I'll be presenting the following Work-in-Progress presentation at the 2022 MMIRA GLOBAL ONLINE CONFERENCE happening on August 3 & 4th 2022. Once the time and date have been finalized, I will update this post. I look forward to connecting with fellow mixed-method's researchers there.

Conundrums of Implementing a Mixed-Methods Design toward Harnessing the Experiences of North American Facilitators of Tabletop Role-playing Games in Secondary School

Many teachers have grown up playing tabletop role-playing games. These teachers often cite playing tabletop role-playing games as being helpful toward developing a variety of language, social, and problem solving skills. These teachers have been increasingly introducing the games to their students through after-school clubs. Given this growing activity, there have been relatively few studies trying to synthesize best practices and evaluation frameworks for how such clubs can be set up and organized. As the author of this presentation is one of these teachers, the aim of this study is to begin a line of research into how to best utilize the tabletop role-playing game "Dungeons & Dragons as a tool for second language learning. 

The presenter is beginning this line of research by designing a study which can synthesize the experiences of teachers who facilitate these clubs into a set of guidelines which can guide teachers toward a pedagogically sound method of setting up, sustaining, and evaluating an after-school experience playing this game. An exploratory sequential mixed-methods research design is uniquely suited for transforming these teachers' qualitative experiences into a framework that assists teachers in facilitating a club and assists evaluators in designing quantitative instruments for evaluating the game’s effectiveness. In addition, it has been my experience that teachers who facilitate these clubs are passionate about the game, open with ideas for effectively implementing the clubs, and generous with sharing their experiences with those who are likewise passionate about facilitating the experience for students to play the game.

This leads the author to the content of the presentation, which is the conundrum of which methodological lens is best to synthesize the secondary school teachers' experiences into a framework suitable for setting up and maintaining an after-school club for language learners. Since the author is creating a club at his university and a player of "Dungeons & Dragons," the action research approach would allow for reflexively obtaining and exploring methods for implementing the club. In addition, since many of the club facilitators are participants in social media discussions of how to play the game and of teaching, an ethnographic approach seems appropriate to identify areas where they have had successes and setbacks in implementing a club at their schools. Taking into account that every club described by each teacher has a unique context which shapes the ways the teacher facilitates the club, a case study approach would allow the presenter to explore the factors which caused the teacher to shape their club in its unique way.

In the first half of the presentation, the presenter will contextualize the purpose of the study and explain a brief outline of the data collected with as many emerging themes as necessary to frame the conundrums the presenter is encountering. In the second half of the presentation, the presenter will present an analysis of how the three methodological lenses would benefit the purposes of the study with the aim of eliciting the audiences’ experiences using similar or more appropriate approaches.