I have been talking about this game for quite a while both online and off line. It was the first game that I bought for my iPad some six month ago. It is a traditional 'Physics' type game with a really user friendly interface. The aim of the game is to get the marble or other object to hit the red button using the simple laws of gravity. Here is an example  (level 5):

 As you can see, the red button is located at a height. When the marble is released, it fals from the port hole (top left) and drops down to the ground level where it pops off the ramp. Though it gains a little bit of height it is no where near the height of the red button. Therefore, the player must use some objects. The objects available in each level vary and can be seen at the top left of the screen. In this case, there are three long blocks. The player must arrange these blocks so that when the marble falls, it hits the objects which in turn hit the red button. Have a look at the next screen shot below:

 Here you can see the blocks arranged. When the marble drops hopefully it will hit the blocks and as they collapse, they in turn will hit the red button. See next screen shot:

As you can see, the marble has hit the blocks and causing them to tumble and hit the red button meaning:

Each level varies in the number of objects, number of marbles and number of obsticles that must be passed in trying to hit the red button. It requires thought, skill and precision. I found this game particularly addictive but wasn't sure why. This brings me back to thinking about last weeks reading. As Malone (1980) mentions edit in his paper-

What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games

• "In order for a computer game to be challenging it must provide a goal whose attainment is uncertain
• In a sense, the very notion of “game” implies that there is an “object of the game”
• Uncertain outcome- A game is usually boring if the player is either certain to win or certain to loose.

Four ways to make the game uncertain:

1. Variable difficulty level

2. Multiple level goals (score keeping and speeded responses)

3. Hidden information

4. Randomness"

Thomas Malone (1980)

- All of which are prominant features of Gravity HD.

When I was teaching, my subject was Biology and Science. If I think about the Science curriculum (specifically Physics) I think that Gravity HD could be used to illustrate/enhnance  learning in a number of ways. If we look at Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence: Science Experiences and Outcomes, we can see how a digital game such as Gravity HD may be used:

• "Through everyday experiences and play with a variety of toys and other objects I can recognise simple types of forces and describe their desired effect.
  
• By investigating forces on toys and other objects I can predict the effect on shape or motion of those objects"

As part of the Digital Games Based Learning course we have been asked to write a review of a game. I am considering using Gravity HD. I was  thinking about producing a small video clip of the game rather than use endless screenshots. Though I am still in the very early stages of my planning, I would welcome any thoughts from any teachers out there

:-)

Notes from Week 3 Readings

Both Malone papers provide excellent basic theories of Games Based Learning. Although written some thirty years ago, the principles remain the same for digital games today. This post is a summary of the mainpoints.

What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games

Thomas Malone (1980)

• In order for a computer game to be challenging it must provide a goal whose attainment is uncertain
• In a sense, the very notion of “game” implies that there is an “object of the game”
• Uncertain outcome- A game is usually boring if the player is either certain to win or certain to loose.

Four ways to make the game uncertain:

1. Variable difficulty level

2. Multiple level goals (score keeping and speeded responses)

3. Hidden information

4. Randomness

• Extrinsic fantasies depend on whether or not the skill is used correctly (see diagram below)
• Intrinsic fantasies- not only does that fantasy depend on the skill, but the skill also depends on the fantasy(see diagram below)

Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces: Lessons from Computer Games

Thomas Malone (1981) 

This paper largely focusses on what makes computer games fun (intrinsic motivation) and the sysems behind the game.

• Game- Darts: diesigned to teach elementary students about fractions
• 8 differnet versions of the game to find out which features made the game enjoyable.

• Boys liked the fantasy of arrows popping ballons and girls appeared to dislike this fantasy
• Fantasies can be important in creating intrinsically motivating enviroments
• Implications for designing enjoyable user interface- the appeal of computer systems based on three categories: challenge, fantasy and curiosity (see below)

I thought I would use a post to list a few quotes from this week’s readings. Hopefully they will be useful when I come to writing the synoptic paper :-)

Greenfield (1984) This paper is somewhat dated. However it summarises the early research of video games. Many of it’s findings are still relevant today:

• “Video games have been dubbed the marriage between television and computers”
  
• “Popular arcade games involve tremendous amount of visual action, and is may be one source of their appeal”
  
•  “Video Games are the first medium to combine dynamism with active participatory role for the child”
•  “Another concern about video games is that they are merely sensorimotor games of eye-hand coordination and that they are therefore mindless”
•  “The motivating features of video games are beginning to be put to more explicit educational use” 

Kane (2005) A General Theory of Play. Considers all the dimensions of play.

Caillois (2001) Classification of Games

Newman (2004) What is a video game?

• “Elements of the video game table 2.1: Graphics, Sound, Interface, Gameplay and Story”
  
•  “What a video game is not: a bunch of cool features, a lot of fancy Graphics, a series of challenging puzzles, an intriguing setting and story” (Rollings and Morris, 2000)
• Why do players play? “Rouse (2000) identifies a range of player motivations and expectations. Among them, three are particularly notable: Challenge, immersion and players expect to do, not to watch”.
  
•  “Video games may be understood as a form of ‘embodiment experience”

Photo Credit: tjmwatson (under CC)

As mentioned in my last post, as a child, I was a huge fan of the Commodore 64. About four years ago, I decided to purchase an old C64 on eBay and relive my youth (not sure what happened to my original?). The C64 was released in August 1982. It was the best selling model of the 1980’s. It had a huge 64KB of RAM and a graphics chip with 16 colours! It really was state of the art. My parent’s bought a C64, in 1986, with the intention of using it to manage farm accounts. This was not to be so. It took my Father 4 hours to program the machine to play ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’, let alone, create, calculate, manage and save any accounts. With so many failed attempts he gave up and passed the machine onto my brother and I. I don’t actually know anyone who used the C64 for anything other than gaming. This is where my passion for all things ICT initially began. I would spend hours working out how to programme the C64 to do very simple (and at the time, fascinating tasks) I managed to play small monophonic tunes, draw very basic pictures and of course there was the game playing. I find it incredible to think that 20 years later I am now able to do the same tasks and much more from my mobile phone! With regards to gaming I was an avid user. With 16 colours the C64 games were just fantastic! ‘Hungary Horace’, ‘Dizzy’, ‘Wheelies’ and ‘Road Blasters’ to name a few (others not the most PC in this day and age). It gives me a very nostalgic, yet strange, feeling when I set up this piece of computing history. Seeing the famous blue C64 screen, holding the ‘Run/Stop’ and 'shift' buttons simultaneously, waiting in anticipation for the game to load; will it load or willit come up with ‘system error’?

C64 Interface

 Hungry Horace Screeshot: Level 1

Photo credits: tjmwatson (under CC)

When I bought the computer some four years ago, I asked for my purchase to be delivered to the school where I was teaching. I couldn’t resist setting it up and letting my pupils see my new toy. At the time, my Intermediate 1 Biology class were working on the subject of ‘Alcohol and Its Effects’. Under the umbrella of this subtopic is ‘Reaction Time’. What better a way to demonstrate reaction time than with a good old 10 minute game of ‘Crazy Cars’ (This is a game where you have to race around a circuit avoiding other cars and potential hazards, ideal for testing reaction time!). After overcoming the basic graphics (one boy asking me, ‘but where is the car?’) the pupils surprisingly got really into the game. They were also very inquisitive as to how the machine worked (i.e. loading of cassettes and the general setup). You can now play many of the C64 games on the iPhone ,however nothing beats the real thing ;-)

The Commodore 64, such a fabulous computer of the past, they have even commissioned a classical orchestra to play the music from the games!

 Pac-Man Screenshot (iPad) Photo Credit: tjmwatson (under CC)

Pac Man was a game that I was first introduced to as a child in the late 1980s. I can't remember which computer I played the game on, but Amstrad springs to mind. The Pac-Man movements are controlled by the game player. The object of Pac-Man is to eat as many Pac-dots as you can without getting eaten by the different colored ghosts that roam around the pac maze. If you eat a large Pac-dot it will turn all the ghosts blue. When the ghosts are blue, you (Pac-Man) can in turn eat them. Fruit also appears at random points in the maze. If you eat these fruits you will gain more points.

For the purpose of the course, I downloaded Pac-Man "lite" (the free version) for my iPad.

I think this is a great little game for testing reaction time and small scale problem solving. However in terms of learning, I am not sure exactly what the player *is* learning? I guess there is a certain amount of physical finger coordination to be learned and perhaps the Thinking Correctly Under Pressure (TCUP) theory, but how could this be applied in another context? Perhaps when playing sport and choosing your tactics?

As Greenfield (1984) states video games are "merely sensory motor games of hand-eye coordination"; quite a sweeping statement but applicable in the context of Pac-Man and many of the basic games of the era. Other similar games of the 1980s that spring to mind Hungry Horrace (the first computer game I owned for the Commodore 64) and the Dizzy Game series (more in another post)

How things have changed with touch-screen technology and augmented reality just some of the things that I am looking forward to investigating further during this course :-)

Photo Credit: tjmwatson (Under CC)

Hello fellow students and tutors!

I thought I would use my first post to (re) introduce myself. Sorry if you have already read my introduction on the discussion board!

The Games Based Learning module is my fourth course. I am also studying the Research Methods course this semester. After these modules I am hoping to go on to the dissertation. I was a teacher of Biology and Science for 7 years. For the last three years I have worked in project management (ICT classroom based initiatives and VLEs). My current role is elearning community facilitator for the Scottish Traveller Education Programme (STEP). My current project is called eLearning and Traveller Education Scotland (eLATES) I am supporting, coordinating and managing the deployment of Glow (the Scottish Schools Digital Network and VLE) for mobile and Travelling Children. I would class myself as a *casual* gamer. As a child I was a huge fan of the Commodore 64 computer. More recently I was involved in a number of games based learning trials in the Primary Classroom (2008). These included the use of Sony PSPs as tools for learning and also using Desktop PC software such as Media Stage and CrazyTalk.

I am looking forward to exploring the potential that digital games have to enhance learning experiences for all ages and sharing practice, knowledge and experiences with others on the course :-)

More information about my online life can be found on my website: www.tessawatson.com

Please feel free to leave me and comments or questions (positive or negative!)... They are what makes blogging so worth while :-)

Experiential learning by means of playing games either in real life with other participants or virtually in an online gaming environment according to Gee (1) draws on the experience, beliefs and moral values of the player’s real world identity. In turn the player gains knowledge by experimenting safely in a learning environment, knowledge which then blends into and transforms his real identity that as a result promotes change to a new identity. The centre of learning therefore is based on own subjective experience and it is experience that guides what the person learns and when it is learned according to David Kolb (2). The desired outcome is a transfer of emotions, notions, capabilities that derive from a safe learning experience where the learner has had an active part in the evolution of the learning environment and the events that have lead to the learning experience.  Thiagi (3) and many other use games regularly as a means to destructure and restructure learning.

Unlike Boellsdorf virtual identities in SL Gee’s players enter a set framework given by the game design with a choice of “unique backgrounds” and features. The creation of the virtual identity is framed by design and not as in SL a free choice and construction of the person. Consequently a game seems to be a more structured way of learning than an identity in a SL environment. Throughout the game the decisions made and the development of the game add to and develop the gamer’s virtual identity as foreseen by the game design, whereas in SL the rules and rewards are defined by the social conventions created and implemented by each individual group (assuming that we don’t enter a preset domain but that we meet on ‘neutral’ grounds’). The choices made according to Gee are filtered by a projected identity that acts an intermediary between the real and the virtual identity. While in both cases the environment provides anonymity the mandatory gap between the virtual and the real world Boellsdorf stressed as being foundational in Gee’s version seems to be bridged by the projected identity that serves as a ‘transmitter’ or ‘synapsis’ between both worlds.  In my previous post I pointed out that in my view even in SL there is a reciprocal ‘contamination’ between the experiences in the real and the virtual world. Gee’s view on using games to transfer and enhance learning seems to confirm this impression. The express purpose for playing online in Gee is to learn. So why and how can playing be an effective learning tool?

Experiential learning expert David Kolb proposes a model of learning cycle with four learning styles: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active, experimentation, which all engage the learner at some stage of the game. Kolb suggests that a learner enters the game with his own personal style and moves along the cycle during the game experiencing and interacting with all four styles. By playing the game the person is actively involved in the choices and decisions, thinks before and after about the alternative choices and their consequences, is able to take the experience out of context and to a meta level of understanding where it will enhance what the person already knows and will support with ‘tangible’ activities that promote learning-by-doing.

http://holyroodpark.net/danielag/files/-1/1091/diagramm0004.jpg

Learning cycle

Source: http://weatherhead.case.edu/executive-education/programs/subjects/e

To have a successful learning transfer Gee sees three basic requirements that need to be fulfilled:

1-     The learner must be enticed to try (…)

2-     The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even if he or she begins with little motivation to do so

3-     The learner must achieve some meaningful success (…)

How can that be achieved? Gee admits that video games are good for some type of learners, so that would confirm Kolb’s different learning styles and different approaches to learning. How can games be used effectively in education, higher, professional or any other education to provide an interesting entry point for all learners?

Based on my experience as an experiential outdoor facilitator games have first to be designed carefully and then briefed and de-briefed well. The briefing serves to set down the framework, similar to a game design in an online environment with its basic rules, choices, characters and roles. The de-briefing serves to transfer the findings of the game (the virtual world and the identity the learner assumed there) into the real world, they need to answer to the question of “how can I apply this in my daily life/work?” and serve as a bridge between both worlds and both identities.

Briefing and debriefing should aim at enticing the learner to try, to offer a safe environment to learn detached from his real life and the identity he or she is required to have in a specific semiotic domain. A feeling of safety is important as well as willingness to commit which might be achieved by showing first that there are no repercussions in real life and second ‘what is in for me/him/her’ or expressed differently “what will I get out of it?, what will my success look like?” And it must be clear that success is closely related to how much effort is put in the task. It should be clear to the learner that the responsibility for success and reward are in his own hands.

Is that enough to motivate people to risk doing something which might make them look stupid, inept or clumsy? Indeed, this is a major obstacle in the real experiential world which requires a lot of ‘pedagogical care’ (Barnett, 2007) or as Gee phrases it, to learn actively and critically. Personally I quite like the idea of identities as an ongoing development program where knowledge is used as a catalyst for developing a new identity and to form bridges from the one’s old identity to the new one. The virtual world has the advantage of offering anonymity which provides a feeling of safety that in turn reduces risk and increases the risk readiness for the learner to allow himself to get involved in the game. How can we ensure that the real world identity will profit from the virtual world identity?

 (1)   James Paul Gee, (2004) “Learning and Identity: what does it mean to be a half-elf?” from What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy”, pp51-71, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

(2)   David Kolb, Learning from Experience, http://www.learningfromexperience.com/ accessed on 17^th October 2010

(3) http://www.thiagi.com/

After our Second Life Session I found myself comparing my perceptions of what had happened in that hour with the interaction during our Twitter and Skypechat tutorial. While the basic text-based exchange is common to all three the addition of visual information, such as seeing a person type on the keyboard, has had a regulatory effect on the communication flow. Our exchanges were more structured and there was a certain flow in the development of the discussion, which allowed to express and elaborate on a thought while it still was on the radar of all.

The impression of having an embodied entity in a dedicated environment contributed to my perception of a more ‘personal’ interaction between the various members of the course. It was interesting to see that the real life behaviours, such not more than two people sitting on a bench or keeping a certain distance to each other was the same in this virtual environment.

One aspect that distinguished us from other users seems to be that the main attractiveness for SL, its anonymity and freedom of behaviour and role choice, is not our main goal. We still seem to struggle with the anonymity of our bodily selves.

From a learning and teaching perspective I can see and think of a number of potential uses for SL, if the participants will buy into the technology part of it. I am still disoriented by the level of complexity of SL and if I were to use it, I would need more confidence and experience to support my learners in this environment. For me SL is not intuitive enough for a quick spin in and out of it.

Skypechatting was really interesting last night. Fast, fun and a little unstructured it felt like being in a classroom, where everyone finally gets a chance to talk and being listened to and answered immediately. By skyping the perceived isolation and asynchronous communication and interaction was finally broken and it felt like a community.

As a teaching tool I would see it as an opportunity to let people vent their ideas, emotions and opinions in a collaborative environment with immediate response. It could also serve as a channel to collect ideas, make provocative statements and brainstorm on them. If we compare it to a real classroom, it is more like a moment of liberation, where everyone has a voice that is heard and reacted to in real time.

The risk is that at the end there is no real listening and it is a little hard to follow the flow and the understanding of each other. On the other hand coming up with many different ideas concurrently it is an excellent stepping stone for further discussion and thought.

As you can see from my very first blog, I was a complete novice when it came to video and digital games.  Also within my immediate family there is a feeling that games are frivolous.  What seemed incongruous to them was this up-to-now serious academic suddenly playing games.

However, I was curious as to what games could offer education and I have not been disappointed.  I particularly liked Nicola Whitton’s approach – focusing on what educators can learn from good game design and also her concentration on higher education which is where my own teaching is located.  As a sociologist I am fascinated by the evolution of digital game play which somehow passed me by – from the very public context of arcade gaming, to early console games, to initially textual multi-player online games in MOOs and MUDs, to fully 3D immersive MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and Everquest, to ARGs and multi-modal games and mobile and wii games.  These developments have occurred in a relatively short time frame of about 30 years.  Being in my mid-fifties I can see how these developments have passed me by although I am not arguing strongly for a generational difference as I was never ‘into’ games that much. I can see someone of my generation who was a game enthusiast would have been enthralled by these developments.

I had a very simplistic notion of what is ‘play’ and what is a ‘game’.  The distinction between paedia (spontaneous, unstructured play) and ludic (structured play) (Caillois,2001) was illuminating particularly as I could apply it to my practice of qualitative analysis – where I can see a phase of ‘playing with the data’ in the paedia sense when experimenting with ideas, immersing oneself in the data and a more ‘ludic’ phase i.e a structured, methodical approach to managing and analysing data.  The problematic nature of ‘what is a game’ was brought home to me when we had to design in our own groups a game using Google Earth as the back drop.  After constructing our game, I was suddenly not sure whether it was a game or not (see blog).  I had to think hard about what differentiated a game from a learning activity.  This was not something I had expected – having read the literature on the characteristics of a game. It was in the practice of trying to design a game that the issues the literature discussed became meaningful.

My own experience with playing games during this course began with a lot of frustration.  I had never played arcade-style games so my attempts with PacMan (I had never even heard of PacMan!! – which seems amazing to me now), Donkey Kong etc. were fraught.  It was like entering a new world, learning a new language for me.  I did not enjoy the early weeks of game playing.  Ironically, I now play on my iPhone two arcade-style games – DoodleJump and Ragdoll 2.  I play them when I want some down time to relax and empty my mind – something I never thought possible during my first attempt at playing these games. And I get satisfaction in getting better – improving my score.  As I tried different types of games, I became more involved in them and started to look at them from a meta-level perspective – learning their design grammars or understanding their semiotic domain (Gee 2003).  This level of understanding was reinforced in searching for a game to review that would somehow be related to my practice.  At this point in the course, we had not looked at ARGs. I first looked at educational games but as most were aimed at the K-12 level, I did not find anything that I thought could be translated to post-graduates. I then looked at commercial games and the ones that I thought had relevance to qualitative analysis were detective games.  The one I ultimately chose (Missing: Since January AKA In Memoriam) I discovered retrospectively had elements of an ARG – playing as oneself, having an ongoing storyline, moving between the game and the real world (real fact-based sites, emails),  a ‘this is not a game’ attitude and a simulation of collaboration.  The blending of the real and game worlds I particularly liked as it engendered a sense of the uncanny (Bayne 2008) – an uncomfortable feeling, a disorientation which mirrors the ‘troublesome’ nature of the qualitative analysis process and links to Meyer and Land’s (2005) notion of students’ needing to grapple with troublesome areas before being able to assimilate the ‘threshold concepts’ relevant to their subject area.

Missing: Since January was the first ‘long’ game that I played and I had to grapple with the variety of puzzles, arcade-style games as well as internet searches in order to proceed. I also discovered a number of cheats on the internet and thus connected with the affinity group associated with this game. At this mid-point of the course, I felt that I was getting a deeper understanding of games.

My biggest surprise was how much I enjoyed the MMORPGs.  I was slightly apprehensive about playing these games and I welcomed the fact that we would be playing them as a group.  I doubt whether I would have ventured into them alone.  I enjoyed developing my avatar and learning about the role my type of character plays in the game.  I have blogged about the ethical issues I think these games raise but I like, in general, the notion of completing quests.  World of Warcraft and Everquest II reminded me a bit of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (with the idea of travelling through unknown lands to complete a quest).  Not surprisingly, I recently discovered that there is a Lord of the Rings MMORPG.  I enjoy the richness of inhabiting these simulated environments.

I am still absorbing how I can apply what I have learned about games to the way I design workshops supporting learning about the qualitative analysis process and the use of CAQDAS (Computer-Aided Qualitative Data AnalysiS).  I can see how each software package (such as ATLAS.ti,  MAXqda or NVivo) can be used as a platform for a game.  Using an existing software package as platform for a game (in the way we used Google Earth as a platform) has the benefits of being efficient in terms of cost (not having to design from scratch a game environment) and being authentic – playing in the environment that you are learning about.  However, I am reluctant to explore this route as these software packages are complex as it as and adding learning how to play a game on top of these packages would be adding an additional layer of complexity.  Students may feel they are wasting time learning how to play the game.  In addition, all these packages are in a phase of rabid development with new versions coming out every 18 months or so – any game I develop for a particular platform will be quickly out of date.

More importantly, I need to consider whether a game is an appropriate vehicle for the kind of teaching I do. I can see the relevance of the collaborative nature of games and the development of affinity groups to develop a researcher identity.  Many of the people who attend my courses are new not only to the software tools but to qualitative data analysis itself – so I see the potential of creating something that addresses that need.  Whether that something is a game or a series of learning activities is something I need to consider.  In fact, I should not think of my choice simply as an ‘either-or’ between a game or a learning activity. Jackson (2009) gives an example of game-based teaching where she used principles from gaming – levelling, “well-ordered problems”, immediate feedback, resubmission and discovery learning – in designing learning activities. What I need to steer clear of is what Papert (1998) calls – shavian reversals – combining the worst from the education and the gaming worlds. This is something I will be working out in my final assignment on designing a game.

References

Bayne, S. (2008) Uncanny spaces for higher education: teaching and learning in virtual worlds, ALT-J, 16:3, pp.197-205

Caillois, R. (2001) Chapter 2, 'The Classification of Games'. In Man, Play and Games. Illinois: University of illinois Press.

Gee, J.P. (2003) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave

Jackson, J. (2009) Game-based teaching: what educators learn from videogames, Teaching Education, vol. 20. No. 3, September 2009, pp. 291-304

Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R. (2006) Threshold concepts: An introduction in Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge, London:  RoutledgeFalmer.

Papert, S. (1998) Does easy do it? Children, games and learning, Game Developer, June: 88

Whitton, N. (2010) Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.