This is a very brief post to list the games I have been thinking about as possible subjects of my game review for the first assignment:

• Foldit http://fold.it/portal/ - a biological puzzle game with actual scientific discoery as the ultimate goal. 
• Plants v zombies http://www.popcap.com/games/pvz - a game where zombies can be killed off with a variety of toxic plants planted strategically!.
• The Cost of Life http://thecostoflife.org/- sort of an ecological variant on Civilisation I think. 
• Super Energy Apocalypse http://www.fadupinator.com/about_sea.html -pollution game (where you have to play polluter).

This was a really challenging pair of weeks as we were designing our own games in Google Earth. I was working as part of "Team Lara" and it took some time to get a sense of what might be practical in the space in the time available. Google Earth looks beautiful but our team of three didn't have a lot experience with it and our schedules were rather out of synch so we needed to find a practical way to combine ideas into an engaging and coherent game. Having decided upon the theme of the Seven Wonders of the World (rather inspired by our team name and the Lara Croft Tombraider games) we turned to this week's recommended reading for advice on where to start.

Whitton (2010 [1]) was an incredibly useful and practical resource for designing a game. We decided to start sketching out our idea for the game - a sort of treasure hunt based on cryptic puzzles and using Google Earth to understand and explore the Seven Wonders - and clarify our learning objectives. We decided that the players would, through playing the game:

    •    Learn about the 7 wonders of the ancient world.
    •    Gain confidence in using Google Earth as a discovery tool.
    •    Practical experience of analysing a learning game.
    •    Use the internet to locate information based on a supplied brief.

Having had a real-time chat in Skype and various discussions about how the game could work and be built we turned our idea and learning objectives into a game specification (which can be seen in the password (which is: voncroy) protected part of our game) using the example offered by Whitton (as per Table 6.2 on p. 101 of 2010 [1]) as a template. Although we did take note of all the considerations highlighted in Whitton (2010 [1] and [3]), Gee (2003 [2]), and other readings we have encountered it proved, in practice, very challenging to build training elements, control, immersion, challenge, reflection etc. into a short game. Indeed as I was looking at the readings this week I initially assumed many of these principles applied primarily to games with complex structures and multiple levels - as per many of the games highlighted by Gee and Whitton - but in practical terms I am aware that many educational games are for quite specific purposes with only a few levels so it seemed to be a really appropriate to be trying to get the wider principles to fit within the constraints of a short focused game. 

Having said this a conversation did break out on the discussion boards about training levels in larger games but I felt that Gee (2003 [2]) was suggesting adopting some of the training techniques not just as stand alone levels in elaborate games but as a subtle element at the beginning of smaller/less complex games and/or a continuing way to pass knowledge on to the player/learner throughout the learning games. I may have interpreted this erroneously but it was what I felt he was suggesting. A lot of learning games are rather clunky to get going and the evolving level of help you see in commercial games (which I believe both Whitton and Gee acknowledge include learning points throughout) tends not to be as subtley or flexibly included. The question of motivation for completing training levels was also raised and I think that is an interesting issue. My own experience has rarely been frustration at training levels but I play games infrequently enough that I basically always need the assistance. Gee conciously draws parallels between the training and game play conventions of games that reveals that he is not only investigating these as an academic but is also predisposed to enjoy certain types of games himself and is playing each game with knowledge of games played before. These seems worth raising since "predisposition" includes factors of motivation, culture and gender and these are very important in understanding the expected training and gameplay skills in a new game. Subtle and flexible mentoring is certainly extremely difficult to replicate in any training level, even given the cleverness of the Tomb Raider training levels that Gee discusses at length.

It is actually really interesting, in thinking about this topic, to see what does and doesn't work when initially restricting access to a game to training levels only. When attempting to play Myst (several times) I found myself trapped in a training level which made me feel quite frustrated but also left me wholly unengaged. I had no motivation to try progressing since nothing seemed to happen - and I seemed unable to succeed - no matter what I did or clicked. If you pitch these things wrongly it can be utterly disheartening and lead to an abandoned game (as both Gee and Whiton observe - and as that Dara O'Briain clip [4] a few weeks back also observed). That type of frustration is annoying - and potentially unprofitable - in entertainment games but potentially near disastrous to the learning process for educational games. Perhaps the answer could lie in a vision of the future recently shared at the DICE conference [5] that the world will become points based and that you can jump levels through purchases? Points and purchasable level jumps are features of some games, particularly those built on social networking platforms, but the vision painted offers a radically different view of how the "real" and the gaming worlds could intersect and, in such a world, a training level that left you stuck in a gaming cul-de-sac would be profoundly unacceptable.

Collaboration does offer a (rather more realistic) potential compromise between what is possible within the algorithmic universe of the in-game training and what is possible in most teaching environments. Whitton (2010 [6]) mentions Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (1978 [7] - also mentioned by Dr Hamish Macleod in Week 3 of this module) and those ideas of scaffolded learning - that others in a learning environment can help learners progress past a point they might other reach by assisting and referring them as needed - offer quite a nuanced form of collaborative working in gaming environments (where that is possible).  I think games that foster collaboration between peers - where, say, you might want an informal chat about how to do a particular move and/or where there may be a strong online community helps new players train and learn (things raised by Greenfield [8] but applicable to educational games too) - can be seen to have significant value (our own game fostered collaboration almost by accident as you'll see at the end of this post). This sort of peer collaboration around a game may also be more achievable than in-game social interaction which, as Whitton talks about herself, may be tricky to achieve especially with a niche games audience (indeed one of the games I found most frustrating in Week 4, Quest Atlantis, is in fact built to support synchronous in-game collaboration (though not apparently enabled on our test user accounts) and is intended to compliment classroom teaching with teacher participation so may, in a realistic context, work extremely collaboratively and rewardingly). 

Something that certainly challenged my previous understanding of games this week was the discussion in Gee (2003 [2]) of the unique linguistic styles of training levels and game narratives. I have always hated the video introductions to games and have seen them as very disruptive to game play but I have clearly missed a trick - and a lot of good advice about game play! Having said with this training approach it's not common to every game and I notice that a lot of puzzle games and a lot of games pitched at younger players roll out skills in levels in game hierachies that are just as complex but do so through less cryptic, often more visual training cues.

In building the Team Lara game, which we had now called "A Wonderful Quest", we tried to establish what sort of training and collaboration would suit the compact size and scope of the game. Because our target audience was expected to be our fellow IDGBL10 learners we decided that providing training on how to use Google Earth was not required as we had all been asked to look at and use the space for our games. I think in retrospect this was perhaps an error on our part because each team, having now seen all their games, clearly had quite different perceptions of the best ways to use Google Earth and some seemed far more experienced as users than others. We also limited our game to those willing to learn about Google Earth and, though we published our game on a public blog, this does mean that our audience is still relatively restricted. Indeed we had several tough decisions to make in setting up our game. The first was whether or not to explicitly state that the game was about the Seven Wonders of the World. Although this is not a hard to detect facet it certainly made the clues easier to solve. We decided not to tell players at the outset that all the clues pointed to a Wonder but we did use a Seven Wonders layer for Google Earth (since many of the Wonders are hard to locate on modern maps otherwise) and we included a simple How to Play section that showed players where to get this layer, which layers they should have switched on and the approximate format and goal for the game. We sort of assumed many people would see the name of the layer and make the connection to the Seven Wonders of the World but decided to leave that discovery as one of the early rewards of exploring the game.

Writing clues proved to be quite an unexpected art form. We thought we knew what we wanted to do: use the Seven Wonders to indicate seven letters that would form an anagram of the password to the treasure. Since we had picked a password that referenced both the source of our team name and the discussion in Gee [2] we thought it would be quite easy to guess and therefore tried not to give the clues in a straightforward order or provide any additional clues to what the password might be. In retrospect I see that this made the game more complicated but, at the same time, still think there was value in our initial fear that the game would be more fun if it was about exploring the clues and the themes - and more intrinsic rewards - than if it was more specifically focused on completion and final achievement - a more extrinsic motivation given that initial playing of this game would largely be triggered by course requirement rather than pure interest in the game. To try and encourage reflection and collaboration we encouraged players to comment on clues (taking our cue from a treasure hunt game, Hunt the Poem that was online for February's One City One Book initiative Carry a Poem) but we found that players actually chose not to do this - perhaps because they wanted to keep answers to themselves, perhaps so as not to share/reveal answers too early, perhaps because they did not want to be seen to get things wrong. No matter what the reason was I was delighted when Team Sonic not only cracked the clues and completed the game but also shared their collaborative efforts with us (Team Lara). It turned out that they had decided to share their findings with their group in their private area of the module discussion boards. By comparing ideas, thought processes and possible answers they were then able to explore possible passwords and work backwards to confirm their answers to the clue. This was actually a method we thought some players might take though the terms in which Team Sonic discussed their discovery of the answer indicated that they felt it was almost a cheat to find the password and then check their answers which suggests we failed to communicate that we wanted people to learn about the Seven Wonders (and about where they sit on a modern view of the world) much more than we minded how they did that. It also highlighted to us that our obvious-seeming clues were actually quit tricky. Perhaps the addition of an easier or example clue might have helped engage users and build their confidence for solving the clues, confidence certainly seemed to be  factor in how long players engaged with the game and how satisfied with their performance they were. Which is interesting as I don't feel Whitton or Gee fully address that subtle need to have someone (the games designer?) confirm that "no, you are on the right lines" or "good but have you considered..." or similar. I know for our game that would have been a super addition although Team Sonic's collaborative approach certainly enhanced the game play of our game and I think I would recommend working with a friend in the "How to Play" section if we were creating it again.

All of which confirms to me that "A Wonderful Quest" was a fantastic learning experience but that the user testing (which effectively our games launches acted as) was also essential as no matter how much theory is applied ultimately it is crucial to get direct feedback on how fun or engaging a game is to play. Knowing it does the right thing in terms of learning is no use if no one wants to play!


    •    [1] Whitton, N. (2010). Chapter 6, 'Designing a Digital Game for Learning'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.
    •    [2] Gee, J. P. (2003). Chapter 5, 'Telling and Doing: Why doesn't Lara Croft obey Professor Von Croy?'. In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
    •    [3] Whitton, N. (2010). Chapter 8, 'Using Existing Digital Games for Learning'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.
    •    [4] "Dara O Briain - Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe". YouTube clip retrieved from eightySeventh's channel 1st February 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG3aHvPG6H8
    •    [5] Schell, J. (2010). "Design Outside the Box". Presentation given at DICE 2010. Accessed and viewed online on 1st March 2010. http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box-Presentation.
    •    [6] Whitton, N. (2010) Chapter 3, 'Understanding the Pedagogy of Digital Games'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.
    •    [7] Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Fuctions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univeristy Press. 
    •    [8] Greenfield, P. M. (1984). Chapter 7, 'Video Games'. In Mind and media : the effects of television, video games, and computers. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

"Pedagogy and Design" sparked quite an interesting cross section of discussions around the readings partly because of the quite different approaches taken by those discussing games design for school age children versus those designing for adults/older learners in Higher and Further education. I started with reading Whitton (2010 [1]) who specifically addresses the needs of adult and older learners drawing on Knowles' (1998 in [1]) key premises of adult learning theory/andragogy as a framework. I think it is quite interesting that Whitton addresses the difference between the needs of children and older learners - she questions the idea that "games are motivating" or that "all students like playing games to learn" - though she does not seem to recognise that this assertation is also likely to be flawed for some child learners as well. I actually think many of Knowles' premises also apply to a wider group of learners, in particular the idea that "Adults need to know why they need to learn something before they are willing to invest time and energy in learning it..." (Knowles 1998 as quoted in [1]).  Although children are certainly obliged to attend school I think this particular principle actually holds true for children, older learners and even training contexts. Motivation is a key factor to making any learning environment work so whilst I agree with Whitton's observations about adult learners - and her findings from studying leisure game usage even with non-gamer adults - I think that Whitton's comment that "It is crucial also that students are aware of the educational benefits of any game and feel that it has a true purpose in the context of their studies" (p. 41 in [1]) is thus applicable to the engagement of any learner regardless of age.

Whitton's highlighting of the fact that not all games will suit all types of gamers does, however, raise some interesting issues for including games into a teaching programme. There will, however, also be limitations of access in many games since the most immersive and engaging games are often slick and multimodal and that offers challenges ranging from game and learner style through to accessibility (e.g. compatibility with screenreaders etc.) through to the types of hardware needed to run a game. As a mac owner I have occasional but important problems gaining access to games that PC using gamers have access to. For instance games like The Sims - which explicitly advertises it's Mac version - can take months or years to port from PC to Mac though even this puts it in the minority of PC games since most do not bother to create a Mac edition at all. My Unix and/or Linux using friends also find themselves excluded from using various games. Since higher education students are increasingly expected to provide their own computing equipment (with institutions providing wifi and power points rather than a profusion of computing labs), that compatibility issue will form a (minor) part of learners' expectations along with the (major) issue of pedagogical justification.

In terms of motivations for playing, learning and learning through games I found Malone (1982 [2] and 1980 [4]) really interesting but very flawed. Malone's Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces (1982 [2]) for instance seemed to be based on examples where many more factors were at play than Malone chose to recognise. Discussion around this reading we have examined the role of gender in feedback and the construction of fantasy in learning games. Malone draws on a Darts game for his example here (a fairly male dominated sport/representation to use) and it's usage in a teaching analogy for math (a subject ) where a positive outcome results in destruction (balloon popping) and a negative outcome results in a numeric indicator (on what appears to be a more logical part of the number line than is actually shown if a positive outcome is achieved). It's a baffling visual analogy in terms of the maths it intends to illustrate and I have found myself failing to see either the fun or the achievement of  learning outcomes in the game

The intrinsic fantasy in the game may tie skills to plot but they do not provide much in the way of motivation if the popping of balloons (quite an odd reward) is not sufficient. In his experiment Malone found the addition of music (at the end as a reward for achievement) to be the most popular addition with his female subjects. This addition is an additional pay off for the balloon popping. For the boys observed I think the balloon popping was seen as a reward itself, much as is the case in first person shooter games where it is the process of violence (gory effects, sounds, etc) and the process of inhabiting the character than it is about the reward of reaching the end goal. I suspect in the Darts fantasy the girls may have seen the balloons popping as a form of feedback but not a reward in itself, making the addition of music that much more motivating. Indeed accounting for individual expectations, cultures and experiences is a difficulty for any teaching but particularly in games design I think as the immediacy and human interaction and feedback cannot always be taken for granted as easily as any more direct relationship between tutor and/or course designer and student.

Malone (1980 [4]) seemed stronger as a paper to me - despite being based on 'intuition" rather than experiment - as Malone highlights convincingly the importance of intrinsic fantasy in games as opposed to the extrinsic fantasy of unrelated goals and rewards. This sits really interestingly with research I have recently heard about that has been undertaken on the motivational effects of performance related pay which has shown financial incentives often do not map to better achievement and sometimes lead to worse performance - this would seem to be a wider confirmation that there is something innately more engaging about tasks and objectives that can be motivating in and of themselves than tasks where one is encouraged to perform only in order to receive some abstract reward one desires.

Finally this week I wanted to turn to Quest Atlantis and the two remaining readings Barab, Arici & Jackson (2005 [3]) and Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux & Tuzun (2005 [5]) where the authors, also co-creators of Quest Atlantis (QA), talk about their work on the project and their conception of a "Learning Engagement Theory" and, interestingly, the development of QA the brand, rather than the technology. I think what I found interesting about both papers was the background information on the evolution of QA through research and ethnographic observation of quite an eclectic mixture of schools and community groups and the co-creators immersion in existing childrens games and environments. This shows through in the game - it is clearly a well founded concept (though as a test user it is hard to experience the collaborative and social aspects (Turkle 1995 quoted in Barab et al 2005 [3])) but also perhaps a few years out of date and based on what is available rather than what might exceed expectations in quite new and different ways. Nonetheless the visual panache of the game is impressive even when game play seems, as a lone player of the game as a stand alone experience, rather constraining (see my earlier post for more on this).

What I would be interested to see after this week, if such a thing exists, is a paper outlining the design process of a successful commercial game that could be compared. I think a genuine issue with educational games and in making them fun is that the funding to test and iterate designs is simply not as viable in the education sector. Thus it is not the educational content that makes many educational games seem particularly dry but the more academically structured development process that seeks not only to embed pedagogy in design but also seeks to ensure that the design process is academically valid - which is an interesting restriction to place on a design process that needs to be creative and original as well as educationally valuable. It's certainly something that I will need to consider further before developing my idea for the final game assignment for this module.


    •    [1] Whitton, N. (2010) Chapter 3, 'Understanding the Pedagogy of Digital Games'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.
    •    [2] Malone, T.W. (1982) Heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces: Lessons from computer games. Proceedings of the 1982 conference on Human factors in computing systems table of contents. Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States. (pdf)
    •    [3] Barab, S., Arici, A., & Jackson, C. (2005) Eat your vegetables and do your homework: A design-based investigation of enjoyment and meaning in learning, Educational Technology, 45(1), pp.15-20
    •    [4] Malone, T.W. (1980) What makes things fun to learn? heuristics for designing instructional computer games. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSMALL symposium and the first SIGPC symposium on Small systems table of contents. Palo Alto, California, United States.
    •    [5] Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux, R., & Tuzun, H. (2005) Making learning fun: Quest Atlantis, a game without guns, Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(1), pp.86-107

I have found this week to be really frustrating in a way that I think reveals some of the weaknesses of educational games. The first problem this week was that although there were only two games flagged up as core examples it was near impossible to find a way to play them. This was a two part conundrum. Both Quest Atlantis and Thinking Worlds appeared to be PC-only. Though it transpired that Quest Atlantis (QA) actually was newly available for Mac (and worked fine) all my efforts to install Thinking Worlds (TW) on the PC I have regular access to (my work machine) failed – on start up TW would simply break down and state that there was an “error” but no indication of what was wrong, how it could be fixed or reported or how I could move past it. I was at least able to download and install software on my PC which is something many PC users on institutional machines are not given access to do, and thus a concern for any educational usage of a game.

Frustration number two (again before I even got to play any games) was that I had to wait to get a login for both games. In the case of QA this is a case of good practice to ensure new users are kept separate from school age children who use the game as part of the curriculum. I am not entirely sure why there isn't a test world clearly signposted as such that you could set up instant access for but I do respect their core aim to keen QA safe and friendly. TW required a login for the very different reason of commercial interest – which is fine but I was a bit put off to get an email from a representative. This is probably a bit perverse – humans should be better than machine responses I guess – the problem is that educational games/tools seem to, unlike commercial web tools, tend to directly contact you so it feels a bit like giving a salesperson your phone number rather than just being on an email list. The pitch is often the same but somehow it feels less invasive in in-service reminders or e-newsletters.

So, anyway, I have finally managed to have a play now that I am all set up.

Quest Atlantis is, I think, a rather weird beast. Although it is genuinely innovative in appearance, ambition and pedagogical scope I found it very problematic. Now I have to say that I realise I am not the core QA audience. For a start I am neither a kid nor a teacher so I am used to services and spaces pitched at Higher Education audiences or public audiences. I was also not experiencing the game in the context of a tailored QA-specific teaching experience and this seems to be the sort of context it is expected that people will interact with QA in. With those important provisos stated on we go...

At first I was really impressed with the look and feel of QA. When I first tried it it was on my work PC after I had closed all my usual programmes for the night. This meant it ran fast and the graphics – after a few weeks of fFogger and the like – looked slick. A few minutes in (as I started moving in the direction of my first quest) I started to wonder why the main area of play was such a small part of the screen estate.

I found Quest Atlantis hugely dictatorial and difficult to become immersed in. Though there were numerous choices to be made they were all predefined for you and highly signposted at every turn. You could not, for instance, pick the "wrong" choice and follow the game on this route, you cannot ask background characters for help unless they are preprogrammed to answer questions. It is an incredibly frustrating environment to operate in as you have open options to move and explore but almost no choice in the order you complete tasks, the way you gain new information, etc. I can see that the game would work in it's intended environment - a structured classroom context - but as a stand alone game it is not the high quality of the animation but the inflexibility of play that holds up most poorly against commercial offerings. However I am acutely aware that I am very much older than the core QA audience and that I was playing the game on my own - it is a more social affair including teacher participation in it's intended context - which may have made a substantial difference to my experience of the game.

Both QA and Thinking Worlds did leave me wondering whether the development of separate dedicated educational gaming environments can ever or should ever try to compete with sophisticated commercial games when it comes to capturing attention outside a structured classroom playing environment. Thus using commercial games as learning experiences seems to offer many pluses, though there are of course disadvantages to the type of content and game goals inherent in such games particularly for creating games suitable and pedagogically sound for older/adult learners. It is certainly interesting to move from these educational games to looking at designing our own games (using Google Earth).

• engagement in critical thinking and reflection tasks before the beginning/at the end of a lesson
• intra-/inter-group engagement
• first-person involvement
• cross-curricular learning (History, e.g.)
• the provision of 'rich tasks', whereby pupils can produce non-fiction investigations, engage with World War poetry
• group collaboration and competition (Whitton)
• used a source for personal journal writing

Week 8

 

I have been thinking about Gee, Whitton in conjunction with the readings in Week 4 of my MEd (Chartered Teacher) course, which this week focuses on Cognitive Style and Formative Assessment.  Furthermore, do certain games and game genres appeal to users based on the Howard Gardner’s idea of Multiple Intelligence?

 

Cognitive Style

Richard Riding (Richard Riding , School Learning and Cognitive Style, 2002, David Fulton Publishers, London) defines the term cognitive style as an individual’s preferred and habitual approach to organising and representing information. He goes on to suggest that it may in fact be built into us and influence how we naturally tend to react to events and ideas.

If we recognise the way(s) in which we prefer to work, it allows us to develop strategies to work more effectively or to minimise our weaknesses. Riding proposes that there are different dimensions along which we are placed.

Firstly there is the: wholist – analytical dimension: whether a person organises information in wholes or parts. Secondly there is the: verbal – imagery dimension: whether a person represents information verbally or in mental pictures.

These two dimensions can be seen as if on two continuums, and can be represented as follows:
Within the wholist – analytical dimension wholists would see the overall picture (perhaps missing out on details);

While analytics would see a collection of different parts (perhaps sometimes concentrating on one or two parts to the exclusion of others).

Somewhere in the middle (and perhaps getting the best of both worlds) would be intermediates.

Perhaps this is what Gee is positing re subdomains, if one thinks about Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory, and furthermore, I am aware of the multimodal aspect of digital games, and the second dimension is pertinent to the use of such games in adapting delivery for optimum reception by pupils. For instance, is the Nintendo Wii providing the necessary support for the kinesthetic learners as defined by Howard Gardner in his idea of Multiple Intelligences?.

Within the verbal – imagery dimension verbalisers would consider or represent information in words or through word associations while imagers would use mental pictures either of information or of things associated with it. Then somewhere in the middle again would be a group of bimodals.

Riding suggests that verbalisers will prefer stimulating environments with a social group helping them to develop or share meanings while imagers will prefer a more passive, static environment.  Does this have an effect on the predilection of some gamers for online collaborative gaming?  There seems to be little doubt that the pockets of digitial games-based and traditional learning is apposite within a classroom setting.   It would of course be possible to have different combinations of the dimensions, for example an analytic imager or a wholist verbaliser.  Riding goes on to state that someone’s preferred style doesn’t seem to relate to intelligence or ability and that ability would influence the level of performance while style would influence the manner of performance. He also says that it is separate from both personality and gender.

Cognitive style is the preferred manner of working but importantly learning strategies can be learned and developed to support or give alternatives to our first preference.

So, what does this all mean for learning, and in particular digital games based learning?

Well, learning performance is liable to be affected by an interaction between cognitive style and:

·  the way instructional material is structured;
·  its mode of presentation;
·  its type of content.

The structure would cover both the format structure  (appearance, headings, length of paragraphs etc) and its conceptual structure (sequence of ideas, relationship of points, logic, chronology etc).

Where a person is on the wholist – analytic dimension may cause them to prefer: large steps, large chunks of verbal information, simple diagrams, or small steps, small chunks of verbal information,  lots of pictorial or diagrammatic information.

The consequence of this is that we as teachers should be thinking about our modes of presentation – text, pictorial, text and pictorial, multimedia. 

Imagers learn better from pictorial representations than do verbalisers. Verbalisers learn better from verbal representations than do imagers. So how we present things and what we have learners do with that information should be considered.  What about the content? Is it concrete or abstract?

It’s also worth noting that we as individuals will have our own preferred styles and there might be a tendency to assume that everyone learns the same way we do, which might cause us to skew our teaching towards our own preferences.  Some possible modes of expression as preferred by the different types identified. (These are noted in a possible order of preference.)

Analytic verbaliser
Text
Speech
Diagrams
Pictures

Analytic imager
Diagrams
Pictures
Text
Speech

Wholist verbaliser
Speech
Text
Pictures
Diagrams

Wholist imager
Pictures
Diagrams
Speech
Text 

We therefore as teachers might like to consider the possible differences in our students and of our own preferences which might affect how we tend to present information.
 As we become aware of differences in our students we should begin to make them aware of their own preferences, see the positives in  their preferences but also see any possible negatives, and give them opportunities to practice other ways of working in order to broaden their repertoire of approaches by using a variety of teaching or presentation methods.

This surely suits the adoption of digital games-based learning!

I woke up the morning after I posted Team Sonic’s game and suddenly wondered – but is it a game?  We were so focused on getting it done within the time constraints and our own limited time that not only did we not work out our learning objectives in advance but we did not think through what elements of a game we were using. We just assumed it was a game.

It is only now, having tried to construct a game, that the reading we did early on as to what constitutes play and what constitutes a game is starting to come together for me.  Initially, before this course, I never thought what constituted a game was problematic.  After I did the initial reading, I started to realise the multi-faceted nature of games and the different cultural, historical, and theoretical perspectives on play.  But my understanding was in the abstract.  Having now tried to construct a game, I realise how slippery the whole idea of a game as – especially when trying to use it in education.  What is the difference between a learning activity and a game? Was it a game we constructed or a learning activity?

During my chat session with Anna and Fiona, I started to rattle through Whitton’s characteristics of games, listing the characteristics that I felt was lacking in our climate change game.

·         It is not competitive (but I added that I thought competition was not necessary in a game)

·         There is no winner – linked to their being no competition above

·         There is no indicator of progress during the game (no scoring etc.)

On the positive side I said:

·         The fantasy element made it game-like

·         And collaboration was done outside of Google Earth in the reflection piece which was to consolidate the learning that was achieved during exploring climate change on Earth – the fantasy element was carried over into the reflection piece to keep the continuity with Google Earth; in fact, while the reflection piece was outside of Google Earth and in a wiki, it was part of the game – as the reflection is the goal – the ‘report’ to be given to the Mission Chief

Anna asked if there was an element of challenge – and yes, there is a challenge in working out the clues which start easy but get progressively harder (to be honest we did not deliberately design it that way – it just worked out that way) but I think the reflection at the end is the most challenging piece.

There was a goal, as mentioned above, the report to the Mission Chief on evidence of climate change on Earth.

The game allowed exploration – players could explore and read the other Met Office reports which we did not specifically direct them to – they could play with the timeline – to see how climate change will impact some parts of the Earth before other parts, etc.

There is no interaction with other players during the Google Earth part of the game. However, the reflection piece was designed so there would be interaction in that a) players could see each other’s reports and b) each team, in the end, would have to compile a final report collaboratively.

The reactions to playing the game have been very positive. Everyone said they enjoyed it. And some people have been writing reflective reports on their experience.

So it does have characteristics of a game – despite my initial doubts.  I think the cohesiveness of the fantasy is what holds it together as a game. Nicola, in her report, said the anagram, while cute, should have been more meaningfully tied to the narrative we constructed in Google Earth.  I agree but given the time we had, we had to make a quick decision on the anagram.

  

I have enjoyed both readings..

Whitton - Using existing commercial games 

Myst and Wolfenstein have taken my interest, especially the former re pupils and narrative creation activities. 

Gee - Chapter 5

"often stays at the edge of the player's regime of competence" (p. 121).  This is the idea whereby - as Gee states early and further on in this chapter - manage overt information but also require the presence of the teacher, or learning mediator.

Overt Telling versus Immersion in Practice.

This schism should not exist - and can be resolved,  "The learner adapts and transforms the earlier experience to be transferred to the new problem through creativity and innovation."

"The learner remains flexible, adapting performance in action." - 29. The Transfer Principle

This is key to effective learning and teaching.

I like Whitton’s view that games can be seen as a constructivist learning environment  - probably because a constructivist approach to learning fits well with the kind of teaching I am involved in – teaching and facilitating the qualitative data analysis process.  In fact, Whitton feels that games have greatest relevance to higher education learning in the development of high level transferable skills.  She defines these as:

·         Analysis

·         Critical evaluation

·         Autonomy

·         Team working

All the above are relevant to the research process and I hope to develop a game that can demystify the qualitative data analysis process. 

Whitton places a high value on collaborative learning. She quotes Wilson:

"a place where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their guided pursuit of learning goals and problem-solving activities" Wilson 1996:5

However, she stresses that the collaboration does not have to be part of the game but can be incorporated as part of the learning package for a particular set of learning outcomes.

Last year I took the Effective Course Design module and constructed a 10 week online course on qualitative analysis aimed at doctoral students or researchers new to qualitative analysis.  While each student on the course would come with their own research project, I constructed an initial collaboration activity where they were working together on the same material which was followed by individual AND cooperative work. They were developing analysis on their own individual project but the activities were structured so that on a regular basis they would report back their analysis-in-process to the small group they were assigned to.  And they would comment on each other’s work –as well as learn from each other.  I am thinking of designing a game for the collaborative activity part of this course where they are all working on the same material which either could replace the current collaborative activity in this course or could form part of new course aimed at those people who do not have a research project yet but who would like to learn about analyzing qualitative data. 

Whitton points out that while games are good at providing experiences and applying theories, they are not very good at providing meaningful reflection and abstract conceptualization.  For the kind of analysis game I would want to construct, reflection and conceptualization are very important.  Whitton specifies a number of additional activities that can support reflection and abstract conceptualization.  The ones I can see supporting developing an analysis include reflective diaries, small group work and production of artefacts such as presentations. 

Of course, I am jumping the gun here.  Whitton recommends starting with the learning objectives of a course and consider how you would normally meet them.  As I have already created an online course specifying my learning objectives, I intend to start with that.  At the moment, I think I can see how a game could fulfil the initial collaborative element of my learning objectives.  But I need to reflect on this further.  Then I can move into developing what Whitton calls a game concept specification:

·         Learning objectives

·         Genre

·         Brief description

·         Plot

·         Gaming activities

·         Constraints

·         Collaboration

·         Reflection

Reference

Whitton, N. (2010) Chapter 6, 'Designing a Digital Game for Learning'. In Learning with Digital Games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education, London: Routledge.

 

I feel we have gone into constructing our learning activity rather back to front.  We were given Google Earth as a platform to design a game and my initial response was - ??? – what kind of a game can we construct using Google Earth? This was a bit exasperated by the fact that I had already a long weekend away booked so I knew I would have less time to think about this. Luckily the deadline was extended – thank you Fiona and Anna.

I already had Google Earth on my computer and I have played with it before – mainly exploring different parts of the world – tracking my daughter when she went to Chile, last year – that sort of thing. But I have never created anything in Google Earth – although I have read placeholders and information that other people had put on it.

Before going away I was quite focussed on the reading for the week (see previous blogs) and doing some preliminary research to find out a) what games have been developed using Google Earth, b) educational resources using Google Earth and c) technical information, online tutorials etc on creating placemarks etc.

I was surprised by the number of educational resources (as well as other types of resources) that has been created with Google Earth.  One of them was a resource created by the UK Met Office on the effect of climate change on the Earth – with a timeline from 1999-2099.  Helen had mentioned climate change as a possible theme for our game and this Met Office climate change ‘skin’ seemed a good platform to build a game.  My Sonic Group team members liked the idea.  I immediately focussed on learning the technical aspects of creating placemarks etc and so did my team members.  I wasn’t focussed on what the learning objectives of the game were. I had a hazy idea that the players would learn about climate change from traversing the information the Met Office had already put in the climate change Google Earth ‘skin’.  I started to think about how game players could interact by taking on different roles in different parts of the world – with the idea that problems in one part of the world would also have impacts on other parts of the world – but quickly realised that was too ambitious.  Wesley showed us how we could create a quiz in Google Earth and that seemed a more realistic approach. So we have divided up the work in constructing the quiz but haven’t set out our learning objectives yet – although I can see we can do that retrospectively.  Given the time constraints and the skills we had to learn, we had to do this backwards.

However, I think we needed to first understand the affordances of Google Earth and what was possible before we could think of what kind of learning outcome would be best achieved within Google Earth. And I think the process I described above was doing that. So maybe it was not really so backwards.  This game is a first exploratory attempt to see what is possible using Google Earth. And our climate change topic is something that does uses the affordances that Google Earth offers.