Design-based research for AI literacy: Designing, testing and refining a gamified application for pre-service teachers

Date of Award

2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Philosophy in Education (MPhil Ed.)

First Advisor

Dr Tasneem Anwar

Department

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

Abstract

This Design-Based Research explores the collaborative design, testing and refinement of a gamified Android app ARTIZEN aimed at enhancing AI literacy among preservice teachers. Grounded in UNESCO’s AI competency framework for teachers (Cukurova & Miao, 2024) the app comprises five modules: Human-centred Mindset, Ethics of AI, AI Foundations and Applications, AI Pedagogy, and AI for Professional Development, each organized across three progression levels: Acquire, Deepen and Create. The study was conducted over two iterative design cycles in partnership with 30 pre-service teachers from two private teacher education colleges in Karachi. This DBR gathered qualitative data through focus group discussions, Google forms, WhatsApp text and voice messages, revealing four key themes: Experience and Usability, Contextual Relevance, Engagement, and Conceptual clarity of AI. Findings indicated that participants found the app informative, easy to use, and effective in simplifying complex AI concepts while encouraging critical and ethical reflection. The quantitative data from the first and the final iteration from in-app user logs were analysed using the number of attempts per scenario as a proxy for proficiency. This analysis demonstrated significant improvement across iterations, with notable gains in foundational understanding, human-centred awareness and AI pedagogical integration, although performance at higher ‘Create’ levels declined slightly, reflecting the complexity of advanced application tasks. Hence, the integrated qualitative and quantitative findings conclude that the researcher-preservice teacher partnership proved fruitful in designing a gamified AI literacy app offering iterative learning and reflective engagement. It further identifies three design principles emphasizing contextualized content, progressive challenge and feedback-driven learning. These findings contribute to emerging scholarship on AI literacy in teacher education and offer practical insights for designing engaging, scalable digital tools that foster critical understanding of AI in educational contexts.

First Page

1

Last Page

100

This document is available in the relevant AKU library.

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