Pedagogy

Day of AI Australia Studios, in partnership with UNSW Sydney, designs games that teach AI literacy through direct, hands-on engagement. Our portfolio of games explore important themes and help students develop critical skills, from ethical reasoning in Inky's Great Experiment to metacognitive decision-making in Sunny's Mindful AI Day. Our games are designed to help students learn by doing: making choices, testing ideas, and reflecting on outcomes within safe, scaffolded environments.

This approach is grounded in constructionist learning theory, which holds that learners build durable understanding most effectively when they actively construct knowledge through meaningful activity, rather than receiving it through transmission [1]. When students translate hieroglyphs in Pyramid Puzzle, make decisions about when to use AI in Sunny's Mindful AI Day, or distinguish AI-generated content in AI or Not?, they are developing meaningful intuitions about AI.

Research on AI literacy frameworks emphasises that students need opportunities to interact with AI systems directly, not just learn about them in the abstract, in order to develop the critical evaluation skills and informed scepticism necessary for the AI age [2]. Each game is paired with Australian curriculum-aligned lessons that guide teachers through structured reflection, helping students move from "what happened in the game" to "what this means for AI in the real world."

This pedagogical approach transforms students from passive consumers of AI into informed, critical, and confident users equipped to make thoughtful decisions about the technology.

1. [1] Harel, I., & Papert, S. (Eds.). (1991). Constructionism. Ablex Publishing.
2. [2] Long, D., & Magerko, B. (2020). What is AI literacy? Competencies and design considerations. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376727