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.

 

 

I am blogging at this point in the course about ARGS because my ‘flow’ in this course was seriously disrupted at the end of Week 7 because the hard drive of my main laptop got corrupted.  While I had some things backed up on my back up computer, I did not have everything – including all the work I had done for this course.  I was able to complete the first assignment having been granted a few days extension.  During those extension days I was completely focused and immersed in my chosen game and the review write up.  However, after I completed my review, I had to go back to re-building my laptop, prioritising the training material that I had lined up over the next few weeks and a presentation I had to give at a conference.  While I continued to do the reading for the course, I was not able to play games as I had to spend what time I had to try to reconstruct all my lost data for my business – contacts, engagements, accounts (I haven’t even started on that!). 

With my ‘flow’ interrupted, I had been finding it difficult to get back into the course. I had been thrown into what Czkiszentmihalyi describes as an anxiety state – I had too many challenges to handle at once.  However, I had been completely immersed in the course before my IT disaster.  I started trying to get back into the course by looking at some Alternative Reality Games.  I was particularly interested in this type of game as it seemed to be most suited to the kind of game which would be relevant to my work. In fact, I reviewed Missing: Since January for my first assignment because while it is not a true ARG it has elements of an ARG:  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 among different people trying to solve the clues that the Phoenix gives as to the whereabouts of the journalist he kidnapped. (It is a single player game but collaboration is simulated by receiving real emails with ideas on how to interpret the Phoenix’s messages from what appears to be real people also looking for the journalist.) I enjoyed Missing: Since January despite being sometimes frustrated by the difficultness of some of the puzzles.

However, I was disappointed in the ARG games I first looked at – Darfur is Dying and the Viola Quest.  Darfur is Dying is simply depressing – it is incredibly difficult to get to the well to bring water back to the village without being picked up by the patrols.  One by one you watch your little avatars – representing villagers - disappear.  The link to the real world is made by asking you every time an avatar is picked up to contribute something for the people of the Darfur. I found it too simplistic and appealing only to the converted. I also felt uncomfortable of the situation in Darfur being represented by a cartoon-style game.  I also could not get engaged in the Viola Quest – the storyline did not appeal to me, and I did not have any need to be inducted in the Manchester Metropolitan University community.

My re-engagement in this course occurred when we explored MMOGs through playing World of Warcraft and Everquest II. It may have been a combination of the immersive nature of these games and re-connecting with my fellow students that re-generated my ‘flow’ in this course.  But it could also be something about how these games can generate flow in players.

Entering flow is largely a function of how attention has been focused in the past and how it is focused in the present by the activity’s structural conditions….Clear proximal goals, immediate feedback, and just-manageable levels of challenge orient the organism, in a unified and coordinated way, so that attention becomes completely absorbed into the stimulus field defined by the activity.” Nakamura, J. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002:92)

I found that I was able to develop my character, learn how my type of character fits into the wider frame of the game world and was able to successfully proceed through several levels.  I have blogged about my experiences of MMOGs and issues they raise – particularly about ethics.

Having successfully explored MMOGs I decided to revisit ARGs.  I read Kim et al.’s (2009) evolution of ARGs.  I found it interesting that the first ARG – The Beast (2001) – was designed as a promotional tool for the film – A.I.  This idea that ARGs can be used as a viral marketing tool was developed further by other games – I love Bees (2004) for the video game Halo 2, Last Call Poker (2005) for the video game – Gun, Year Zero (2007) for Nine Inch Nails’ CD of the same name, and Free Fall (2008) to promote the film – Eagle Eye.  All these games benefitted by a large marketing budget which is obvious by the quality of the various artefacts of the games.  (I explored in particular – I love Bees  and Year Zero.) While I don’t believe that top production values of videos, web-sites, posters etc alone make a game exciting, the combination of a good game design AND top production values are winners.

Kim et al. (2009) make the point that ARGs they discussed used participatory mechanisms ‘to build and strengthen affinity groups. A set of problems aligns the interest and attention of a group and pulls them into the story’s action’. This development and use of affinity groups is key attraction for educators. In my case, I think ARGs can be used to develop qualitative data analysts - creating a group environment where novice researchers can learn from each other, given an interesting area to research.  Kim et al. (2009) point to the decline of professional journalists and the domination of information by a few media sources.  They see ARGs as a way ‘to make sense of amateur data and provide structure and interactive experiences. The role of the storymaster will likely evolve to become more flexible and open...’ They seem to be promoting ARGs as a structure for everyday folk to make sense of the mass of information about the world.  This seems similar to the analysis process in research.  Of course, who frames the stories will have a lot of power in what they are proposing.

Jane McGonigal who was involved in designing some of the viral marketing ARGs (including I love Bees)  has now moved to using ARGs to promote social action.

 

 Also see the link below:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/mcgonigal

She designed World without Oil – a game where participants from all over the world had to imagine a real world potential problem – how would they manage when the oil ran out.  Her current game is Evoke which is focused on youth in Africa although anyone can play. It is described as a ‘crash course for changing the world’ – teaching you collaboration, creativity, entrepreneurship and sustainability. The World Bank is one of the sponsors. As can be seen from the promotional video, the production values are high but so is the design. (It cost $500,000 to design.)

 

However, even though at the time of writing this blog Evoke is live as a game, it has already inspired a parody game – called Invoke – a crash course in saving capitalism – inspired by the World Bank and their game Evoke.

 

 

Christy Dena (a game design consultant) has blogged about the implications of this parody.  The first point she makes is that the fact that Evoke has been parodied is evidence that the ARG genre (a game form that has confused many up until now) is a recognized form – particularly as the parody ARG was designed by people outside of the ARG community. 

It wouldn’t be a parody of form if there was no recognisable form to parody. This means the mechanics and missions have become somewhat standardised. They are not part of experimental fringe culture, but have moved into mainstream creative forms if you like. (Dena, 2010).

The second point Dena makes is that Invoke is also a parody of McGonigal’s claim that games can save or change the world.  Adrian Hon (a cross-media entertainment designer – a term he prefers to ARG designer) has blogged about the misleading claims that have been made for ARGs. He cites that while World without Oil had 2176 registered players over 32 weeks, only 276 were active (i.e. submitted at least one piece of work) and only 170 submitted more than one piece of work.  Superstruct is another ARG where players fast forward to 2019 and try to find solutions for multiple threats to human survival. Hon reports that of 8901 registered players only 554 superstuctures were created.   Hon’s point is that while these games may attract a large number of players initially, they are impacting on only a small percentage of them. He says it is overstating the case that games can change the world. However, he acknowledges that in its first week Evoke had over 8000 registered users and these users had submitted 3000 pieces of content. It is also truly international and has succeeded in attracting players from Africa.  Hon feels that games like Evoke and World without Oil can be inspirational but it is misleading to say that they can change the world.

My preference for the ARG game genre in relation to my own work is that the game is enmeshed within the real world rather than entering a fictional game world and that it uses multiple media and communication tools.  The players are playing as themselves but they are linked together to form a community of novice researchers. My goal is that they learn to be qualitative analysts. I notice that the game Evoke also has a role for mentors in the game which is an idea I can use when constructing my game. My concern is that while it is possible to construct an ARG with basic Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, emails etc. (as Whitton suggests), the ARGs that I found that worked were the commercial ones, the ones that had a lot of money to produce them.  Also even in these, they needed a critical mass of several thousand players in order to get enough interaction going among players. Despite this, I feel optimistic that it is possible to use as a model these successful ARGs to produce a scaled down version for educational purposes.

References

Dena, C. (2010) Parody and Design, blog post March 8 2010, from Christy’s Corner of the Universe, http://www.christydena.com/2010/03/parody-and-design/ accessed 8 April 2010

Hon, A. (2010) Can a game save the world?, blog post March 9 2010, from Mssv, http://mssv.net/2010/03/09/can-a-game-save-the-world/ accessed 8 Apritl 2010

McGonigal, J. (2008) Saving the world through game design, New Yorker conference video, Stories o f the Near Future. http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/mcgonigal#ixzz0kPkbB4Y8

Kim, J., Lee, E., Thomas, T. and Dombrowski, C. (2009) Storytelling in New Media: The case of alternative reality games – 2001-2009, New Monday, vol. 14, issue 6.

Nakamura, J. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002) (2002) Ch. 7 The concept of flow in Snyder, C.R. et al Handbook of Positive Psychology, Oxford University Press

Whitton, N. (2010) Learning with Digital Games, Routledge.

 

 

 

MMOGS such as World of Warcraft and EverQuest can be viewed as communities of practice.  Etienne Wenger (2006 - http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm ) identifies three elements that characterise a community of practice:

·         The domain – a shared domain of interest that members are committed to and have a shared competence that distinguishes them from others

·         The community – members engage in joint activities and build relationships so that they can learn from each other

·         The practice – members are practitioners who develop a shared resource of knowledge and expertise through sustained interaction

 

 The community of practice is evident in the guilds of World of Warcraft .  As John Seely Brown  (2005) points out, guild-building is important in WoW. High level quests have to be carried out by a well-organized team with players who have diverse skills e.g. warriors, healers and spell-casters.   The WoW guild has all three elements that Wenger identifies as essential to a community of practice.

David White in his case study of World of Warcraft in Whitton (2010) mentions that there are three significant techniques that WoW uses to encourage the formation of communities of players (or communities of practice):

·         Their management of presence

·         The formation of multi-skilled teams

·         The pursuit of clear goals within an overarching narrative

White claims that the first two techniques have not been properly considered by those designing online learning environments.  White makes the point that interaction in a community requires fostering both a feeling that the environment is safe and a feeling of trust that others in the community will respond to one.  White claims that WoW successful does this by how they manage presence.  The player is immediately aware of the presence of others in the game by being able to see their avatars.  More importantly there is a general chat channel which is open to all, so the player can see the interactions going on without having to risk engaging in interaction.  It is this low-risk management of presence that allows the novice player to learn the etiquette of this new world enabling them to eventually more from being an individual player to a group player.  In addition, Hagel, Brown and Davison stress that there is also there is a whole “’knowledge economy’ surrounding the game –videos, blogs, wikis etc.” (http://blogs.hbr.org/bigshift/2010/01/a-better-way-to-manage-knowled.html )Any player can access these resources to learn more about the game.

White’s discussion about presence resonates with my own experience of WoW.  I am still at the early stages (having attained only level 6 at the time of writing this piece) – so I still do not feel that it is a safe environment – although I feel comfortable enough to go there on my own.  However, I am aware of the open chat channel and I have observed interactions among other players – so I am getting a feel for the community. I have explored some wikis that discuss my role of the priest and the best way to maximise play at different levels.( http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_priest )

I can see that if I decided to continue to play WoW that I could get to a point to start interacting with other players and maybe eventually join a guild.  What I like is that I am not forced to immediately interact with others – that the game world is structured so that I can learn on my own the social norms of the world and that I am allowed to decide to interact in my own time.

Having time to explore the game world and learn about the role you have adopted leads to White’s second point about how WoW encourages the formation of multi-skilled teams.  White makes the point that educators should think of designing goals that require a multi-skilled team.  He feels that assigning roles is crucial to collaboration when it comes to learning.  Ideally he would like learners to be able to experiment with different roles as they can in WoW.

The way WoW manages presence and has quests that require a multi-skilled team encourages the formation of guilds (a community of practice).  I would like to design a game that leads to the development of a community of practice of qualitative data analysts. My goal is to design a game which is about what John Seely Brown calls ‘learning-to-be’ a qualitative analyst as opposed to ‘learning-about’ qualitative analysis.   I am not sure whether a MMOG is the type of game for what I want to do, however, I can see how I can extract the ways that WoW encourages the development of communities of practice.  I could see that the analysis task can be divided initially so that each analyst would be working on part of the data set (could be divided into types of data such as text, graphic, video, and audio). The initial tasks would be simple – organizing and classifying the data, moving on to commenting and reflecting on the data. This initial period would enable the analyst to familiarise themselves with their part of the data set and start to gain confidence in their ideas about the data.  However, to develop the analysis, they will have to work as a team and collectively decide how to code the data and eventually they will need to collectively construct their arguments about how the data addresses their research question.

References

Brown, J.S.  (2005) New Learning Environments for the 21^st Century, Forum for the Future of Higher Education Symposium. Aspen.

Hagel, J., Brown, J.S., and Davison, L. (2010) A Better Way to Manage Knowledge, in Harvard Business Review blog, 19 January 2010

Wenger, E. (2006) Communities of Practice – a brief introduction, http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm

White, D. (2010) Case Study 6: World of Warcraft in Whitton, N. Learning with Digital Games, Abingdon: Routledge.

 

Tiered Experience - The New Digital Divide? 

I bailed very early on from attempting to configure my connectivity to WOW and Everquest.  Some success was gained in accessing the latter, but even 100mbps (via an ethernet connection rather than wireless at home) my Asus EEEPC struggled.

Yes, I may have played using better equipment, but I thought that a 10mbps connection to the internet via Virgin and  2Gb of RAM would have given me *some* experience.

As for WOW, I was very disappointed: a recursive problem with registration/configuration meant that I never got to access and enter the WOW universe, just a browser redirect to a-n-other game site. 

So, are these games really geared towards the Internet and the average user? Or are they still a niche genre that only harnesses the Internet for connectivity - effectively power-hungry desktop applications calling for similar high-end distributed demands?

 

I enjoyed playing World of Warcraft and EverQuest.  It is the first time I ever played an MMOG.  However, I was a little concerned with how easily I slipped into the culture of these games.  As I posted to the discussion board:

 

While playing with the group I heard one of our group members say that they did not like bashing wolves. I found that I didn't like doing it either but I had rationalised it because they were 'diseased' wolves and as such should be culled. However, in a later quest I had to collect the bandanas of some renegades and when I accepted the quest I realised that meant that I had to kill them. I was a bit uneasy about that but I had accepted the quest. I was killed at my first and second attempts but after being resurrected and figuring out (a la Gee) which weapon I should use, I was successful and forgot that I was 'killing' these renegades but just focussed on being successful in completing my task. However, when I went to get my reward and next quest, the quest-giver made a comment about how I didn't mind doing dirty work (or words to that effect). This jolted me out of my complacency and I realised that my character was a murderer. I had deliberately chosen the persona of a priest rather than a warrior to avoid being a 'bad' character. I was surprised at how easily I slipped into a murderer. I had an objective and became focussed on that objective - ignoring the means of achieving it.

I should add that I just came back from giving a paper at a conference in Berlin and spent the weekend exploring Berlin - which included visiting the Jewish museum and part of the Wall which is still standing. I was appalled at the stories of informers but my husband suggested that we did not know what pressures were put on informers. I mention this only because this experience is fresh in my memory and what I find interesting about WoW is how easy it is to be absorbed into a particular culture and a particular way of being. It made me wonder whether I could act more ethically in the WoW culture rather than passively just accepting quests.

 

 

Gee talks about three identities when playing a game – the virtual, the real and the projective. A player has some control in constructing their virtual identity in a game but the player’s choice is constrained because she has no control over the game world in which she has to play. So I chose Anavli to be a Priest in WoW so she could be a ‘good’ character.  However, the initial quests in WoW involve killing beasts, killing renegades etc.  My choice of my virtual identity was constrained by the game world in which my character has to live. Gee also talks about a projective identity using the term projective in two senses:

 

·         Players project their own values and desires onto their virtual identity (in my case Anavli)

·         Players see their virtual identity as a project in making – they need to take ownership of their creation (I have aspirations for the kind of character I want Anavli to become)

 

After creating my virtual identity, when I entered the game I was a passive player – accepting the quests and not questioning what I was doing. It was when the quest-giver made his remark that my real identity reawakened and questioned how my virtual identity was behaving.  At that point, I think that I began to be aware of my projective identity.  I wanted to take ownership of the kind of character I wanted Anavli to become but I was not sure of the constraints in the game world of WoW. 

 

 

Miguel Sicart has written on the ethics of computer games.  His view on ethics of computer games is linked to his definition of a game – ‘A game is not only it rules, its material aspect, but also its experience – the act of playing the game.’ (Sicart 2005:15) He takes the view that games players ‘are moral beings that evaluate their actions and the choices they make’ (Sicart 2005:15). However, he also argues that:

 

The way games are designed and how that design encourages players to make certain choices, is relevant for the understanding of the ethics of computer games. (Sicart 2009:17)

 

In his 2005 paper he uses an example from WoW.  WoW designers allowed player vs. player combat (pvp) in certain servers.  Because of the popularity of that feature, the designers decided to implement an honour system – where players got a considerable number of points for killing other players.  (Sicart points out that they did not at the same time implement a dishonour system.)  This design feature led to what the WoW community considered unethical behaviour such as corpse camping (i.e. waiting for other players to resurrect to kill them again when they were weak) and ganking (attacking players who cannot defend themselves).  The WoW community became divided – some liked the honour system, others disliked it so much that they stopped playing in the pvp servers.  The designers resolved this polarization by having certain areas that are designated in the map as battlegrounds. (Sicart was writing in 2005. I have been challenged to a few duels in WoW but I had the option to decline – so this is probably a further design feature refinement of the ethical issue the honour system raised.)

 

Sicart’s point is that both the player and the rules/fictional worlds are ethical entities which are both responsible for ‘the well being of the whole experience of playing a game’.  My concern was how passively I started to play the game – not reflecting on the experience. That may have been a feature of being totally unfamiliar with this kind of game and concentrating on learning about it.  I also wonder whether the quest-giver’s comment was a deliberate design feature to make me reflect on the nature of my virtual self.  It seems in Sicart’s WoW example, the game designers are responding to community issues.  If that is the case, then perhaps one could argue that WoW is an ethical game.  But I need to play more in it to discover whether that is the case.

 

Educators designing games need to think carefully of the culture they want to foster.  They need to take care that design features they create do not have negative ethical consequences. At the same time they need to see players as active moral individuals.  As I work with mature adults that is not a problem for me – those working with young children may need to think carefully of their level of maturity.  For both groups, individual and group reflection will help them resolve ethical issues.

References

 

Gee, James Paul (2003) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy

 

Sicart, Miguel (2005) Game, Player, Ethics: A virtue ethics approach to computer games, International Review of Information Ethics, vol. 4 (12/2005) 13-18

 

Sicart, Miguel (2009) Ch1 Introduction in The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.

 

What do we learn at school?

This was a question I posed to my S2 class shortly before giving then an end-of-term creativity exercise, whereupon they were to design their own game (individually or in groups not exceeding 4) based on the 'mapping learning objectives', Concept Specification and Functional Specification templates provided by Whitton.  

As may be discerned, the overwhelming response focused not on a list of the subjects that they learned but the pupils invariably produced 'answers' which focused on the social aspects of school where "perceptions of the self and others are socially determined and constrained" (Lee and Hoadley, p.2).  This fortnight, Weeks 10 & 11 the Readings on Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) explores the idea of virtual exploration of socialization as identity.  This interaction and exploration is evident in the 'roles' identified by the S2 pupils, who themselves are equipped and expected to produce versions of themselves in talk and creative writing, "and learning takes place during this enactment" (ibid., p.5).

MMOs are more flexible, draw on more than two or more senses and still allow thinking "from an alternate point of view and experiencing events situated in context helps students maintain interest and facilitates learning while the student grows into the alternate identity [and when] when students have a direct investment in the learning experience, they will more readily embrace their new knowledge as a vital component of their own personal growth and development" (ibid., p.5).

 

 

 

 

 

References 

Lee, J., and C. Hoadley. 2007. Leveraging identity to make learning fun: Possible selves and experiential learning in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Innovate 3 6).
http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=348 (accessed April 24, 2008).

 

In Gee (Chapter 7: The Social Mind in What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy) he extends the learning through video-games from single-player to multi-player.  As ever, he ends the chapter with a subset of the 36 Learning Principles (33-36) and these focus on the distributed nature of knowledge and the dispersal of this across 'affinity groups' - objects and systems as well as people - whereby he extends the notion of communities of practice and identity; all draw on traditional methods of storage and collation but importantly email, the internet, etc.

As with the classroom, players/participants work towards a common purpose, irrespective of race, class, gender, etc. This idea of common purpose and objective of all school pupils must be conveyed to pupils and allow them to acknowledge that it is their interest to work in partnership in order to support each other through their strengths and weaknesses (known as 'jigsaw method' defined by Brown & Campione (in Kate McQilly Ed. Classroom Lesson's: Integrating Cognitive Theory and Classroom Practice).

The idea of identity resurfaces, recalling the notion of 'multiple identity' whereby in such affinity groups "the norms and values of groups are contested and negotiated" (p. 184), bearing in mind that players - and us - modulate across a continuum of identity depending on context.  He finishes noting that this 'identity' should not only be in control but one who can modify content and the process itself.

These ideas accord with my periphery readings of Richard Riding's School Learning and Cognitive Styles where learners are negotiated into two dimensions of 'learning style' - wholist-analytic & visual-verbal.  In relation to the  affinity group that Gee promotes, Riding suggests that they, the learners, can work in partnerships that take into account differences / discrepancies in different learner types.  I think that this may have a significance in the successful presentation and reception of learning activities derived from digital games, and when you factor in collaborative learning I think that it is equally appropriate to look at compensatory pairing/grouping in addition.  

http://www.encorewiki.org/display/~hnajafi/Communities+of+Learners

uLearning (ubiquitous and context-specific) and Alternative Reality Games (ARGs)

The binding medium is generally the Internet, drawing on other forms of media. 

My understanding is that it is an inversion of the classic computer gaming paradigm, whereby the real-world characters are controlled or undertake a computer-generated narrative.

Where I think uLearning is interesting within this particular genre of gaming is that a context-aware environment can play along/maintain this invention of reality in supporting the narrative, therefore removing itself from the players’ physical domain and merely adopting symbols or metaphorical representations from of this narrative.

uLearning “enables users to interact and learn with sensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) embedded objects in their surroundings… As a student moves around the learning area, the system can detect their location by reading and analysing the data from the nearest RFID tag. Consequently, assessment can be conducted to evaluate the learning performance of the student in the realworld” (Liu et Hwang, 2009b, p. 1 & 4)

References

Liu and Hwang. (2009).  A key step to understanding paradigm shifts in e-learning: towards context-aware ubiquitous learning.  British Journal of Educational Technology (2009) doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00976.x

Liu and Hwang. (2009).  Learning spaces, learning environments and the dis‘placement’ of learning.  British Journal of Educational Technology (2009) doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00974.x

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Ubiquitous_learning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_learning 

Chapter 7
The Impact of Digital Games on Learning

I found this an interesting read, especially in accordance with my own reflection upon the three classes currently using or having used digital games in order to complement some aspect of learning or having “the ability to make mistakes in a safe environment and and learn from them [which] is one of the key benefits of game-based learning” (Whitton, 2010, p. 104).

Commandos

On the 15th of March, the S3 pupils at Dunoon Grammar School sat their S3 exam ('mocks').  In order to foster relationships - a recurring factor in much of the material being amassed as part of my studies of the MEd in Education on The University of the West of Scotland's Chartered Teacher Pathway programme - I decided to look at the interaction within and between groups of 14 year-old boys, with each group taking part in the playing of the game projected onto a large classroom display.  Each of the 6 groups would control the mouse, direct commands and filter comments and suggestions from the other groups. The pupils are about to conduct research on a topic from which they will develop and deliver a solo talk presentation to the whole class, which will be summatively assessed in accordance with SQA Standard Grade Arrangements.  I am attempting to remove and existing barriers amongst pupils and to continue fostering the supportive and actively collaborative climate necessary in a single gender (all male) class.  These are noted as “unintended learning objectives” (Whitton, 2010, p. 108) and include: “Valuable transferable skills, such as problem solving, teamwork or negotiation” (ibid.).

I was not to be disappointed.

Initial uptake was slow: I put this down to the audience and 'public performance' factor.   There were instances of bravado and a carefree, less-than-interested approach.  One particular academic/quiet pupil made significant progress - suggestions as to having played before (private interview afterwards). 

I then released the 'walkthrough' now that they had mastered basic navigation.   Still, there were small isolated pockets of resistance: disengagement - post and pre-play.

However, there was plenty of humour - pupil-teacher humour and a fair amount of camaraderie/praise.

Sherlock Holmes



Whitton’s provision of examples whereby games can be justified as applicable within a learning environment lend to specific areas within which I have used this game:  

• Narratives associated with the action in the game (e.g. characterizations, back stories, future scenarios);
• Reflective accounts of actions taken in the game and the learning acquired from it; 

(Whitton, 2010, p. 105).

It is important to note Whitton’s view that adults require close connections to be made between game-based activities and learning outcomes and benefits.  With the S1 pupils, merely adopting the game as an adjunct to a piece of study and utilizing it for a generic lesson opening activity has been enough; whilst formative assessment of daily journals helps to deliver feedback about their writing attainment.  This is certainly a justification to anyone seeking educational merit!

Myst

After a single period of this game – used with an extremely able s2 class (aged circa 13) – I observed and detected disengagements that hadn’t been noticed before from the S1 class.  On the 16/03/2010 I passed around a Pros/Cons sheet and asked for at least one entry from each pupil. 

‘Bad graphics’ featured once, but interestingly the cons noted that it was “hard”, “no one can use it” and that it was “confusing” (no context or background is provided).  What also featured was the looseness of the lesson structure and that “we all shout out at once”.

It would be interesting to allow the pupils themselves to structure a ‘best practice’ approach…

On the plus, the idea was “fun” and that some enjoyed “puzzles” and the “mystery”, “scenes” and “setting” were positively remarked upon.  Whitton offers a more fine-grained ‘Engagement Questionnaire’ that could be used in future.

Overall, I was curious about the following:

 “higher levels of engagement with a learning activity are indicative of increased learning from it” (Jacques et al. (1995) cited in Whitton, 2010, p. 110).

But that it “is possible to be engaged while not actually in a state of flow” (Whitton, 2010, p. 110).

“Lepper and Malone (1987) provide evidence that there is a link between intrinsic motivation to learn, engagement and instructional effectiveness” (Whitton, 2010, p. 110).

I shall conclude these musings AFTER I have watched the Youtube clip on ‘flow’.