Increasing Player Engagement Without Breaking Your Budget: Simple Choices That Make a Big Difference (GLS 2008)

GLS 2008 presentation: Increasing Player Engagement Without Breaking Your Budget: Simple Choices That Make a Big Difference.

Questions the authors, who are game designers, asked:

What makes a game engaging?
Why do people spend time playing games?
As a designer, what choices will make my game more attractive?
As instructor, how can I make my instructional games more effective?

To answer the question the authors created a very simply “game” — as quickly as you can click on a circle when it appears. They demo’d various versions of the game — each with additional features to increase engagement.

Within gameplay:

Provide simple, ongoing feedback, e.g. half bonus, full bonus if click quickly enough
Add a narrative
Allow for some strategy

Within media:

Add sounds
Add colours

With pre- and post-tests on the four different versions of the game, the authors concluded:

Different enhancements did not change level of motivation.
Women liked the media version the most (they played longer, had higher perceived quality and time compression on this version), men liked the feedback version most. Thus, gender matters.
Pre-game interest and expectation play a key role: If people were interested in playing the game, they appreciated the extra features. For those who were not interested, extra features did not impress.

This is an interesting pilot project, still a work-in-progress. The way they’re measuring engagement is interesting.

They’re going to be adding another two features in the area of Narrative: a bit of a storyline and characters. They’re also challenging anyone to take the core version’s source code and add features to make it more engaging, which will be tested. Rules: no porn, but violence is allowed.

Creating a Culture of Critical Game Designers in Elementary Classrooms and Clubs (GLS 2008)

GLS 2008 presentation: Creating a Culture of Critical Game Designers in Elementary Classrooms and Clubs.

Kylie Peppler, Alicia Diazgranados and Deborah Fields presented their findings from two different learning spaces, formal and informal, in which they used different strategies to establish a culture of critical game design among elementary age students with Scratch. Scratch is a new programming language for kids that makes media-mixing and the creation of designed artifacts easy.

The presenters, along with Yasmin Kafai, have been researching game design and, more generally, creative production as a pathway to critical reflection (Peppler & Kafai, 2007a/b). In other words, kids not just playing games, but actually creating them.

After all, as Katie Salen has pointed out:

“Beyond their value as entertainment media, games and game modification are currently key entry points for many young people into productive literacies, social communities, and digitally rich identities.”

According to the session presenters, there is ample evidence that youth are learning when they engage in computer and design programming, e.g. with Scratch. What is lacking is for youth to speak critically about their work and use the specialist language associated with learning in these subject specific areas. From the prior work in the arts we know that time for critique is imperative to help youth develop their lenses as critical and creative producers (Winner & Hetland, 2007).

The two presentations:

Formal setting: Critical Reflections With Scratch in a Second Grade Math Classroom (Peppler, Diazgranados)

Prior work in the arts demonstrates that time for critique can help youth question, explain and evaluate (Winner & Hetland, 2007)
A US math standard that is often overlooked: Making a choice and defending that choice using reasoning that’s convincing. In 2nd grade is the first time that learners get to make decisions about math problems.

Research question 1: What are the local practices to best prep the classroom and class for the exercise?

Background of the 2nd grade classroom:

80 learners (20 at a time in a class)
Math classroom
High numbers of special education students
Urban school in LA Unified School District
> 70% free and reduced price lunch (i.o.w. kids from low SES homes)
English Language Learners (English not their first language)
Minority youth: mix of primarily Latino and Korean youth
Technology and games focus
Each learner has a laptop in the class (different from SA!)

As part of the process of critical reflection in the classoom it is very important to first create a comfortable, safe space for expression and critique. An exercise:

Play a game without instruction (become an expert)
Then teach an adult how to play it (the strategies, characters, etc.)

Another exercise:

When introduced to Scratch, the kids loved it. The kids had to create artefacts in Scratch, and then critique each others’ work using a given rubric. One group of 20 learners would critique the work of learners in another group. Peer-assessment at its best! On the back of the rubric was also an open-ended feedback space, e.g. What I liked about it, what I’d change about it, etc. And then the learners had to share that evaluation with the actual person who created the artefact.
The real power behind the creation of the pretty products (outcomes) is the process and the critique.

An exercise:

As a group they evaluated some of the existing Scratch games (developed by people outside of the class) They found that some games needed more levels, more characters, etc.

Notes:

Much of what is covered in Scratch is beyond 2nd grade math curriculum, and they don’t have to know those things. What Scratch provides is an opportunity for defending decision making.
Even kids who can’t read can program Scratch. Initially it is a matter of trial and error as opposed to free creation, but the kids are still learning the tool.
Kids are natural data collectors. On the whiteboard the teacher showed stats on how the games were evaluated by the learners. This lead into math-specific discussions (addition, subtraction, etc.)
Explaining variations by the learners.

How to scale this process? Not every teacher is an amazing Alicia?

The team are working on a process, a replicable model.
Provide scaffolding for teachers. Give them rubrics. But it must be flexible enough for teachers to take ownership of the process.

Research question 2: How might game design and play scaffold or promote writing and group discussions among predominantly ELL learners?

Kids who don’t like writing (in Language class) are very happy to write up their critiques in the maths class.

Research question 3: How to develop the specialist language needed for critical reflection?

In the critiques the kids begin to use that specialist language, e.g. game mechanics, interactive design, character traits, etc.

Media literacy has moved from the 1970s from a right-wrong answer approach to a more subjective, justifiably opinioned approach. This is in line with a participatory culture where being able to critique and voice a point of view is important.

Overall benefit of the project has been to cultivate a culture of explaining why. Not just “Coz the teacher told me that” but “This is why I think that …”

Informal setting: The Role of a Social Networking Site (ScratchR) in Supporting Reflection on Design in an Afterschool Technology Club (Fields, Kafai)

ScratchR is a platform for sharing programmable media on-line. This platform allows people to publish using the Scratch programming language. ScratchR is the engine behind the Scratch on-line community, a their own animated stories, games and interactive art made in the social network of novice programmers. Unlike other user-generated content communities, ScratchR makes it easy to reuse (we refer to it as creative appropriation) other people’s creations to foster collaborative learning. ScratchR allows members to rate, comment, tag and create galleries.

ScratchR is to programming what YouTube is for video production

The research project, which set out to analyse the role that ScratchR had on stimulating critique and generation of designs in an unstructured setting, took place at an after school tech club:

9 x 4th-6th graders
Met 3 times/week for 2 months (approx 24 meetings)
Played with Scratch and then ScratchR

Types of participation in ScratchR:

Browsing and playing projects
Managing image: creating their online identity, choosing which projects to share, looking for comments on their work, “friending” others
Critiquing and praising others’ work, e.g. on games: “it’s a glitchy game”
Design work: downloading, uploading, remixing

From club to wider community

Weeks 1-2: nothing
Weeks 3-4: club focused (friending, image management, browsing)
Weeks 5-7: wider community (from friending and affinity browsing — looking for Halo or Soulja Boy projects as opposed to Most Viewed — to downloading and remixing)

In one exercise the kids had to create geometric art projects that they had to upload to Scratchr for “expert feedback.” Yasmina and Deborah created alias accounts and gave feedback. The learners thought that their pieces were complete upon upload, but the feedback encouraged tweaks to make. Getting kids to revise work is very difficult, usually. But after this style of feedback, the kids extended their pieces to create improved, more complex pieces.

Concluding thoughts:

Scratchr provided an opportunity for identity construction
Stages of use — in first weeks they didn’t upload anything because they didn’t feel they had anything to show. From nothing, to local (club) to broader community (whole of Scratchr)
Provide multiple entries for challenge and design — first exercise is to create your name, then increase challenge for the learners over time.
Collective projects (remixing, working with others on a project, etc.)

Challenges:

Bringing social networking into the classroom
Allowing Google image searching for artefacts to bring into the projects

The Global Kids are alright

Whilst in New York I visited the offices of Global Kids. Barry Joseph is the Director of its Online Leadership Program, which “integrates a youth development approach and international and public policy issues into youth media programs that build digital literacy, foster substantive online dialogues, develop resources for educators, and promote civic participation.” It’s a program by the kids, for the kids, and involves gaming and virtual worlds, amongst other things.

Global Kids and this program are impressive enough to warrant their own blog posts. But right now I just want to throw out a few tidbits from the meeting with Barry.

On virtual worlds:

Teen Second Life (SL) has value as a social network and a participatory medium. There is also a sense of playfulness associated with it, which is important. Gaming is successful because humans like to play. Barry believes that drawing the art of play into the real world has value. It allows for fresh perspectives. We apply “ludic sensibilities to the mundane areas of our lives”. Teen SL does a good job of building these mental bridges between the playful-virtual and physical-real worlds.
A product they’re working on is Switchboard, which provides a way for anyone in the world with access to a mobile phone to exchange SMS text messages with users in Second Life. Say Rik Panganiban: “We think there is an enormous opportunity to connect those on the other side of the Digital Divide with the rest of the world through technologies like Switchboard. We’ll be doing an initial public test of Switchboard in the coming weeks with a young person in Africa chatting with other teens from around the world.”

On future collaborations:

The youth at Global Kids worked with New York game developers Game Lab to develop a popular serious game called Ayiti, the Cost of Life. The kids have subsequently helped to create a game called Hurricane Katrina: Crescent in Tempest City. Services that they could offer for the Shuttleworth Foundation, or others in SA:

To give feedback on game ideas (on a conceptual level), curriculum around a game, game design, etc.
To user test game interfaces/demos/prototypes.
To advise on the US youth market, for games that are aimed at, or repurposed for, that market.

These services might cost, or might be for free. A conversation needs to happen to establish this.

Using an online journal (blog) in EFL writing: Learners’ perspectives (ED-MEDIA 2008)

ED-MEDIA 2008 paper: Using an online journal (blog) in EFL writing: Learners’ perspectives.

Abstract: This study seeks to research on blogs in education by investigating students’ perspectives. Students from two different junior high schools in central Taiwan were invited to participate in this study for eight weeks. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were adopted, including interview, works on blog, and questionnaire. This study revealed that students had positive attitudes toward writing online journals with blogs. Other important findings yielded from this study are the following three themes. First, it engages students in critical reading and reflection and enhances their writing knowledge and skills. Second, the features of web links and the unpredictable feedbacks from peers attracted participants greatly. Third, writing diaries on a blog is not only a pure writing practice, but also is an activity of exchanging information and interacting with authentic context outside of classroom.

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Authors: Shih-Ru Lin, Chung Shan Medical University, Taiwan; Shwu-jiuan Huang, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taiwan

Process and content: education needs both

We live in a world where information is being generated at such a rate, and existing knowledge being challenged so readily, that the best education we can give children is to teach them how to learn. They simply cannot memorise content any longer. More important than knowing information is knowing how to look it up and apply it. This is the true skill of the lifelong learner.

This is one of the key tenets of the Shuttleworth Foundation’s view of education for the 21st century, and one with which I wholeheartedly agree. However, this is not a new perspective. The assertions above were made by William Heard Kilpatrick of Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1925. He pushed for a “progressive education” that set aside the teaching of facts and figures for the fostering of critical thinking in learners.

The 1940s video clip below is a wonderful piece of history, providing a summary of progressive education. The contrast of this approach with the existing educational practices of the time is significant. A critic of the new way warns that such revolutionary ideas “caused a softening of the fibre of Greek education 2,500 years ago and played a part in the decadence of Greek civilization.”

While the philosophy of progressive education is something with which I agree, it is also important not to be wholly celebratory about it, as in the video. Education is highly politicised: the pendulum usually swings from extreme to extreme. In the case of South Africa it swung from a highly instructionist model to a post-Apartheid constructivist outcomes-based education.

Perhaps the best option lies somewhere in between, drawing on either approach as it is best suited to the content at hand. For example, the instructionist approach is best for learning times tables, whereas the constructivist approach offers an appropriate way to learn fractions, as learners experiment with physical objects (2 sticks out of 4 is the same as 1 stick out of 2).

Ten years ago an essay was written — in a deliberately dramatic tone — that bemoaned the progressive approach and how it left learners all clued up on process, without any content knowledge. The author of Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach states that Kilpatrick “forged the central educational fallacy of our time: that one can think without having anything to think about.” The essay makes interesting points, but is again wholly celebratory about good old-fashioned instructionist learning. (In a world gone crazy, isn’t it necessary to return to traditional, trusted ways?)

I am really beginning to believe that the answer lies somewhere in between, tending more towards the constructivist approach, but not without a necessary does of content. Content provides the material with which to develop the higher order thinking skills. Yes, content may change, and yes, it may be easily looked up on the internet, but it is still necessary. Without it we might be teaching children to talk without the need for words.

Conference notes

I get to attend many conferences and take as many notes as possible to share with others who can’t be there.

2009:

Web4Dev, New York, USA (February)

2008:

Handheld Learning, London, UK (October)
mLearn, Wolverhampton, UK (October)
Schools ICT conference, Cape Town, SA (October)
Rural Education Project conference, SA (August)
ED-MEDIA, Vienna, Austria (July)
Games+Learning+Society, Madison, USA (July)
eLearning Africa, Accra, Ghana (May)

Sick at South Shore Beach: A Place-Based Augmented Reality Game as a Framework for Building Academic Language in Science (ED-MEDIA 2008)

ED-MEDIA 2008 paper: Sick at South Shore Beach: A Place-Based Augmented Reality Game as a Framework for Building Academic Language in Science.

Abstract: Recent research on Augmented Reality (AR) gaming suggests that place-based AR games embedded in larger curricular units provide contexts, experiences and scaffolding that help develops students’ understanding of domain specific language in science. Using a socio-cultural view of learning, this project explores the potential of one specific place-based AR gaming unit, Sick at South Shore Beach, to develop students’ academic language related to environmental science and scientific argumentation. It examines specific game design features aimed at facilitating scientific language development and discusses how lessons learned during classroom implementations will be used to inform future AR designs.

Jim Mathews is part of the Games, Learning and Society group at the University of Wisconsin. The MIT-developed outdoor AR engine used in his project is GPS-, map- and role-based. Features: location awareness, content delivery.

Sick at South Shore Beach is a place-based augmented reality curriculum:

10-15 days to “play”
Learners have to investigate why people are getting sick at South Shore Beach– it is a game of scientific investigation, detective-style.
To make the game experience authentic, the learners complete sign-up forms on the fictitious company’s letterhead, get emails from their “bosses”, etc.
Aimed to improve science language
Based on theory of situated learning

Iterative design cycle to iron out kinks in the game:

Spring implementations
Teacher workshops
Fall implementations
Teacher workshops

Very initial findings:

Learners were motivated to use and develop specialist language
Field experiences helped deepen learners understanding (especially English language learners)

Lessons:

The game is more appealing to some learners than others.

Challenges:

How to assess this sort of intervention?
Are the learnings transferable to other learning areas?

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Author: James Mathews, University of Wisconsin, USA

Thinking About Thinking Through Multimedia: Undergraduate Learning with MicroWorlds (ED-MEDIA 2008)

ED-MEDIA 2008 paper: Thinking About Thinking Through Multimedia: Undergraduate Learning with MicroWorlds.

Abstract: Undergraduate education students engaged in a multimedia project using MicroWorlds displayed levels of engagement in the activity that was beyond that displayed in other assessment tasks. Students also displayed deep levels of understandings about their own learning and about their understandings of teaching and learning. This paper investigates three years of student engagement with MicroWorlds and reports that in each year students achieved high grades and reported high levels of self satisfaction. It became apparent that through this task students were thinking about their own thinking and making practical connections to theory.

ICT in children’s learning is a whole year subject in the 2nd year Bachelor of Education at the University of Melbourne. Most students were not “digital natives.” The author wanted to use MicroWorlds to develop the constructivist and constructionist pedagogical skills of pre-service teachers using ICTs.

The assignment: in 5 weeks construct a multimedia project (a story, a book, a game, etc. in MicroWorlds). Needed to have at least 4 pages and 4 major components of multimedia.

At first the students were thrown out by the vagueness of the assignment. “The idea that these students ‘had to work things out’ for themselves, was alien and threatening for some; they were not being ‘taught'”. Some students complained bitterly about the assignment for this reason.

But gradually as the students engaged with the assignment, they realised that they themelves had to complete learner-centred tasks that involved creation, exploration and self-discovery — constructivist and constructionist learning attributes — before they could one day expect to engender these qualities in their classrooms. They realised that these skills could not be taught, but only learned through practice.

This study highlights the need for effective and practical teacher training when constructivist and constructionist learning is desirable in schools.

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Authors: Nicholas Reynolds, The University of Melbourne, Australia

New Media Literacies, Student Generated Content, and the YouTube Aesthetic (ED-MEDIA 2008)

ED-MEDIA 2008 paper: New Media Literacies, Student Generated Content, and the YouTube Aesthetic.

Abstract: The proliferation of content generation and sharing through Web 2.0 tools has created what Henry Jenkins refers to as new media literacies. We explore the application of new media literacies through digital media creation with eighth graders. This pilot project promotes online video capabilities in conjunction with the time-honored practice of adolescents reading classic and young adult literature. Through the project’s curriculum design and pedagogical apparatus, student-generated digital stories illustrate that complex thinking and learning and the YouTube aesthetic do not need to be mutually exclusive. We provide the theoretical foundations for our work as well as preliminary analysis of student-generated products. We will introduce a revised scaffolding process that incorporates a series of rubrics (based on Henry Jenkins framework on new media literacies and Biggs and Collis SOLO taxonomy) to facilitate evidence of complex thinking in the students’ next round of video products.

In-class project and at-home work. Only four students involved.

Benefits to learners:

Improved critical research skills
Discussed and appreciated copyright issues

This study related to the student skills gap — identified in the 2007 Horizon Report — “between understanding how to use tools for media creation and how to create meaningful content. Although new tools make it increasingly easy to produce multimedia works, students lack essential skills in composition, storytelling, and design.”

Complexities of student-created video:

Creativity vs appropriateness (tensions with popular culture: adult teachers and teenage learners have different views on appropriateness)
Levels of scaffolding? Modeling? Too much and the learners simply repeat what is given back to them
Distributed expertise: change in traditional teacher role
Copyright and IP issues: need to appropriately cite and sourced material

A lesson learned was that students lacked many of the basic skills needed for the project:

Computer skills
Reference skills
Downloading skills
Flip video skills
Video editing skills

Future directions for the project:

Provide learners with a tech pack: camera, tripod, USB drive, headphones — one convenient toolkit
Pilot with entire class

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Authors: Hiller Spires, Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, NCSU, USA; Gwynn Morris, Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, NCSU, USA

Playing to Learn: Guidelines for Designing Educational Games (ED-MEDIA 2008)

ED-MEDIA 2008 paper: Playing to Learn: Guidelines for Designing Educational Games.

Abstract: Using computer games and games in general for educational purposes offers a variety of knowledge presentations and creates opportunities to apply the knowledge within a virtual world, thus supporting and facilitating learning processes. An innovative educational paradigm such as game-based learning, and guidelines for educational game design are discussed in the first part of the paper. The second part of the paper provides an example of a multi-user collaborative learning platform, “The Training Room”, and outlines the game concept employed.

Author has built on the Garris model of game building.
Many COTS are not historically factual or follow scientific laws (because they don’t want to employ those content experts).
For a game to be immersive, it must be fun and/or challenging. Otherwise it’s just homework!
40% of students at Graz University in Austria do not like computers, the internet and games.
He demo’d The Training Room, a flash-based scenario-based game where the story is created by the moderator. Each team needs some information from another team, but there is much distrust between them because of ulterior motives and cultural differences. It’s a negotiation game between the Vulcans, the Shadows, the Narns, etc. with consensus needing to be reached on five goals. The designers used characters from existing fiction, e.g. Star Trek. The players need to find out info about their team from the web, e.g. Vulcan on Wikipedia.

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Authors: Paul Pivec (website) ; Maja Pivec