The design of Spilltakulær comprises elements from these three domains of play: playful objects (e.g., using mobile phones, words usually associated with games as quest or badges), playful structures (e.g., unlocking system, A certain degree of freedom 19 52 • Heft 2 DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 achievement system, teams of students), and playful context (e.g., how teachers introduced a session with the app, how activities on Spilltakulær were not graded or corrected). Understanding play as an attitude and playful designs as creating a space for interpretation (cf. C RUAUD 2018b) - within a structure - has implications for both how to design playful learning activities and how to analyse the actualisation of such a design in the learning environment. This understanding of play also makes a natural link between playful designs and player autonomy, as playfulness comes only as a consequence of a player’s decision to play. 3.3 Learner autonomy in the design Designing for autonomy in playful learning could be described as designing for the illusion of agency. In the same way as autonomy can be seen as a design feature of the learning environment (cf. B ENSON 2008), a playful design should support the emergence of autonomy, or the illusion of it, by giving students space to make choices and to interpret the learning activity as playful (cf. C RUAUD 2018a). Increasing the playability of the application, by for example adding playful cues in its design (e.g., a quest structure, play-related words, badges) is a way of making space for a playful interpretation of the learning activity. A previous study of Spilltakulær shows that students interpreted these design cues as playful, with a student comparing the application’s levels to a video game they played in their free time (cf. C RUAUD 2016: 336). An implication of these findings is that playful digital designs may contribute to the emergence of autonomy by giving students control over the learning tasks. This, in turn, may give learners a better chance of reaching learning outcomes. Indeed, another study on autonomous language learning in secondary education showed that the use of mobile learning systems supported students in their learning and that students using the mobile platform received higher scores on the tasks than the control group (cf. S HADIEV / H WANG / L IU 2018). In line with these findings, previous studies of Spilltakulær have shown that the playful design supported the students’ emergence of autonomy by providing open tasks within a gamified structure (cf. C RUAUD 2018a, 2018b). The idea of autonomy within a structure is well expressed in T REBBI ’s (2008: 38) “supportive constraints”. Her project about innovative approaches to FLL as a way to challenge traditional structures imposed by school culture emphasises that constraints do not inhibit freedom, but instead provide a way to develop autonomy, given the possibilities the constraints entail. Autonomy was operationalised in the design of Spilltakulær through offering “a structure where students [could] make decisions at each step”, and especially within these four areas of choice: choice of working methods; choice of task type; choice of topic; and choice of place and time (cf. C RUAUD 2018a: 30). Previous studies have shown that the application did indeed open up for both playfulness and emergence of autonomy: students made choices at different levels, created their own learning paths and adapted the learning activities to their own needs (C RUAUD 2018a, 2018b). A 20 Caroline Cruaud DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 52 • Heft 2 more detailed account of the application Spilltakulær, the design process and its implementation can be found in C RUAUD (2016, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). 4. Methods 4.1 Semistructured interview The data analysed in this article consist of four group interviews conducted at the end of the school year (June 2015) with nine students (see Table 1). At the time of the interview, students had used the gamified application for approximately one hour per week during an entire school year. The interviews were semistuctured, which means an interview guide was used as a starting point, but as interviewer I had great flexibility to follow participants’ narrative and prompt them in “new directions they may open up” (B RINKMAN / K VALE , 2015: 156). During the interview students had access to an offline version of Spilltakulær on a tablet to help them remember the application’s categories and let them physically point at different elements. The interviews were video-recorded to capture the students’ gestures when pointing at the tablet and thus simplify transcription. As the interviews were conducted in Norwegian, I translated the data extracts used in this article to English. While translating I tried to keep the students’ hesitations, repetitions, and formulation as close to the original as possible.Students were invited to the interviews not just as participants in a gamified classroom sharing their experience, but as co-designers for a potential future iteration of the Spilltakulær application. The premises for the interview were to hear about the students’ experience during the year and the changes they wanted to suggest by discussing the following themes: • students’ use of the different functions in the application and what happened in the classroom while using the application; • what they think worked or did not work with the design (application and instructional design); • changes students would make to the application or instructional design; how they would improve it in a new iteration; • things they thought were missing or they would like to add to the design. This choice of positioning was done to empower the students by asking them to help improve the design. As part of the research setting the students had spent a year using the application and interacting with me, as both designer and researcher. Giving students an active role in the design of the future iteration might make them feel more at ease in sharing critiques of the application and the project. A certain degree of freedom 21 52 • Heft 2 DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 # Participants Duration Group composition Interview 1 Erik - Jonas 30 min 2 out of 3 students Interview 2 Marianne - Peter - Sindre 38 min 3 out of 4 students Interview 3 Ida - Jan 53 min 2 out of 3 students Interview 4 Maja - Nora 27 min 2 out of 3 students Table 1: Overview of interview data: participants (anonymised), duration, and group composition 4.2 Reflexive thematic analysis A reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) of the interview data has been conducted (cf. B RAUN / C LARKE 2006, 2019). I decided to use RTA to better understand how the students experienced and valued the potential for autonomy in the application. RTA is “a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (B RAUN / C LARKE 2006: 79). As this study is placed within a dialogic perspective (Bakhtin 1986), it also made sense to use a method where the researcher’s interpretation and reflexivity was at the centre of the process (cf. B RAUN / C LARKE 2019). Reflexivity in this study was supported by a research journal that documented data collection as well as the analytical process. The journal allowed me to reflect on my own participation in the project at the time, both as a designer and a researcher, and to keep track of my analytic thoughts when encountering the data again in this more recent study. While extracts from these journals are not included in this article, they have been an integral part of the analysis presented in this report. As this study is specifically interested in how students perceived the design’s opportunities for developing autonomy, I first followed a theory-driven approach to narrow down the dataset. I created an initial codebook linked to the definition of autonomy as presented in section 2 of this article and the design aims for autonomy (e.g. choice, freedom, control, initiative). However, this initial codebook was only a starting point, a way of marking where topics related to autonomy were found in the interviews. The dataset, thus defined, was coded in an inductive way with both latent and semantic coding (cf. B RAUN / C LARKE 2006: 88), to represent different patterns of meaning in the transcript (e.g., too much choice: negative; more to choose from; deadlines). Through further analysis of the coded extracts and the relationship between the different categories, I generated three initial themes. Then, I reviewed all four interviews once more to code data extracts that might have been left out during the delimitation of the dataset. All three initial themes were reviewed and adjusted to ensure coherence in my interpretation. The following figure presents the thematic map of the three final themes with the main strands of meaning they are covering: 22 Caroline Cruaud DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 52 • Heft 2 Fig. 2: Thematic map of the three generated themes The first theme generated during the analysis of the data is called “freedom is good”. It groups those data extracts where students expressed different ideas about how they appreciated having more choice and being able to take decisions on their own. The second theme “too much freedom is overwhelming” represents how students felt lost when faced with too much choice. They talked about how taking initiative is hard, when it’s all up to them and how hard it is to start on a task. They sometimes said they felt left to themselves. The last theme is called “ways to limit freedom”. In the interview data students gave suggestions for a new iteration of the design. Their ideas are often linked to giving more control to the teacher, and sometimes to the application. They also discussed adding deadlines, using the application as homework and other ways that are linked to a more school-like environment. Finally, they appreciated the application functions (e.g., quest unlocking system) that limited choice. All of these different strands of meaning can be interpreted as different ways to limit the freedom the design made possible. Before developing the three themes in the next section, I discuss the choice of freedom as a keyword. A certain degree of freedom 23 52 • Heft 2 DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 4.3 A note on freedom Students did not use the term “autonomy” when they described their experience of using the playful design, but words such as “freedom” (frihet; fri), “choice” (valg; velge) and “open” (åpent) appeared frequently in the interviews. All these words are connected semantically to the concept of autonomy. I decided to use “freedom” in the theme titles as it is wider than “choice”, but I could just as well have used “autonomy” as it would represent the meanings expressed in the data. Indeed, freedom can be seen as “a prerequisite of learner autonomy” and can be “understood as the capacity for identifying and taking into consideration the dual relationship of necessity and possibility” (T REBBI 2008: 45). Following T REBBI ’s definition, freedom within learner autonomy will not represent absolute freedom, in other words absolute lack of constraints, but freedom within and through internal and external constraints. Freedom is then not only the possibility to choose to do something, but also how to do something within given constraints. This definition fits well with the idea of an open design within a playful frame. 5. Students’ interpretation of design aims for autonomy: a thematic analysis 5.1 Freedom is good Freedom is good is a clear theme in the analysis of the interview data. Students appreciated the potential for autonomy and took advantage of the design that let them do what they felt like. There are different aspects of the students’ answers that can be interpreted as signs of their acknowledgment and appreciation of freedom. For example, when Nora described how her group went about selecting tasks to work on: 1. Nora: We jump back and forth a bit and see what suits us that day. (Interview 4 - Extract 1, written after as I4E1) 2. Nora: We just look at the next task and ask each other if it’s something we feel like doing in a way. (I4E2) Students are taking charge of their learning activities by selecting what they like or what they would rather do at a given time. This appreciation of freedom is also apparent in the way students talked about being able to choose both their own working method (individual or collaborative), and the manner in which they would solve the tasks they had selected. Indeed, students could choose to solve tasks in any way they wanted (e.g., multimodal, text only, video) and choose how extensive their answers would be (e.g., a simple paragraph with short sentences or an audio file going in depth on a subject): 3. Ida: I think it was nice that we could choose, well, what method we wanted to use to solve the task. (I3E1) 24 Caroline Cruaud DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 52 • Heft 2 These two strands of meaning converge in the fact that students in general valued positively being able to make their own decisions, to take charge of their learning process entirely. In other words, doing things on their own: 4. Jonas: We had to figure it out on our own and it was lovely. (I1E1) In conclusion, the students appreciated this potential for autonomy, for taking charge of their learning in different manners and aspects. 5.2 Too much freedom is overwhelming Alongside the dominating theme of students appreciating their freedom, there is a less prominent and opposing theme of students feeling overwhelmed by too much freedom. In some situations, students have a negative perception of the potential for autonomy. This is clear for example when students expressed how hard it was to take initiative, especially when they had to select tasks, as in this example from Nora and Maja: 5. Nora: I felt that sometimes I just sat and did nothing because we were kind of [voice trailing off] Maja: Struggling to start. (I4E3) This might be a consequence of a design that gives students a greater role, also as initiators of their learning. Students expressed needing to be pushed to action as when Erik talked about the difficulty of pushing himself to do more than just solving the tasks in a minimal way. 6. Erik: Sometimes we lacked the initiative to do more. (I1E2) This struggle to start or do more than necessary could be a sign that Nora, Maja and Erik do not have a complete mastery of what it means to be an autonomous learner. In these occurrences, they seem to need someone or something to support them in their learning, to guide them towards the next step. The open design gives students so much responsibility for their own learning that they might sometimes experience a certain inertia when having to take a decision: 7. Nora: Because when we kind of just sit there and [voice trailing off] it’s of course nice that it’s free and that we can choose, but when you just sit there and do nothing then it kind of becomes boring. (I4E4) This inertia or struggle seems also to be linked to a certain tipping point, where the design becomes too open, and “almost a bit too free” (Nora). Even though students appreciated the freedom as we have seen in the first theme, they sometimes felt lost when faced with choosing a task: 8. Erik: Yes, and then it becomes very open, and so it can be a bit difficult to choose what we will do and how we will do it. (I1E3) A certain degree of freedom 25 52 • Heft 2 DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 Both strands of meaning in this theme Hard to start and Too much to choose from are in a way summed up by Jan: 9. Jan: I think it was in a way, that everything was left to us; the only thing Mari [the teacher] did was to give us badges. (I3E2) This theme underlines that it is hard to be in charge and seems to delineate a thin line between too much or just enough freedom. Too much freedom can lead to negative experience and latent meanings in the interview data are feelings of being lost and overwhelmed. 5.3 Ways to limit freedom In the face of the design’s freedom that was perceived as overwhelming sometimes, students suggested different ways in which their autonomy could be limited. These suggestions often emerged in response to my request to give feedback on the design and especially on how it could be improved or changed in a following iteration. First, students indicated in the interviews ways to relinquish some of the control the design gave them. They describe changes in the design that would let the application give students suggestions or limit their choice, and changes in the instructional design giving the teacher a greater role in task selection. For example, Ida described how she thought the application should be used in a future iteration: 10. Ida: The teacher for example says ‘now you can work with the blog for example the tasks connected to it’ or ‘you can work with voyage’ for example, that we in a way do it in a more structured way, then we wouldn’t all end up in such different places, because after a while someone had done some tasks, others not, and then we all ended up so different. (I3E3) In this comment, the teacher is given greater control, orchestrating a common progression for the class. It could indicate a more collective way of learning, where the individual learner’s choice of learning path is less important than the group and the teacher is guiding the whole group towards an identical outcome. Across all the interview data, students also suggested changes that would bring a more rigid structure to the learning experience. I interpret this as another way to limit the freedom offered by the design. Marianne and Maja talked about using the application as homework and adding deadlines to the tasks: 11. Marianne: Maybe that’s why we think it’s fine to have it as homework, so that we are a bit forced to do it. (I2E1) 12. Maja: that it needs to come within a certain period of time, like homework, like we have on it’s learning for example, so you have a deadline for when you need to submit it. (I4E5) These changes have in common that they make the playful design closer to their experience of schoolwork through deadlines, grades, tests, homework. Maja even 26 Caroline Cruaud DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 52 • Heft 2 compared her design idea to the school Learning Management System (LMS), It’s Learning, and how the system administered homework. In addition to these suggested changes, students appreciated the existing functions that limit choice within the application. Jonas mentioned for example the unlocking system that limited the number of tasks students could choose from: 13. Jonas: But some things were locked and such, so it was fine that you couldn’t choose everything. (I1E4) All of these different strands of meaning can be interpreted as different ways to limit the freedom the design made possible. Through suggestions for changes in the design, and indications of what they appreciated in the current iteration, students expressed ways in which their autonomy could be limited, ways in which they could give away some of the control the design had given them in the first place. 6. Discussion In the first theme, freedom is good, students acknowledged and appreciated the potential for autonomous learning offered by the design. This finding is not surprising as previous research on the Spilltakulær application showed that students took advantage of the design principles for learner autonomy (cf. C RUAUD 2018a). Other studies have also shown the importance of designing for autonomy and how it can influence students’ motivation or performance (cf. S HADIEV / H WANG / L IU 2018; Z OUROU / P OTOLIA / Z OUROU 2017). If not surprising, this finding is nonetheless interesting as it does not focus on what happened in the classroom but on the students’ perception of it, a perspective lacking in research on language learner autonomy (cf. C HONG / R EINDERS 2022). The second theme showed that a design that is too open can be overwhelming for students. This is in line with the pedagogical concept of scaffolding, where learning activities should not be too difficult or too easy. Scaffolding is also a cornerstone of game design, even if this specific term might not be used. Game designers strive to create challenges and tasks that meet the player’s abilities at a given time (cf. S ALEN / Z IMMERMAN 2004). Limiting players’ range of action at the beginning of a game, and then gradually increasing the range of action as players gain experience is a common design feature of video games. This finding illustrates how difficult it can be to find the correct balance between too much freedom or not enough. T REBBI (2008: 45) also reports this issue when describing freedom not as the lack of constraints, but “as consciousness about external and, in particular, internal constraints”, turning “constraints into necessity on the one hand and opportunities or possibilities on the other.” This finding suggests that some students needed more support, if not continuously at least occasionally. A less expected finding is seen in the third theme ways to limit freedom. At the time of data collection, I found some of the design suggestions expressed by students A certain degree of freedom 27 52 • Heft 2 DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 surprising, and wanted to learn more about what motivated these suggestions. When asked to imagine an iteration of this gamified application, students proposed what seemed to me the exact opposite of playful and autonomous learning. Indeed, their design suggestions tended to limit students’ autonomy and give more control to the teacher or the application itself. At this point B ENSON (2013: 87) comes to mind: “autonomous language learners often find themselves, or willingly place themselves, in situations where they have little direct control over their learning.” My interpretation of the data through the three themes suggest that students were trying, consciously or not, to find ways to limit their autonomy, in line with B ENSON ’s observations. In an effort to counter the potentially overwhelming factor of a design that gives them too much responsibility and control, students turned towards solutions that would structure their learning with more external constraints. This question of balance between an imposed framework and the students’ space for taking initiative is also taken up by T REBBI (2008: 45). She remarks that supportive constraints in a design create the potential for emancipation, in other words, space for the emergence of learner autonomy, but that “internal constraints, i.e. cemented learners’ attitudes and beliefs” can sometimes come in the way of this emancipation (ibid.). Another way to understand this finding could be to turn towards the school context as a frame that is difficult to transform. School and being a student in a classroom could be seen as a primary framework that a playful design tries to transform by adding another layer to the activity (cf. G OFFMAN 1974). Students in upper secondary schools, including the participants in this research project, have studied within the school system for at least ten years. They come to the group interview with ten years of expectation and first-hand knowledge about what school is and what school should be. They have experience of what the rules of interaction are in such a situation, and what it means to be a student. It is to be expected that students would turn towards what they know best and associate most with school when asked to design an iteration to a learning activity: grades, homework, and deadlines. Students need time and training to accept playfulness and autonomous learning as valid alternatives to the learning designs they are used to. As in T REBBI ’s (2008: 37) study on freedom within innovative approaches to language learning, students lacked “experiences to build on” and could only think of “learning activities they were already familiar with.” In the design of Spilltakulær, the openness offered to the students was gradual. At first, they only had access to one quest, a sort of tutorial to learn the play mechanism of the application, but the students rapidly opened more quests to explore. The design might need to be modified to ensure all students have time to experience the potential for autonomy gradually before they open too many alternative paths. This takes me to the last section of this article, implications for future designs and research. 28 Caroline Cruaud DOI 10.24053/ FLuL-2023-0019 52 • Heft 2 7. Where do we go from here? That learner autonomy in playful learning situations is challenging does not mean that it is not worth pursuing. Literature on FLL reveal that there are many benefits to learner autonomy, and that it is a natural part of playful learning. Indeed, previous studies of Spilltakulær have shown that students took advantage of the open playful design. These new findings confirm that students clearly value the potential for autonomy, while showing that providing students with the right amount of freedom is challenging. Students need time to adapt to innovative learning situations and understand how to be an autonomous and playful learner. This is especially true within the school context, where students’ expectations are built upon years of experience. Learners need time to stretch their playful muscle and expand as independent beings in the learning situation. When designing for playful learning, it is tempting to go all in, but it might be preferable to introduce different degrees of freedom and playfulness to give students the opportunity to build on them progressively and to slowly create a new understanding of what it means (or what it can mean) to be a student at school. Some students may need more time to interpret the new cues in the learning environment and to explore the possibilities a playful design offers. A design that gives students space to try and fail at being playful students, that offers different degrees of support or of freedom, in other words a flexible design that give students the space to become autonomous, may be an interesting way to approach this. Literature B AKHTIN , Mikhail M. (1986): Speech Genres and other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. 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