503 Design Collective | Portland State University

The 503 Design Collective is a team of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and community members that is interested in social interaction around mobile digital technology. With support from a Portland State University Provosts' Challenge Grant (Steve Thorne, PI), the collective developed and implemented an augmented reality game called ChronoOps ('Chronological Operations' due to the time travel conceit that structures the game narrative). That game has been translated and played in French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Spanish.

The group has since designed several other AR games. We meet regularly at different times each term to do collaborative analysis and discuss various topics in linguistics and game design. For more information about how to get involved, contact Steve Thorne or John Hellermann.

A 2019 ChronoOps game screen map showing players one of five locations that represent some form of green technology.

ChronoOps game prompt notifying players that they've identified the first green technology location, and asking them what are some ways that rainwater can be used.

Three ChronoOps players

Two ChronoOps players being recorded by a third

Research

Sydorenko, T., Thorne, S. L., Hellermann, J., Sanchez, A., & Howe, V. (2021). Directives and the organization of task formation in augmented reality game interaction. Modern Language Journal.

Thorne, S. L., Hellermann, J., & Jakonen, T. (2021). Rewilding language education: Emergent assemblages and entangled actions. Modern Language Journal.

Hellermann, J., Thorne, S.L., & Haley, J. (2019). Building socio-environmental infrastructures for learning in the wild: In J. Hellermann, S. Eskildesen, S. Pekarek-Doehler, & A. Piirainen-Marsh, (Eds.), Language learning 'in the wild': Using conversation analysis to discover the complex ecology of learning-in-action, Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Sydorenko, T., Hellermann, J., Thorne, S. L., & Howe, V. (2019). Mobile augmented reality and language-related episodes. TESOL Quarterly, 53(3), 712–740.

Okoye, A. (2018).Other-initiated other-repair: Repair organization while playing a place-based augmented-reality game. PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal.

Hellermann, J., Thorne, S.L., & Fodor, P. (2017). Mobile reading as social and embodied practice. Classroom Discourse, 8 (2), 99-21.

Thorne, S.L., & Hellermann, J. (2017). Mobile augmented reality: Hyper contextualization and situated language usage events. Proceedings: of the XVIII International CALL Conference: CALL in Context.

Thorne, S.L., Hellermann, J., Jones, A. & Lester, D. (2015). Interactional practices and artifact orientation in mobile augmented reality gameplay. Psychology, 13(2-3), 259-286.

Thorne, S.L. & Hellermann, J., Jones, A., & Lester, D. (2015). Walking and Talking as a Group: Interactional Practices for Playing an Augmented Reality Game on a Mobile Digital Device. Proceedings of GLS 11: Games + Learning + Society Conference, 215-222.

Thorne, S.L., (2013). Language learning, ecological validity, and innovation under conditions of super-diversity. Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature, 6 (2), 1-26.

Resources

Field Day Lab Experiment at the University of Wisconsin, Madison: ARIS website
Chris Holden's Local Gamelabs ABQ website, a tremendous resource for augmented reality and mobile gaming.
Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) at the University of Oregon: Place and Experience-based Database for Language Learning (PEBLL).