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 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.

 

We have been given a couple of research papers for critically evaluation. One of them is by Dunleavy et al (2007) which looks at the "value addedness" of the one child per laptop (OLPC) project. What struck me here is that there are similarities between the OLPC initiaive and that of our partly JISC funded project, iBorrow. Whilst the OLPC project is ensuring that there is a "laptop per child" and iBorrow is about "borrowing a laptop" - the similarities here are one of transformation (or at least potentially).

Our students have a choice of using one of the 200 netbook devices or one of the 120 fixed desktop PCs - which ones are they drawn to and under what circumstances? They have relatively free reign in a large learning space (incorporating library, cafes and student services) the size of a football pitch across three floors - which means they have a choice as to where to work, learn and play with these netbooks - and again, which zones are they drawn to and under what circumstances?

Which leads us to another set of interesting questions:

• What kind of affordances do these devices bring?
• Are they indeed "value added" or something else?
• Does the combination of group work and mobile devices differ from that of group work and fixed devices?
• Does an "underworld" of virtualised peer support exist in these groupings?

I have a lot to think about and mull over before I finally hand in my project proposal in April 2010 - the trick here is to keep the research question(s) tightly focused.

If you are interesting in delving deeper into the OLPC project, Nicholas Negroponte, author of "Being Digital", founder of MIT Media Labs and founder of the OLPC initiative provides a nice summary of what the initiative is and the some of the issues of getting the project off the ground. James O'Hagan's blog "1 Laptop : 1 Student" offers some "stories" and case studies taken from practitioners of the initiatives.

References

Dunleavy, M., Dexter, S. & Heinecke, W.F. (2007). "What added value does a 1:1 student to laptop ratio bring to technology-supported teaching and learning?". Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23, pp. 440-452.

This was an enormously challenging and fruitful week and this is one of the reasons that it's taken me a bit longer to write about. Dr Hamish Macleod (senior lecturer in the School of Education, University of Edinburgh) was guest tutoring around the multifaceted areas of play and playfulness and really got discussion going although I think we actually strayed off the core areas we were asked to consider, namely:

• Why does play have such a bad wrap with grown ups?

• Why an opposition between work and play?

• Do we aspire to enjoy *our* work?

• Do we take ourselves too seriously?

So I'm going to start by saying that I have always struggled with the idea that work is a separate compartmentalised part of life and that work is not fun. I have not always had the most exciting jobs in the world (a summer at Domino's Pizza as a student being the lowest point) but I have always found something to enjoy in them so the idea that work could be seen as the opposite of play by anyone feels quite alien to me making this a really fascinating week.

Kane (2005 [1]) was a great paper to start with as it was, in it's format and outlook, hugely playful in exploring play and theories of play. Kane talks about two key rhetorics of play and humanity: a modern vision build around ideas of human freedom as embodied by an ideal of imagination, passion and confidence (I think Brown (2008 [8]) is a really interesting example of this rhetoric); and an ancient vision which “sees players as determined by forces largely beyond their control” which, to me, also suggests a form of play more allied with social, religious and superstitious practice (so not always that ancient). These are not mutually exclusive rhetorics and most actual experiences of play can't be neatly pigeon holed into either category and nor can work be separated neatly off to the side. Thus I can't agree more with Kane's comment that “Once properly investigated, there's no going back to a simple definition of play”.

Kane goes on to examine a range of theories of play. “Play as progress”, which focuses on play as a/the core early development process. In evoking this Kane refers back to to the Enlightenment, to Rousseau's Emile (1759) and to the invention of taking “childhood” seriously as a phenomenon in the early industrialised west. However whilst Kane talks about the role of play – the idea of play as an opposite force to work in Victorian society - in the creation of the notion of childhood I think that he rather skips over the role of religion (after all the ultimate Christian art works – unlike religious icons in many other religions – frequently centre on the idea of Jesus as a perfect playful child – precocious but poised), as well as the role of myth and the idea of play that pre-existed in those particular creation myths. Although there are certainly art works that testify to the extent that privileged children were presented as mini adults there are also childrens toys – rattles in particular – that pre-date Victorian culture and indicate play and playfulness as important to raising children long before the “seriousness” of childhood was established. For me what is gained in accepting and embracing childhood in Victorian society – which, after all, saw a huge move from rural to city living conditions and living expectations leading to shocking brutalisation of children (often unwanted) in grim factory settings – is also the simplification and mythification of childhood as a protective innocent space. Playfulness is one side of this but saccharine behavioural and physical expectations build up (and thus a whole wave of literature about societies underdog unwanted children emerges) and the idea of taking children seriously – other than as innocent spiritual barometers to be romanticised – all but disappears. Play has not been discovered but it has, in fact, been de-clawed. Greek myth might have youthful gods making mistakes and playful hi-jinks but Victorian play myths see creativity and play as wonderful traits only in the young and innocent. And I think it is these ideas of the ideal child able to play so long as innocence is retained (and those of the ilk of Maria Montessori – also quoted in Kane) that leads to the modern juxtaposing of work and play – and the relative barriers to inducing adult play - to perhaps even greater extent than the industrialised structured play identified by Kane. Those industrial ideas of work-life balance (for this is what they are – early experiments in identifying work as so unpleasant that play is required as an offsetting force.

The study of mental health and medicalisation culture also emerges around the same time as these new ideas of play and I don't think that it is any co-incidence that many psychologists and psychiatrists use playful methods of diagnosis and treatment to encourage patients/subjects to voice ideas, memories, fantasies (by the time Freud appears a repressed populace is ready to see most of the world in terms of sex and death) through a safe prism of innocent child like wonder. But that is to presume that children are innocent and I think any hour spent with an 8 year old will reveal that children are actually far more complex and aware of the world and whilst nieve are unlikely to be wholly innocent. It is a rare western child that will reach secondary school without exposure to swearing, urban legends of horrible and/or sexual things, bullying, peer and parent pressures, loss and sadness, bad and/or immoral behaviours etc. Indeed I think the Victorian's play legacy here actually includes the commercialisation of emotion and nostalgia and the establishment of unreal ideas based on a past that never was.

As Kane moves on to Play as Imagination and the work of the surrealists I cannot help but wonder why he does not pick up on the role of play in oppressive scenarios. The surrealist movement emerged out of complex, often highly repressive, political times where statements of narrative art could be seen and punished as criticism but surrealism provided an under-the-radar way for subversive content to be communicated, shared or simply enjoyed. Surrealism has remained a popular form of artwork precisely because the outrage it often sparks is in fact a decoy that raises attention for the free and critical comment often embodied in the work. The work of Jake & Dinos Chapman, for instance, capitalise on shock and awe to make surreal nightmares that critique the grotty realities of war, or, most notoriously, mock public obsession with the sexualisation of children and the fetishisation of their innocence. These are artworks whose warnings and notoriety are almost as powerful as the work itself. They are surreal and playful but without the arousal of shock and outrage the appeal of these critical works would be restricted to those already well aware of the dark horrifying works of Goya, El Greco and, indeed, Salvidor Dali that are all referenced in the Chapman's work. Play is used here as a front for dual subversion – a critique of the very audience that will be appalled into viewing the works and a very traditional nod to the long western history of art that focuses on the dark underbelly of human desires, particularly humanity's lust and violence.

The use of playfulness through surrealism in advertising meanwhile is both a nod to art which has moved from subversive cult to mainstream ubiquitousness and an efficient means of capturing attention. A straightforward advertising message is rarely the most effective, in part because the cost of advertising space is prohibitive and, in part, because any advertising must differentiate it's product from all the compeitors. Surrealism is about adopting a series of flexible codes that must be cracked – this in itself constitutes not only playfulness but also a small subconcious game. The famous Silk Cut ads of the 80s (some are included here) were instantly recognisable, instantly popular not because of the product (cigarettes) but because they were visual games – huge advertising hoardings filled with abstracted images in which one must identify the brand colour (purple), some sort of sharp edge (often scissors which come loaded with their own symbolic meanings) and, of course, silk in some form. This game draws attention and attentive eyeballs are the key goal of any advertiser. It also – as with the original surrealists – neatly side stepped increasing restrictions on the advertising of cigarettes. But surrealism and abstraction only work when the game is recognisable. If you know you are playing Where's Wally? It can be fun. If you just see just part of an image with no indication of the goal you will certainly not give the ad significant repeat attention. Attention has currently moved to playful but less abstracted viral ads – or viral style ads – where product labels are clearly in view, prices are stated etc. Surrealism wasn't purely a mid 1990s trend but that period did seem to mark a peak of abstracted surreal ads perhaps because advertising was a very lucrative business at the time and the number of media channels was expanding but only in usefully limited directions (perhaps also the advertising executives at this time had been raised on the drug and hypnagogia induced surreal art and LP sleeve work of the 1960s and '70s) . In a worldwide online marketplace it is harder to build knowledge of a brand enough to build a familiar game between advertising product and consumer and thus more transparent methods of communication – particularly in print ads - are favoured over surreal and playful campaign games.

Kane, in talking of Play as Selfhood, raises issues for me around the idea of “free play” since this idea of playfulness also relies on some distintly non free, non casual, non playful preconditions. Core drivers that enabled hippies to tune in and drop out include the movement's grounding in the secure middles classes (one can only drop out when one has the resources to opt out); the invention of the birth control pill substantially contributed to the “free love” movement (later to also lose it's free veneer with the rising rates in sexual diseases). So as long as you had medical insurance, a structured calendar of birth control pill consumption, and enough money to engage you could take part in “free play” of a sort.

However as Kane develops his theory of play I find his idea that society is both defined by work and is thus inherently unplayful to be rather difficult. This is not what I see in my own experience of the world. My sector – effectively educational technology – is an intensely creative and playful space and, as universities look to boost commercialisation of ideas developed in their bounds, the spaces to play and experiment are increasing exponentially (e.g. University of Edinburgh's Informatics Ventures initiative). At the same time BarCamps, unconferences, etc. all contribute to a much more playful culture and the rise in participative playful hobbies – geocaching, knitting groups, Maker Faires, World of Warcraft, the rise of burlesque, community participation in Wikipedia (motivation for which is very nicely described in Pink (2009 [7]) – all help highlight playful natures whilst stories of individuals leaving jobs they don't like to become ebay sellers, Second Life sellers, etc. also hint at the bridging between work and play that is possible in an affluent (even in these straightened times) and well educated society. Indeed our videos for this week both highlighted the impotance in modern society of a streak of subversive play that cuts through the normality of a day - though both Piano Stairs [5] and Pacman in the Library [6] could, perhaps, be seen to highlight a lack of playfulness in normal routine they certainly reveal a huge reciptiveness to play. That they could be made possible also shows the humour and space already allowed for playfulness in work and study spaces. 

 

There is also a bizarre paradox at work in the idea of respect and play. Although we respect academic and intellectual achievement we also often quantify success and standing in the world in terms of money and power. Thus is it peculiar to note that the greatest thinkers, intellectuals, academics, politicians, inventors, etc. are actually not the highest paid or most influential people in the world. Instead it is the film stars, the sports stars, the television personalities, and even the people famous for being famous. We may say that we do not respect play but actually our society puts those who play (whether through acting, games, or purely fun intuitive on-camera pursuits) for a living. If that is not an indicator that play is respected very highly indeed I don't know what is. But the fact that we ourselves prefer to maintain an idea that seriousness, that “work” must not be fun but must be respected indicates a tremendously interesting sociological construct of the notion of proper and improper ways to use time. And yet, as highlighted by Pink (2009 [7]) play can be a more productive and motivating form of activity when it is not classified as a thing that must be done, as something that is “work”, as something with intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivators.

The Sutton-Smith (1997 [2]) paper on play and ambiguity brought me back to thoughts of Gee (2003[9]) and his “semiotic domains” since both authors talk about the fluidity of meaning and the relationship of meaning to context, domain and playfulness. Although I very much liked the insight of the Sutton-Smith paper – particularly the depth of ambiguity that can be explored in any notion of play - I found that it was most useful for opening up my mind and triggering my own further thoughts on what constitutes play. However both Sutton-Smith and Callois (2001 [3]) slightly exasperated me with their blend of quite fascinating discussion of play – and the difficulties of play being open, playful, full of diverse and often difficult to grasp meaning– since it was accompanied by what felt, to me, to be oddly arcane attempts to classify this amorphousness into impossibly limited categories. That seems to me to help with the semantics of discussing play but not the matter of understanding play any more deeply – it is the short discussion and not the specific terms and theories being forwarded that offered most in terms of addressing how play can be understood and usefully harnessed for learning. Callois's instinctive paidia and more chewy ludus do seem robustly defined and informative but it is hard not to question whether cognitively the need to solve complex puzzles for their own fun (ludus) is, in fact, rewarding only because it is as much an instinctive, child-like force as making a loud noise in a quiet building (paidia). I think it would certainly be interesting to know how the definitions of play – from all of the readings we have been looking at – map to the function of the brain since inherent in Callois's opposing play types is the idea that pleasure is derived and enjoyed in different ways depending on the type of play and I do not know if that is cognitively accurate. Sutton-Smith's rhetorics of play overlap and combine - though this is self-conciously the case with Sutton-Smith making reference to Pepper (1961) and the usefulness of arbitrary distinctions in philosophical scholarly discourse.

I also unsure how the role of external factors – such as the process of being observed - can be properly accounted for in these categories. One of the continued themes of discussion board activity this week revolved around the self-consciousness of play in adults and the different qualities of play (even in the least self-conscious people) that occur alone, in social situations, and with audiences of any type. There are specific forms of of play around audiences but I think, putting on my former scientist hat, that if you are to identify categories, you must also be able to define the variables, the margins of error for those categories.

However as a final word I have to say that, whilst I deplored the quality of writing in Juul (2001 [4]) I was left with a great sense of curiosity to explore Sutton-Smith's 1959 work Kissing games of adolescents in Ohio. I do wonder if Juul's claim that the study of play is repeatedly lost is more a matter of specifically psychological discussion of the topic since I am aware that there is a long standing social anthropology interest in play and social play in particular. At this point in the course I am starting to wonder how many disciplines can be constructively combined to form a theory of play since it seems clear that psychology, history (and specifically history of science if the work on intrinsic motivation is to be recognised), social anthropology but also cognitive science – and that is just for a start – must all be combined to form any sort of “universal” theory of play. I think this is one of the reasons that I fear the use of categories that create a layer of opacity between disciplines and discourage playful sharing of ideas.

To play and to consider how we play in all aspects of daily life has been a rewarding week for me and is certainly useful going forward. Sutton-Smith's comments on the use of play as a form of defining identity is particularly interesting to bear in mind as we move into educational games and thus the use of avatars, social play and other more performative and more constructed forms of play and selfhood.

 

References

• [1] Kane, P. (2005) Chapter 2, 'A General Theory of Play'. In The Play Ethic : a Manifesto for a Different Way of Living. London, Pan. p35-64

• [2] Sutton-Smith, B. (1997) Chapter 1, 'Play and Ambiguity'. In The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 

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

• [4] Juul, J. (2001) The repeatedly lost art of studying games; Review of Elliott M. Avedon & Brian Sutton-Smith (ed.): The Study of Games. Game Studies 1:1 (July 2001).

• [5] "Piano on the stairs" video

• [6] "Pacman in the library" video

• [7] Pink, Dan (2009) Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation. TEDGlobal. Accessed 14^th February 2010. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

• [8] Brown, Tim (2008) Tim Brown on Creativity and Play. Serious Play 2008. Accessed 14^th February 2010. http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.

• [9] Gee, J. P. (2003). Chapter 2, 'Semiotic Domains: Is playing video games a "waste of time"?'In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.