FIELD DAY
Open Research Infrastructure for Education Research with Digital Games: Results of a Community Survey
https://playstorypress.org/books/field-day-open-research-infrastructure-for-education-research-with-digital-games-results-of-a-community-survey/

Since 2024, Field Day at the University of Wisconsin - Madison has been exploring options to roll out infrastructural components they have developed to education and games research communities. In addition to collaborating on research projects, these components have been explored in a series of pilot projects (Swanson and Gagnon 2025; Gagnon and Swanson 2023; Swanson, Gagnon, and Scianna 2022; Scianna, Gagnon, and Knowles 2021) as well as in community forums including workshops and conferences (Gagnon, Swanson, and Harpstead 2024; Harpstead, Gagnon, Seif El-Nasr, and Swanson 2023).

From this work, a strong community has been coalescing. To better understand community sentiment and scope an initial service offering, we conducted a community survey and follow-up interviews.

Findings suggest that the effort to build a common learning games research infrastructure, herein called Field Day 2.0, should start with a focus on community building, grow into documentation of practices, and work toward improving collaboration and ability to assess impact of games on learning outcomes. This has implications for Field Day 2.0 communications, funding strategy, and business model.