Teachers Designing Lessons with a Digital Sandbox Game: The Case of Minecraft Education Edition

While studies have indicated that teachers are increasingly accepting digital games as a teaching tool, the curricular design work of teachers toward integrating digital games into their teaching has remained relatively understudied. This study explores the learning activity designs of teachers who used the sandbox game Minecraft Education Edition. Taking a grounded theory approach, we analyzed 159 publicly available lesson plans designed by 16 teachers. Through qualitative coding, we identified seven design dimensions that described variations across the lesson plans. We illustrated how teachers combine these design dimensions to arrange the socio-technical learning environment, scripting interactions between themselves, students, the game, and external media. These findings reveal the various design possibilities that teachers have when teaching with a sandbox digital game and highlight the important role that teachers play in designing game-based learning activities. Suggestions for future research and implications for the design of professional development for gamebased teaching are discussed.