The shaping of an idea as temporal, multimodal, and collaborative activity: exploring how students develop a board game in L1

Abstract

Brainstorming activities are quite common in L1 education. However, limited attention has been paid to the concrete unfolding of students’ idea development as a temporal, multimodal, and collaborative process. In this article, we explore how a group of four upper primary students in Year 5 (age 11–12) design a board game in a teaching unit on young people’s communication and toxic language use on social media. The unit was part of an intervention carried out in a study on game-based learning in the school subject Danish L1. Our detailed analysis shows how the students’ development process involved an interplay of different timescales at the micro, meso, and macro level, and a use of different semiotic resources such as spoken and written language as well as drawn sketches for a game board. The layers of meaning expressed through the students’ dialogic talk resulted in a metaphorical chain of reasoning, where the students’ initial loose idea was gradually transformed into a final game concept. This reasoning across modalities was enforced through the choice of bringing in paper and pen for drawing. The study concludes by discussing how we can understand idea generation as a non-linear multimodal process in the L1 classroom, which may have implications for other productive tasks.

Keywords:

• Timescales
• multimodality
• dialogic talk
• upper primary
• L1 education
• board games

Introduction

Brainstorm activities before writing and other productive tasks form a recurrent practice in the language arts and first language (L1) classroom as a way of supporting students’ learning (Dysthe 1993, 1995). However, while limited attention has been paid to the concrete unfolding of students’ idea generation, insight into this potentially creative process might influence pedagogical approaches to students’ productive work. In this article, we explore how a group of four upper primary students in Year 5 (age 11–12) design a board game in a two-week teaching unit on young people’s communication and toxic language use on social media. The unit was part of an intervention carried out in a mixed-methods study on game-based learning in the school subjects Danish L1, Mathematics, and Science in Denmark (GBL21, 2017–2023). The intervention and, thus, also the specific teaching unit was based on design thinking principles, a pedagogical approach to creative problem-solving that seeks to foster students’ idea development or ideation (Rusmann and Ejsing-Duun 2022).

In this article, we direct our attention to the subject Danish L1 with L1 referring to the language of instruction in the national educational context that includes a multilingual student population. The subject is concerned with languages, literatures, and literacies resonating with European L1 education (Krogh and Penne 2015; Green and Erixon 2020). We concentrate on a group of students collaborative shaping of an idea from the first brainstorming activity to the manifestation of a board game prototype by taking inspiration from Lemke’s (2000) eco-social notion of timescales, and we grasp the shaping of an idea as in itself an observable series of intensified moments (Falchi and Siegel 2014) that form an identifiable short timescale; however, each moment inherits different timescales, and they are thus characterised by heterochrony. The notion enables us to attend to, for example, how students’ prior experiences from out-of-school contexts, routines in the classroom, and the clock time come into play in the concrete shaping of an idea. Complementing this exploration of students’ idea development with timescale lenses, we look at the semiotic resources used, which allows for a close depiction and nuanced exploration of the involvement of spoken, written, and visual language in each moment, and how these different modalities influence and further the collaborative shaping of an idea.

We explore two group activities with a focus on the first brainstorming activity, and the fulfillment of the idea in a succeeding activity, where the students play their prototype board game. Hence, in this article, we use the term brainstorm as a pedagogical term for individual, group, or whole class activities, more or less structured (Pifarré 2019), but planned to generate ideas, often in relation to productive tasks. More specifically, we follow brainstorm as a group activity. Following Craft (2000), it is an assumption behind the present study that ideation as a creative process does not occur automatically. While collaborative brainstorm activities have been suggested within school writing research, the concrete unfolding of an idea during student group conversations in the L1 classroom is to our knowledge under-researched. Therefore, by shedding light on the process of the shaping of an idea, from the first brainstorming activity to the manifestation of final text, in this case, a board game, the aim is to contribute with knowledge that makes us better able to understand and, eventually, support such recurring and potentially creative processes in the L1 classroom. The following research question guides our study: How can we understand the way ideas emerge and take form through collaborative group work exemplified by a teaching unit where upper primary students design board games in a L1 classroom?

Approaches to students’ development of ideas in the classroom

Whereas design thinking makes out the framing for the teaching unit from which we have chosen our empirical material, our analytical perspective is social semiotic and dialogic, and draws on the notions of timescales and multimodality. In a compulsory school setting, and influential for the L1 classroom in Denmark and beyond, several pedagogical approaches exist to support students’ way of evolving ideas, particularly related to the writing classroom. In this section, we mention two research areas relevant to the present study, namely ­process-writing research and dialogic research rooted primarily in a sociocultural tradition. With theoretical inspiration from Vygotsky (1978) and Bakhtin (1984), the Norwegian researcher Dysthe (1993, 1995) suggested how students in groups can use tools such as mind maps, drafts, logs, and notes to find and outline ideas in the pre-writing process as a response to experiences with ‘the white paper’—a situation where the student is sitting alone, waiting for thoughts to come out of the mind and down on the paper, which often never happens. In the North American writing to learn tradition, from which Scandinavian educational writing research gained inspiration (see also Igland and Ongstad 2002; Bremholm et al. 2022), writing was likewise seen as a way of constructing knowledge, either individually or, as relevant for this article, through collaborative knowledge creation (cf., Ness and Dysthe 2020). Hence, informal collaborative (pre-) writing and dialogic talk activities were suggested as ways of supporting students’ initial idea generation. The underlying understanding is that language use—particularly interactional exchange—forms and partly precedes thinking.

In the present study, where the collaborative brainstorming activity is planned to lead to a product, we see affinities in the mentioned activities while acknowledging that the use of modalities other than language is less commonly the focus within this tradition. Furthermore, the students’ conversations during the two activities in focus have affinities to the kind of collaborative talk described within research on classroom dialogues. Mercer et al. (1999) stressed how negotiations and conversations emerge organically over time in group work; students’ ways of using language for seeking, sharing, and constructing knowledge are rarely carried out in systematic ways. Oral language is per se leaping in its form, and talks are used to exchange ideas, explore new areas, and challenge assumptions. Mercer’s continued work on exploratory talk (2013) suggested this form of dialogue as a teachable way of enhancing idea development and learning. In comparison, Wegerif (2011) emphasised dialogue as an educational aim in itself and suggested the analytical term dialogic space, which implies that learning takes place by opening up for different perspectives that may widen and deepen a group’s collaborative understanding of a given topic. In this way, creativity should be seen as a collaborative effort that emerges in dialogic spaces, where multimodal interaction may play a key role, as noted also by Pifarré (2019). In relation to our study, the process of designing a board game involves collaborative group work, where different perspectives may meet and challenge each other. In essence, we understand the process of idea development as made possible by activities that allow for students’ dialogic talk (cf., Myhill et al. 2020), characterised by an openness and a non-systematic nature and involving a variety of semiotic resources from different modalities.

Timescales

Two decades after Lemke (2000, 2002) proposed the term timescale to identify the multiple processes and meanings integrated into moments and semiotic objects in each classroom and persisting on longer timescales, the notion has informed ethnographic literacy research on learning and identity development. The notion of timescale has primarily been used to emphasise long-term processes such as literacy learning and how short-term processes contribute to it (Lemke 2002), to explore students’ identity construction over time (Elf 2017; Krogh and Jakobsen 2019), and how students make sense of themselves and the school (Compton-Lilly 2017). In contrast to these longitudinal and emic-oriented studies, we take inspiration from Burgess and Ivanič (2010) who, with reference to Wortham (2003, 2008), explored the different timescales that came into play during the production of a single written text. Falchi and Siegel (2014) applied the same attentiveness to how a longer timescale gives ‘meaning to a shorter timescale activity’ (p. 87). Like Burgess and Ivanič (2010), we use the notion of timescale to identify our object of exploration, in our case the development of an idea, as this unfolds in the dialogue between a group of upper primary students and through the use of different semiotic resources, resulting in a product. At the same time, the notion of timescale allows us to open up this micro level timescale (Pahl 2007) and deepen our understanding of the different layers of context in play in the process, and how these layers of context are related to both classroom environment and the students’ prior experiences with, among other things, board games.

Wortham (2003, 2008) underscored how identity development takes place in sociohistorical, ontogenetic, and meso level timescales, yet is only trackable in observable events at the microgenetic level, Pahl (2007), however, underscored the different timescales that come into play in an object such as a child’s text, distinguishing between micro, meso and macro level timescales. When we focus on layers of context related to classroom environment, we focus on meso level timescales such as routines and practices in the concrete classroom, including the use of clock time to govern single activities. Moreover, we explore how macro timescales in particular relating to the students’ own out-of-school life are configured in the group work and contribute to heterochrony. Thus, because of our focus on idea development, the notion of timescale allows for a focus on not only (micro) events as moments, or semiotic objects as the developed board game, but on a recognisable but rarely explored meaning making process in the L1 classroom, traceable in moments during two activities. By exploring the process, the aim is to enrich our understanding of how the shaping of an idea may unfold in classroom settings, and hereby contribute to the pedagogical attentiveness of how to support such potentially creative and productive processes.

Multimodality

In our approach, we look at the use of semiotic resources to analyse the multimodal interaction (Pifarré 2019). Kress (2010a) and Bezemer and Kress (2016) explored and theorised modalities and their interplay in multimodal ensembles. In line with this tradition, we follow Jewitt (2006) in her definition of a modality as ‘an organised set of resources for making meaning’ (p. 17), each with a specific materiality, affordance, and meaning potential formed through use. Of particular interest in this study are spoken language, visual ­language—specifically student drawings—and written language. In analysing the spoken language, we look at students’ ways of interacting through questions and reiterations of utterances in their dialogic talk. We explore idea development across modalities as this emerges through what we describe as metaphorical chains, a term we use to describe the continued bringing in, exploration of, leaving out, and further development of ideas. The manifestation of the idea, the developed board game, is in itself a multimodal text or ensemble, including also material objects such as the board and game pieces. However, as stressed by Apperley and Beavis (2011), games can be viewed as both a text and actions. This means that a board game can be viewed as a multimodal text consisting of different game elements (e.g. movable pieces, a board, game instructions, etc.), and refer to specific forms of play (actions), in which the game modalities are unfolded through activities that may both occur within and around the game (Garcia 2020). The manifestation of the developed idea is encapsulated in both the semiotic resources of the tangible board game and in the activity in which the group plays their game prototype. As such, the board game partly unfolds in time and is not in itself solely a fixed material artefact.

Methodology

The teaching unit on online toxic language

In the present study, we followed a group of four Year 5 students (age 11–12)—two girls and two boys—in a teaching unit in their Danish L1 classroom in autumn 2019. The group was designated by their Danish L1 teacher as a well-functioning group and chosen for this reason. Consent was obtained from both the teacher and the parents of all students in the class. The class was one of four classes at four different schools that we observed as part of the qualitative track in the research project Game-Based Learning in the 21st Century (GBL21, 2017–2023). The four schools were selected from among the 19 intervention schools, a selection based on variation with regards to town/city, school profile, and socioeconomic background of parents. The school in this study is situated in a larger town in Denmark, in an area characterised by both midtown apartments and villas and attended typically by students with well-educated parents. The teacher has had the class since Year 1 (age 7), and from the first visit our impression was that both teacher and students were used to classroom dialogues with time for student contributions and an explorative ethos. Tables were organised as group tables for four, supporting group work, a common activity in Denmark, where 80% of the teachers in primary and lower secondary often or always let students work in small groups to collaboratively find a solution to a problem or a task (OECD 2019).

Our research strategy was based on focused ethnography (Erickson 1977; Green and Bloome 1997; Knoblauch 2005) with a main interest in detailed classroom observations utilising several methods. Data were collected during four visits on four different days (eight lessons) during the two weeks in which the teaching was carried out in this class (18 lessons) and consisted of field notes written on a laptop and assisted by sound recordings and photos of classroom activities, following specifically the group in focus. Likewise, photos were taken of all student groups’ board games, drawings, writing, and other products. Sound recordings of key activities were transcribed.¹

In the teaching unit, the students were faced with a specific assignment or design challenge: they were asked to design a board game that should address and potentially help players to understand (and manage) issues with online toxic language. In this way, the unit both aimed at developing the students’ design competencies and their understanding of online communication. It is part of the Danish L1 national curriculum for compulsory school (Ministry of Children and Education 2019) that students should work on how they communicate in different contexts, also online, and reflect on how it feels to give and receive responses in online fora. In this unit, they had to reflect on toxic language, meaning language that harms other people. Following design thinking pedagogy, the unit of work consisted of activities in which the students were to: explore examples of online toxic language (e.g. negative comments on famous YouTubers’ videos or use of toxic language during in-game chat when playing Fortnite or Counter-Strike), interpret their findings, try out different board games as inspiration, generate ideas for their own board game, experiment with designing a board game prototype, and evolve the prototype by testing it with other students. It should be noted that the development of a board game in L1 is not a typical classroom activity in Denmark; rather, students are more likely asked to composite products dominated by written language in the Danish L1 classroom (Slot et al. 2016).

Key activities and intensified moments

Data from the fieldwork were shared and analysed initially in collective data sessions (the authors of this article and two colleagues, see acknowledgements) with the aim of arriving at an understanding of ways to explore in more detail salient aspects of the idea development as this emerged in the specific group work in the specific classroom. This collaborative and abductive strategy resulted in the final formulation of our research question and choice of key activities and intensified moments (Falchi and Siegel 2014), a process defined in line with Erickson (1986), who describes how key events bring to awareness ‘intuitive judgments the analyst has already made’ (p. 151) in a recurrent interpretative work.

The first key activity is from a double lesson (90 min) (second visit) in which the students in one main activity played different board games as inspiration, followed by the brainstorming activity, and hereafter a whole class activity in which each group shared their developed ideas with the class. In between were instructional activities in which the teacher introduced the day’s work and the brainstorming activity. The brainstorming activity lasted 23 min and the transcription of the group talk constitutes the primary data from this activity together with field notes and photos.

The second key activity is also from a double lesson (third visit, a week later) in which the students were asked to describe their developed prototype of a board game, composed since the second visit. They played their own game to be able to describe it. This testplay activity lasted 21 min, and, as with the brainstorming activity, the primary data consisted of a transcription of the activity together with field notes and photos. In later activities that day, the students also tried another group’s game and pitched their own game.

In these two activities that mark the beginning and end of the idea development process, we have identified five moments as central to the unfolding of an idea, from an initial insecurity about the task of designing a board game to the students’ validation of their developed board game.

Table 1 visualises the timescale levels used in the analysis and the two key activities in the study, each consisting of five intensified moments that form a short timescale at the micro level. We explore each moment as a configuration of layers of context, trackable as meso and macro level timescales in play. Furthermore, we describe the modalities used to make meaning during the process.

Table 1. Overview timescales, activities, moments.

Analysis

Start-up (moment 1)

In the first part of the double lesson in which the first key activity took place, the students played different board games as inspiration for their development of a board game about communication on social media. After a short break, the teacher introduced the students to the brainstorming activity and underscored that they could choose any game format they wanted, and that the game ‘has to be about negative comments, or about how there might be more positive comments (…) it has to be about getting insights into how we communicate’. There were a few clarifying questions from students before the teacher started a clock embedded in a Word document on the digital smartboard. The clock counted down the minutes left, with the activity scheduled to last for 23 min (suited to the next formal break). A text said: ‘Will the game make us communicate better online and how?’ (Table 2).

Table 2. The text on the digital smartboard says will the game make us communicate better online and how? while a clock shows how many minutes remain before the brainstorming activity ends.

One student (Holger) was sick and therefore absent. Another student, Hannah, had a notebook in front of her. The use and meaning of the notebook appeared as well-known for the students, and it was also re-introduced in the first lesson of the teaching unit earlier that week as a log in which the groups should write. Hannah initiated the dialogue by asking what the two other students, Frederik and Isabella, thought about doing a board game, as shown below in excerpt 1, which reveals how the students from the first moment are insecure about the task. Excerpt 1:

Hannah: What do you think about us doing, ehm, a game?

Frederik: What?

Hannah: What do we think with a game?

Frederik: What do we think with a game, what do you mean?

Hannah: What do you think about it?

Frederik: About, why a game?

Hannah: We’re going to make a game.

Frederik: But I don’t understand what you mean by what do you think about a game.

Hannah: Well, what kind of game should it be?

Frederik: Tic-tac-toe, I think that’s fun.

Hannah: Yeah, but we’re going to make our own game. Should we make a board game or, where you ehm () what do you say we, what should be in the board game?

The dialogue between the two students is characterised by questions, reiterations of questions (‘What do we think with a game?’), re-questions (‘What do we think with a game, what do you mean?’), and explanations (‘We’re going to make a game’), which show how the idea development begins from scratch and emerges by talking around the task. Both meso and macro timescales are present: the clock time is counting down on the digital smartboard, and, together with the notebook, it brings meso level timescales into play. Furthermore, Frederik mentions tic-tac-toe, which the students talked about in the first lesson of the teaching unit a few days earlier (meso); moreover, he and the two other students might know this game from playing at home with family or friends (macro). The presence of the different timescales exemplifies not only how the single moment is intertwined with local routines and practices (the digital clock, the notebook) and the concrete teaching unit (tic-tac-toe game play), but also how the students can draw on experiences from contexts outside school in this collaborative entering into the task: to generate and discuss ideas for a board game format and its content in relation to the topic of the teaching unit. However, at this initial phase, the students are getting on with the task of designing a board game, with the task of addressing toxic language not yet in focus.

The main modality is spoken language in the form of student talk. The written question and the clock numbers on the digital smartboard frame the entire activity, but it is the dialogic exchange between the students that forms the outset for their idea development. We return to the notebook later; it is left unused in this part of the activity.

The swamp and the toxic language (moment 2)

The students had to handle the double-task of developing their own board game prototype and doing it in a way that facilitates players communicating with less toxicity. Thus, these two criteria were combined to solve the overall design challenge that the students faced. After the start-up (moment 1), the third student, Isabella, suggests an overall metaphor for the game world, a swamp, and hereafter, Hannah suggests a way of addressing toxic language on social media. The content of the dialogue changes, from the students tuning into the task to a task focused talk. Ideas are brought in, some are developed further, and others are left without dwelling on them further. Excerpt 2 shows this process:

Isabella: But then, you know, but when I think about games, then I also think that we could make this branch. Well, now I’m just considering my idea, the thing about playing inside a computer, right, it’s the network inside those lines, isn’t it, then you might say that landing on a piece would kick you, like, sideways, and then, maybe down into a swamp or something like that.

Frederik: And then you just slide down into a swamp ((laughs a bit)).

Hannah: So, I was kind of thinking that of course it could be fine with those things

Frederik: Swamps

Hannah: Yellow and red and those ((others: Yes))

Hannah: But I think it should be a little like […] for example, if you landed on that one, and then you’d happened to have used bad words, and then you landed where bad words weren’t allowed, then for two rounds all the players would be allowed to talk bad to you as much as they wanted, then you’d get the feeling of how it felt to be spoken bad to.

In the excerpt, Isabella draws on film experiences, shown in her intertextual references to the Wreck-It Ralph films, particularly Ralph Breaks The Internet (2018) that takes place inside a computer, or more precisely inside the internet. First, she actually thinks of a branch, and, in the same sentence, she transforms it visually into lines as also used in the film: ‘it’s the network inside those lines’. This leads to the idea about a swamp, an idea reiterated and hereby maintained in the exchange between Isabella and Frederik. Hannah suggests another game mechanic, that you as a player might experience what it is like to be talked badly to. In that way, she integrates the topic of communication on social media into the game mechanic, and she draws on more general game experiences in her approach to the task. Macro timescales (film and game experiences from out-of-school contexts) are intertwined with the students’ idea development. Later, the group returns to both the idea of lines and a swamp as an overall game concept, and to the idea of toxic language use as an in-game experience.

After this part of the dialogue, several other ideas are brought in and left again, most of them drawing on students’ game experiences from outside school. For example, some ideas are drawn from the board game Amazing Labyrinth (e.g. when the students talk about the possibility of building in an opportunity of shortcuts), and as a game mechanic linking to the topic of the teaching unit, cards with fact questions about communication on social media are suggested, but not returned to. As in the start-up moment, the main semiotic resource used is spoken language.

Paper and visual language (moment 3)

The next important moment, and influential for the idea development, is when Isabella suggests that she can find some paper so that they can draw their ideas. This new visual modality and meaning making possibility results in new ideas about the design of the game board itself, and the content of the game and how to address the part of the task on how to nurture players in communicating in a better way. Excerpt 3 conveys this moment:

Frederik: Yeah, and then someone might come, ehm, but can’t there also be a kind of, if you land on a, ehm, piece, then

Hannah: [If I get some paper, then I can try to draw it] ((gets up to fetch some paper))

Frederik: [maybe] you can land on a piece, and then you need to wait another round, so you don’t get your turn or something () It could also be between, so that you weren’t supposed to be spoken to for one round.

Hannah: Yes

Frederik: It could also be that you weren’t supposed to be spoken to for one round, because then you could try to feel a little left out.

Isabella: ((Returning to the table with some paper)) Frederik, you can try to draw yours.

Hannah: Yeah, and you’re not supposed to speak yourself either for one round.

Isabella: You can also try to draw your version.

The dialogue in excerpt 3 shows how the students use their knowledge about games (design of game boards, game pieces etc.) as well as their communicative experiences from online settings (macro). In moment 2, the idea about using toxic language or not as an in-game experience is now supplemented with the idea of not being spoken to, while Isabella finds some paper and asks Frederik to draw his idea, which turns into a game board draft. Hereafter, the drawing seems to generate ideas about both the game board’s design and how they can address the issue of toxic language. The affordance of this semiotic resource matches the aim of developing the board game: drawing is suitable for visualising ideas for the form of the board and hereby for seeing others’ ideas. Table 3 shows the drawing situation and the end result, one of the drawings, which is later recognised in the group’s board game prototype. In the left photo, the open notebook is visible; however, it is not used for writing here either.

Table 3. The students are drawing ideas for the board (left).

In the left photo, the notebook is open next to Hannah. The right photo shows the sketches.

From swamp to blackout (moment 4)

While the students are drawing, they return several times to their idea about the swamp. The last time is a determining moment for their idea development, as the dialogic exchange around this content results in a final idea and title for their board game: Black out. Excerpt 4:

((Isabella lifts her drawing))

Frederik: Where’s the swamp?

Isabella: Well, that’s all this in the back.

Hannah: But if you fall into the swamp then

Isabella: Well, you need to imagine yourself walking a rope.

Hannah: Maybe you need stop calling it the swamp.

Isabella: The deep

Frederik: The abyss

Isabella: The abyss

Frederik: No, blackout, because you’re inside a computer-like

Isabella: Yes, blackout

Hannah: So, if, you know, and then sometimes

Hannah: If you give a wrong answer, if you’ve just been given a question, for example, and then, hello, and if, let’s say, you get those questions and you give a wrong answer. If, for example, you like a bad comment, then it might say black out, and then you need to go all the way back to start.

The rather long excerpt expresses how the idea development takes place through both spoken and visual language (drawings). The return to the swamp results in a metaphorical chain developed across modalities, from swamp, rope (line), abyss to blackout (and later as verb, black out). The meaning of blackout here is power interruption, relating to a player’s experience of being inside a computer network that can be shut down. Furthermore, game elements concerning the moral aspects related to online communication are refined: if you choose a wrong answer, you are hit by a blackout or you black out and must go back to the start. At this point in the brainstorming activity, the students tell their teacher that they have an idea, which underscores the importance of this moment in the process. The students’ process shows how their looser idea generation gradually turns into idea development through their metaphorical line of reasoning, which involves dialogic talk and drawing. In contrast, students’ writing does not interfere in the meaning making process; at the end of the brainstorming activity, Hannah, uncommented by the rest of the group, has written a few words that sketch out a game mechanics about obstructions and shortcuts (see Table 4 below). The notebook was used occasionally through-out the entire unit, but neither the other students in the group nor the teacher looked at the text during the teaching unit; the purpose of the notebook seems—in line with the instruction—to be that of a log to document the process, as known from process-oriented writing (e.g. Dysthe 1993, 1995).

Table 4. A few written notes written by hannah at the end of the brainstorming activity.

(Danish) Hvis man lander på et fælt så skal man træke et kort og så for man et benspen og hvis man klare den udfordring Får man lov til at gå ned ad genvej (English, normal orthography) If you land on a square Then you must draw a card And then you get an obstruction And if you meet that challenge You are allowed to take a shortcut

The playtest (moment 5)

Six days after the brainstorming activity, the students had made their game prototype, manifesting the idea they developed in the brainstorming activity. The board resembles the network with lines sketched during the brainstorming activity (Table 2), and the game concept is expressed in the title, Black out.

The game is designed with a classic roll and move mechanic, where the player has to roll the dice, move their piece around on the squares on the board, and pick up cards with specific challenges (the orange and blue squares), which must be overcome, or follow instructions (the blues and yellow squares). If a player lands on a red square, they are hit by blackout and have to go back to start. As the illustrations in Table 5 show, the students’ game design process involved a lot of written text production, both in terms of the game instructions as well as the in-game challenges and answers written on the game cards. The metaphorical chain that led to the concept of Black out is consolidated across yet another modality, written language.

Table 5. Photos of the board game prototype.

If a player lands on a red square, they must go back to start (this is the black out part).

Turning to the game as activity (Apperley and Beavis 2011), all student groups were asked to playtest their own game for 15 min; hereafter, the teacher stopped them and introduced four questions to help them reflect on and if necessary, refine their board game. The questions were:

• Was the game playable?

• Was the game too fast or too slow?

• Was the game fun?

• How did the game address the problem that you found earlier in the unit?

Hereafter, the playtest continued. The four students did not pay much attention to the four questions, but answered them with one-liners—e.g. ‘yes’ (question 1), ‘I think it was just right’ (question 2), and ‘the thing about those challenges’ (question 4)—while otherwise engaged in talking about their game play. Reflections on toxic language and how the game can help players reflect on how they communicate on social media were not the core of the discussion. They read the questions and instructions aloud while talking and listening to each other. Written (read aloud) and oral language and the material-visual board, including pieces and dice, are the main modalities. During the activity, the black out mechanic causes laughter and attention, showing how the game as an activity also works as a manifestation of the idea. Excerpt 5 exemplifies the amusement, joy, and annoyance on the part of Isabella as she has to move back to start:

Frederik: Holger, you need to move back two spaces

Hannah: Oh yeah (laughing a bit hysterically)

Student 1 at another table: Hey, can you (…) hey, be quiet please (laughing loudly at the table)

Student 2 at another table: Hey, can you be quiet, man!

Holger: Sorry

Student 2: What happened?

Holger: Isabella moved all the way back to start ((choking with laughter)).

Holger: She was there, and then she rolled a one. When she landed on a white space, she needed to move back two, then she hits the red one and has to go back to start

Isabella: Yes, and I was so far from

Frederik: One two three four five (rolls the dice and moves his piece to an orange square with a question)

Hannah: I read: “A nude has been shared, what do you do? 1) Share it”

Holger: Tell my parents

Hannah: “2) Erase it, 3) Show it to your parents”

Holger: Show it to my parents.

Hannah: Yes, right answer, you move three spaces forward.

Frederik: Hmm

Frederik: One two three ((moves his piece))

Holger: So, it’s just where the red space was

Isabella: How annoying this is

Frederik: Isabella just moved back to start (telling another student sitting behind them)

The student talk shows how they have developed their blackout idea into a playable game, where the players must try to avoid certain squares (e.g. the red ones, which cause ‘black out’; i.e. that they have to move back to start) in favour of other squares (e.g. orange squares, which involve questions on online communication behaviour that allow the player to roll again). In this way, the play activity appears meaningful to the players, which serves as validation of the design idea. This intensified moment marks the final stage of the students’ idea development, which started with the brainstorming activity and ended with the playtest moment. The idea development timescale is observed in moments in which the process progresses, and the game-as-activity forms in itself a new micro level timescale, from when a new game begins and ends and a winner is found, which adds to the complex heterochronicity of the idea development.

Discussion

In this study, we have followed how an idea emerges and takes form through collaborative group work when upper primary students design board games in a L1 classroom. Whereas the creation of multimodal texts is a less frequent activity in primary and lower secondary Danish L1 in Denmark (Slot et al. 2016), the potentially creative process of generating and shaping an idea during a brainstorming activity and subsequent composing work is well-known in pedagogy and a recurrent practice in Scandinavian L1 classrooms influenced by educational writing research (e.g. Dysthe 1993, 1995), and hence connected not least to in-formal (pre-) writing activities such as mind maps and logs. While dialogues have been suggested as key for learning, both within neo-Vygotskian socio-cultural research and dialogic research (e.g. Mercer 2013) and explored in the writing classroom (e.g. Myhill et al. 2020), the ideation process itself has been under-researched in L1 research. With the term dialogic talk, we signal an affinity with the notion of dialogic space (Wegerif 2011); hence, although we concentrate on two key activities with collaborative group work and talk, we underscore an extended focus on the meaning making process. Therefore, our aim in adopting an eco-social, multimodal, and dialogic approach in this article was to grasp the idea development in a way that contributes new knowledge and insights that makes us better understand and eventually support this process in schools. In this section, we summarise and discuss the timescales and semiotic resources in play, as well as the metaphorical reasoning, and we draw pedagogical implications from our findings.

Our key focus in the analysis was on the interplay of timescales involved in the idea development process, as this was formed in a group of students’ dialogic talk, involving also collaborative choice of other semiotic resources than the spoken and written language to represent game elements. To summarise, the idea development among the students actualised the micro, meso, and macro timescales:

• Micro level: Our study identifies how the students’ idea development unfolded in a series of intensified moments that involved dialogue and interaction through the use of different semiotic resources. This also included the timescale of the students’ game design, which would unfold when played.

• Meso level: The students’ idea development process was part of the larger timescale of the two-week teaching unit, which involved specific teaching activities in the classroom environment interfering in the students’ process (e.g. an inspirational board game play activity). Additionally, other activities relied on specific routines and practices of everyday life in the classroom, e.g. working in groups, the use of notebooks, and the representing of the clock time on a digital clock, which was shown on the smartboard.

• Macro level: Finally, the students’ idea development was also connected to their prior experiences with e.g. films, games, and toxic language, which went beyond their school experiences.

As this overview shows, students’ idea development can be understood as a heterochronic process, which simultaneously draws on several different time scales. Mapping these different timescales, and understanding their relations, can thus provide important analytical insights into how ideas are generated and formed in classroom settings. The concrete task in our example caters to out-of-school experiences with both online communication and board games; however, whereas (online) communication would be recognisable as an L1 topic in Denmark (Ministry of Children and Education 2019), a board game as text-action (Apperley and Beavis 2011) would expectedly be less acquainted. In our example, this part of the design process—that is, the game idea and mechanics related to blackout in the finalised prototype—receives more attention from the students than toxic language, although the blackout concept relates to online communication through the idea of being inside the internet. We see this attention as linked to and underscoring the unfamiliarity with producing a board game in Danish L1, although the students know the format from out-of-school experiences. It is worth raising a pedagogical discussion on how the combination of learning about a school topic and—through—new school formats as a board game can be taught in L1 classrooms. In our case, the format is foregrounded, and it is difficult to say if the students learned much about toxic language and communication on social media, while they definitely were engaged in the idea development and game play activity.

The layers of meaning expressed through the unfolding of the students’ dialogic talk resulted in what we identified as a metaphorical chain: from the swamp, which attracts their initial interest, to network, line, deep, abyss, and to blackout (and the verb black out), the final game concept, manifested also in the title and game mechanics. This reasoning across modalities was enforced through the choice of bringing in paper and pen for drawing. The visual language is apt for the making of a game board and, for this group, more concrete for maintaining the game idea about the internet as network and lines, important for fusing this idea with the swamp idea and developing the latter to a blackout. In contrast to the visual language, it is interesting to note that writing played a minimal role in the students’ actual idea development, although written language was an intrinsic part of their game-as-text (rules, question cards, etc.). We understand this as not only linked to the concrete task but also as linked to young people’s confidentiality with visual culture due to, among others, digital technologies. In a broader perspective, this has consequences for the nature of L1 subjects, both concrete in the sense of drawing as an idea generating method on line with (pre-) writing methods (mind maps, logs) and in terms of the nature of L1 productive tasks and hence preferred literacies, as suggested already by Kress (2010b) and by researchers reflecting on how technologies co-develop the L1 subjects (e.g. Elf et al. 2020). Hence, both pedagogical trends—as, in this case, game-based learning and, more generally, a more visually dominated text landscape—require other modalities in the collaborative idea generation process than spoken and written language. Although the observed teaching unit was embedded in a game-based intervention, the task of developing a board game has parallels to other multimodal texts both non-digital and digital such as decorating a playground wall or making an animation film (Pifarré 2019).

The dialogic talk that framed and made possible the idea development was characterised by openness and a non-systematic nature, and was based on an insecurity about the task. Our findings echo similar findings that Wegerif (2005) identified as playful talk, a notion used to describe how metaphors emerge when children are to think and reason creatively. In contrast to Wegerif, our example of how students develop an idea has a strong focus on the meaning making process involved in designing a board game format for a product, which involves other modalities than spoken and written language.

Idea development can be supported in many ways in the classroom, and we can draw pedagogical implications from our findings that complement the impetuses from, in particular, educational writing research. First, our analysis show that it can be important to allow for different semiotic resources, collaborative work, and time for testing (e.g. playing, reading, experiencing a product), thus supplementing insights from process-writing and dialogic research. Second, we argue that it is important to understand how collaborative creativity in multimodal production processes always calls upon the participants’ experiences and expectations across different timescales, and that these layers of contexts need to be integrated into the processes. Even though we grasp the idea development as it is formed in intensified moments during a two-week unit, we can also see that idea development is not a linear process as it tends to involve the interplay of several different time scales at once, which may both point back to prior experiences and the projected futures of the developed idea. This means that educators have a responsibility for facilitating idea development processes, which allow students both to draw upon their prior experiences and allow them to project their future ideas. In this study, the activities were less structured, and the students’ contributed in different ways. Their individual roles and positioning work were not our focus, but we noticed in general that teachers also have to pay attention to the potential possibilities and restrains such open collaborative processes might involve for the individual student’s participation. Third, and more concrete, we point to the necessary interplay between timely extension and the clock time’s constrain for creative processes in the L1 classroom; in our example, the digital clock counting down played a key role for organising the activities.

Concluding remarks

Our study has shown how developing ideas for a board game is a highly situated activity, which involves multiple time scales and the collaborative choice of specific semiotic resources to represent key game elements. In the literature, the notion of timescale has been used to emphasise how short-time processes contribute to long-term processes such as literacy formation. Furthermore, the intrinsic interrelatedness of time and space has been explored (cf. Compton-Lilly and Halverson 2014; Compton-Lilly 2017). However, by exploring how the different scales of timely extension give meaning to the development of an idea, it is possible to identify a recognisable but rarely explored meaning making process in the L1 classroom, with insights and implications relevant for other productive tasks. To enrich our understanding and an ongoing pedagogical attentiveness to how such potentially creative processes can be supported, further work needs to be done on how the configuration of different time scales and semiotic resources may come together when developing ideas in educational contexts.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues, senior researchers Jesper Bremholm and Peter Heller Lützen for initial analytical comments in collective data sessions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Transcription key

() brief interval

((Isabella…)) description of relevant actions

[if]

[maybe] overlapping talk

[…] words left out

Normal punctuation used. Full stop only used after finished sentence.