MEANING-MAKING EXPERIENCES AND EXPERIENCE-BASED DECISION MAKING AMONG MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRLS PLAYING DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

The purpose of this intrinsic qualitative case study was to understand the meaning-making experiences and experienced-based decision making that occur among middle school girls while playing the tabletop role playing game Dungeons & Dragons through the online videoconferencing platform zoom. table-top games have been played in some form for thousands of years and despite the recent growth in popularity, there has been little scholarship focusing on analog hobby games studied with a lens of literacy interactions and what meaning making occurs.

Three 8th grade girls qualified for the study and met to play Dungeons & Dragons over the online platform zoom for a total of 8 meetings. observations of gameplay and interviews as well as transcribed audio recordings of gameplay were used to collect data. The researcher employed thematic analysis to look for patterns and themes across the data. two overarching themes emerged, collaboration and meaning making. middle school girls used the interrelated components of the feedback loop to make crucial in-the moment decisions when playing Dungeons & Dragons to co-create a story as well as layered their out-of-school literacies with their academic and social literacies to make meaning from playing the tabletop role playing game Dungeons & Dragons.