New educational game titles (explicitly subject or curriculum focused) are constantly entering the market. Historically, educational game titles have taken mostly drill-and-skill approaches. In contrast, we’re now increasingly seeing a shift towards the development of games with situational and constructionist learning models.
Another option is the adaptation of COTS games originally developed for commercial entertainment to address the needs of learners.
Some of the challenges in using COT games include:
Identifying the relevance of a particular game to curriculum; alignment of game goals to learning goals
Amount of irrelevant content or functionality in the game which takes up lesson time
Lack of functions capatible for class structures; e.g. ’save’ function to resume at prior play
Lack of time for teachers to familiarize themselves with the game and game mechanics
Lack of necessary technology power or capability to run the game title
Unscalable purchasing options; per copy vs. school/class license
Violent content or cultural representations that reinforce stereotypes
Difficulty of measuring the effects of using the game on learning
Some of these challenges can have design solutions — like creating support materials, mappings to curriculum standards/requirements, pre-set scenarios for teacher adaptation, built-in asessments, adjustments to interfaces.
Absent the ability to easily manipulate the flow of COTs games, some of the best applications I’ve observed has been using COTs as an engagement hook. Many of these entertainment games have rich digital assets that can be used to stimulate discussion, writing, and collaboration.
Some of these games also offer the tools and “space” for players to experiment with a problem in a sandbox. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) can offer a platform for multiple users, group activities, and content creation.
Highlight of a few examples for inspiration:
Consolarium was established to explore the world of computer games and their potential impact on teaching and learning in Scottish schools. Interestingly, their initial pilots focused on bringing familiar platforms like the wii, Nintendo DSs, and SonyPSPs to teachers. Their site hosts several videos and case studies sharing their experiences, such as this project using Myst to enhance children’s writing. Over on its associated blog there are also comments on more current work like this teacher building off of Wii game Endless Ocean.
Global Kids has done some amazing work with kids in Second Life. Related to classroom learning, I’ve had the chance to observe the pilot Science and Sustainability course they developed at a high school in Brooklyn (short videos below). No kids were skipping classes where they could design hybrid cars.
A white paper summarizing the results of a three-year ethnographic study, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, of participation in the new media ecology by U.S. youth was released today. From interviewing and observing young people on social networks, video-sharing sites, gaming sites, cell phones, and ipod-like gadgets, the researchers unpacked behaviors and learning in every day activities that run contrary to common adult perceptions about what is a waste of time.
Some highlights I found worth digesting for improvement of program/product designs:
Drivers of self-motivated learning coming not from institutionalized “authorities” but from peer networks.
Different sets of hierarchies and politics in the online world creating opportunities for youth to exercise adult-like agency and leadership. Ownership of their own self-presentation, learning, and evaluation of others.
Recognition, reputation, and sense of appreciative community as motivating forces for participants. Underlying everything, there is a social context for sharing knowledge/interests.
The networked and public nature of these new media making the “lessons” about social life more consequential and persistent. Friendship, social status, and informal forms of social evaluation are more explicit and visible in new ways.
Emergence of interest driven passions that require more far-flung networks of affiliation and expertise. At the same time, new media being integrated within everyday hangout practices that provide ways for young people to extend and enhance those networks across space and time.
Taking a serious look at “Hanging Out”, “Messing Around”, and “Geeking Out” as degrees of commitment to media engagement.
There is also an online version of an associated book incorporating the insights from 800 youth and young adults and over 5000 hours of online observations.
As an adult, I’ve learned a secret, teachers (at least in NYC) are among the most out-of-the-box people. Perhaps its no surprise that many have gone renegade online to connect, learn, and share outside of their school institutions.
Curious about how many informal teacher social networks have formed, I found a pretty staggering list. Platforms like Ning, Elgg, and Wetpaint have allowed these decentralization digital communities to form, independent from physically defined school geographies and authorities.
A comprehensive analysis of the topics, activities, and types of participants on these networks would likely be very useful for educational leaders. A rough scan of the 300+ education related networks on Ning alone suggests a pattern of joining mostly around common geography (state or country/region), interest in integrating technology, particular content areas (especially language), and for inter-school classroom collaborations.
Some large private players, like Microsoft with Innovative Teachers Network, have also created social network platforms for teachers (which has the double benefit of helping the company better understand the education market).
Some additional questions to ponder: Will school systems catch up and sign on to these kinds of social networking tools? Do they need to catch up? Does a forrest of home grown, teacher-generated networks stimulate more creativity and professional community than institutionally-tied social networks (and/or negate the need for them)? For the education field, what are the tradeoffs in network effects?
How does the ability to track stock points affect the incentives and behaviors of companies? The common phenomenon of focus on short term profits suggests in a narrow and significant way.
Services like SchoolMAX and Edulink allow students and parents to follow the ups and downs of grades like stock tickers. On the one hand, these portals create improved connections to review grades, download homework assignments, and text chat with teachers. On the other hand, they motivate the question about whether we are tracking and focusing on the right things (or perpetuating outdated indicators of achievement).
In the adult world, we aren’t graded on each email we write. What matters is did we (usually as part of a team) accomplish/solve the end goal — did we sell the product, heal the patient, win the case, build the application, complete the compelling creative. The changing nature of work and required skills has caused the need to rethink traditional assessment – what aside from attendence, the completion of assignments, and exam performance can be captured and tracked to motivate and improve learning in progress?
There is energy around the idea that games do not seperate learning and assessment – the potential to get “just in time”, constant feedback on one’s learning curve. Professor James Gee has a knack for explaining in layman’s terms the potential for games as part of the solution to understanding “knowledge not just as facts, but knowledge as something you produce” and for transforming assessment from a stick to a carrot (watch a video interview here).
A more academic summary of “what we know about assessment in games” via UCLA CRESST here (with a helpful list of research papers in its end References section). Baker and Delacruz advocate that games must be integrated into curriculum/training at the outset of design rather than as an add-on, so that the assessment is embedded in the transaction of the game and underlying game engine. Current typical approaches to game-based assessment such as scoring mechanisms (e.g. number of obstacles conquered against time) and wrap around assessments (added tasks or questions) are compared to embedded assessments that could use process data to help explain learning outcomes (e.g. student online clickstream behavior to support inferences about student understanding). The difference between motivation measures versus measurement of cognitive or procedural skills is also emphasized.
Akin to how tools like Blogger enabled a legion of less html-savy web readers to also become web writers, there has been a recent burst of tools that may encourage less code-savy game players to become game builders.
To paraphrase Seymour Papert, computer programming is the closest thing to thinking about thinking. A similar hypothesis is growing around game design (and play). Games are challenge-based, goal-oriented systems. To play (and win) a game, you must understand the system and the system’s dynamics. Failure is accepted, and in fact expected. To move forward, you must adapt, iterate, and learn. (More detailed post on the theories/literature to follow). Arguably, building games requires an even deeper understanding of (content as) dynamic systems and an engagement in iterative reflection.
Working list of education-related game design tools developed (some focused on teaching programming):
Alice: 3D programming environment developed by Carnegie Mellon for learning introductory programming concepts. Graphics and a drag-and-drop interface facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
Game Maker: (in version 7) Application with drag and drop system for intuitive game creation. Built-in scripting programming language for more experienced users.
Gamestar Mechanic: (In development) Massively multiplayer online game where players take on the role of Game Mechanics and create their own games to play and share.
Little Big Planet: Playstation Network game with three modes of Play, Create and Share. In particular, the physics engine and level editor enables players to create, destroy, edit and manipulate levels and objects.
Popfly: (Beta) Microsoft free online game and mashup creator.
Playcrafter: Flash based web application that lets anyone create and share custom games with simple drag and drop features.
RPG Maker: Program for users to create role-playing games. Most versions include tile set based map editor, a simple scripting language, and a battle editor.
Scratch: Free software that enables kids (8+) to program interactive creations by snapping together graphical blocks like LEGO® bricks.
Stagecast Creator: Visual programming language allowing kids to construct 2D simulations, animations, and games (Java). Based on the idea of independent characters who represent objects containing logic.
Projects, collaborations, and academic centers focused on researching and developing games in Education. (There are a significant number of other academics focused on studying Serious Games and Commercial Games).
Education Arcade (MIT): Researchers produced 15 game concepts with supporting pedagogy that showed how advanced math, science, and humanities content could be uniquely blended with state-of-the-art game play. Examples include Augmented Reality Games (Environmental Detectives), Online Puzzle Games (Labyrinth), Multi-player Role Playing (Revolution), 3D worlds (Supercharged!). Future work will focus on an initial set of computer games that will be distributed through desktop and mobile devices.
Epistemic Games (University of Wisconsin): Developing epistemic games (computer games that can help players learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals). Game projects include: Digital Zoo (become biomechanical engineers and use physics simulation to design wire frame prototypes); Urban Science (tackle urban issues using iPlan, a GIS tool, to develop a comprehensive plan for the community); Journalism.net (become reporters working for online newsmagazines); Science.net (become science reporters); Pandora Project (become high-powered negotiators deciding the fate of a medical controversy); Escher’s World (become graphic artists creating an exhibit of mathematical art).
Games for Education and Learning Lab (MSU): Mission to design prototypes, techniques, and games for entertainment and learning and to advance knowledge about the social and individual effects of digital games. Research includes
Games for Learning Institute (NYU): New consortium recently created to evaluate games as learning tools. The joint endeavor of Microsoft, NYU, and other university partners (Columbia, CUNY, Dartmouth, Parsons, Polytech, RIT, Teachers College) will “identify which qualities of computer games engage students and develop relevant, personalized teaching strategies…” The first three years of G4LI’s research will focus on evaluating computer games as potential learning tools for STEM subjects at the middle school grades. G4LI will also evaluate game prototypes and introduce them, along with accompanying curricula, into an existing network of 19 New York City area schools.
Pixels, Programming, Play & Pedagogy (University of Denver): The project explores the creation of interactive videogames as a holistic, project-based teaching method in high schools. P4Games has two primary activities: (1) “Teach the teacher” through the Teacher Game Institue and (2) Teach video game creation skills directly to high school students during residential summer camp.
Project New Media Literacies (MIT): Central goal is to engage educators and learners in today’s participatory culture. Believes that new media literacies need to be integrated across curriculum — as a paradigm shift in how we teach and think about content, not as an add on subject. Has community site to share learning materials and with teacher strategy guides. Encourages educators to download, test, and provide feedback on their learning modules in classrooms or in after-school programs.
SciCenter (Cornell): Focused on supporting engaging STEM learning through the social and playful medium of virtual worlds and new media (including open source software platforms for creating collaborative multi-user online applications).
Last month my mom bought a wii and my dad started talking about getting an iphone. These are two people who had embraced email only after the Internet bubble had already burst. Perhaps moreso than the growing number of reports about digital natives, their shift reinforced to me that the digital future is now.
In Education, the technology is often emphasized over the use of technology. However in designing and changing what teaching and learning looks like (in and out of classrooms), what is essential to understand is the human piece.
A recent report by Pew Research, Teens, Video Games and Civics begins to touch on the reasons why integrating interactive and social technologies has the potential to be a game-changer: it matches the way many kids (and adults) now experience, communicate, create, and make meaning in their lives.
According to the Pew report, 97% of American teens ages 12-17 play some kind of video game. Moreover, game playing is social; 76% of teens play games with others. Given the ubiquity and social aspect of that medium, how can we contrast with (and adapt) current ways that teaching and learning happens? What do we need to know to pose a similar question of other technologies?
