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

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

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

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

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

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

On the positive side I said:

·         The fantasy element made it game-like

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is key to effective learning and teaching.

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

·         Analysis

·         Critical evaluation

·         Autonomy

·         Team working

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

·         Learning objectives

·         Genre

·         Brief description

·         Plot

·         Gaming activities

·         Constraints

·         Collaboration

·         Reflection

Reference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

This weeks games felt more educational than last week's <Casual Games> although I think in part this may be leisure snobbery. Scrabble is a game I'm very familiar with as a boardgame but also online in it's unlicensed form (on Facebook) of “Scrabulous”. I like a word game and see it as a more worthwhile waste of time than Tetris or Solitaire because it is about words and patterns and, for right or wrong, I feel that words are somehow more worthwhile than visual patterns (which is an odd sort of bias now that I think about it). What I was not prepared for was the social aspect of Scrabble in the Hasbro version of the Facebook app. What was immediately disconcerting was the fact that I was presented with a huge wall of possible players who I don't know at all. It looked most like one of those late night “There are girls in your area!” type ads which I found immediately off-putting – I've never thought of boardgames as the online equivalent of a dubious Wednesday night in a particularly low rent pub but that was about the vibe listings like “Theresa – 2 player – casual – 2 mins” gives. The effect was compounded by the chat from my automatically (and with no opt out) found opponent Craig D. (Games: 187; Won 38%; Top Score 429):

Thus, as I played the game my concentration was largely consumed with avoiding either offending or leading on my opponent (rather easier said than done) rather than on the gameplay itself. Actually social interaction is part of the game I suppose, I was just more interested in the word part of play than the social play here. I found myself pining for my dusty old cardboard and plastic set to avoid Craig D. However when his chat up lines failed he, despite having double my score (see image below), forfeited the game to me. Which explains the stats in his profile actually – a score of over 400 is a good score (or so my scrabble obsessed friends always inform me) so his 38% win rate, especially given he was playing casual games, seemed odd. However if he is seeing the game as a game of flirtation around Scrabble rather than the Srabble itself as the game I can see why his win rate is less you might expect – perhaps it is more a representation of his flirting success than a reflection of his Scrabble skills.

After that experience I was loath to return to Scrabble with strangers (if ever in the past I've longed for someone to play a game with I'm not sure I will again now). However in the course of playing online I note that a lot of the thrilling uncertainties are removed – the interface includes a dictionary (including the mystical Scrabble 2 letter word list) rather than a simple possibility of a rejected work; a timer is included in the casual game to discourage slow long term games and encourage quick mechanical games (something my super fan friends with love, something I don't play the game for); and friends are de-prioritised as competitors even though, even with anonymous opponents, there are chat and social features. Most upsettingly of all the Tiles tab lists every available tile – a view into the virtual bag and a breach of one of the nice Scrabble features – you can guess at probabilities of letters appearing but unless you have a photographic memory these are guesses (and always, in any case, assume no one has lost/eaten/changed/replaced any times. Addig all those practical functions takes away from some of the core gameplay aspects. Evidently the Scrabulous creators knew more about what it is to play scrabble and be engaged by it than the brand owners themselves. Really interesting.

Mahjong is a complex strategic game I've been shown several times and like but struggle with. Mahjong (solitaire) on the other hand had me baffled at first. I'm not a big reader of instructions – particularly for online games (and yes, in Week 4's education games that is proving interesting) – so I was confused to see the tiles all face up and laid out in strange shapes. Whilst I couldn't remember the proper way to play Mahjong I knew this wasn't it. And then my partner looked over and said “It's a Mac thing. I used to play that years ago. It's just to do with matching pairs”. To that I looked disappointed but then proceeded to get very absorbed in spotting patterns and looking out for moveable/flipable tiles. There are some very minor nods to Mahjong (proper) but otherwise this is a memory and pattern recognition game with very enticingly attractive graphics. The game made lots of sense once I knew the basic goal but the guidance and introduction to the game – and especially the rather misleading optional login screen - wasn't really very helpful to establishing what those goals were but, after playing, I read the help text and it was actually pretty good – just why it wasn't labelled “How to Play” or “Rules” or something similar rather than “Help” was a bit of a mystery though. I'm not sure I learned anything at all but I enjoyed playing the game, I did progressively better and I was encouraged to go back and find my Mahjong tiles and play with them a bit. I'll probably also go back again as it was a very graphically sophisticated game, the music and sound cues were useful and fun, and the rules regarding nearby tiles, scoring, timing, tile layout etc. all added to the gameplay and strategies that were useful for completing a level. It was difficult but not too difficult and I liked that.

Finally I was trying out Bookworm this week. Of all the games it felt most educational and most frustrating. Firstly it required download which, in an era of browser based games, seemed quite old fashioned to me. The graphics were also a little out of date but squarely aimed at educational connotations.

Gameplay seemed like it was going to be great – there is an element of random chance, a need to match patterns and find words, and a good range of possible directions to create words in. What I found problematic in practice was the fact that the possible routes round tiles weren't entirely intuitive (some looked close enough but were not). I got very into the game though and headed at a score of over 40,000 moving from “Encyclopedia Salesman” up to “BookBinder”- they seem like odd sorts of level names though – the game is about books not literature. That is reflected in gameplay as well – you get points for flashing letters, strategies, avoiding burning letters (you have only one life in Bookworm!) etc. but the emphasis is on time and points rather than elegant word finding. This is not unlike Scrabble but in bookworm you cannot elect to play long words as easily as the choice and mixture of vowels and consonants tends to make shorter words more viable. Worrying I also got one of my highest scores with “Barf” - not the masters student level of verbal dexterity I fear.

The music and graphics were fun for play although the music quickly grew repetitive and, though it gave musical cues to the game action, only served to panic rather than focus me. Overall though this was an interesting counterpart to the other two games this week. It is an engaging game and the Bookworm character is quite charming – he even spouts explanations when a word looks especially interesting (“cud” was one of the words that triggered a definition in my game). And the high score feature at the end is quite a nice way of allowing you to compare your performance – in theory at least – and by setting the default comparison names to low scores it's quite encouraging too.

I think the puzzle game genre is a hard one to place. Though educational in the sense of improving your skills in both the game and, perhaps, your knowledge of words these games provide odd motivational opportunities as often the area of learning is not necessarily compatible with the highest scores – in Scrabble two letter words that can be used in many directions are often far higher scoring than a complex word and anything over 7 letters is rare and usually a compound of two words rather than, say, a technical or scientific term; in bookworm you are discouraged from looking for longer words by the time/burning challenges; in Mahjong the more numeric and strategic skills are exchanged for simple pairs play (only the season tiles challenge the simplicity of the game). Progress is rewarded in these games with speed or score challenges rather than building up activity to feed into some sort of reward or conclusion. All three games look attractive and have big usable buttons but in all three there is no compelling reason to start playing. Once you get going you are engaged but the motivation to engage in the first place seems to be expected to come from a place of boredom rather than interest (e.g. Scrabble's auto-selecting opponents) and that does not bode as well for serious educational goals. Additionally the downside of attractive games like these is that they look like games and that often neither feels nor looks like work/education to others since they are so associated with time-wasting patterns of use. The fantasy element in these games is also quite weak, particularly with regard to intrinsic fantasy since puzzles are, by their nature, artificially reliant on rules, restrictions and arbitrary goals.

Pedagogy & Design

Motivation (Whitton, 2010)

On a personal level, I value my free time – what little time is afforded to a secondary school teacher with a young family and who is undertaking two separate course of study at postgraduate level – any of which tries to contain elements of newspaper and short story/poetry reading.  I would categorise myself as one who would need to see an educational purpose or that the completion of domestic and academic activities on the peripherary were not being undermined by spending time at a console or PC playing a game.

According to Whitton (p. 37) motivation and purpose are paramount to digital games-based learning; users need to be in control, and for games in learning, users will accept them if they are the most effective way of learning – this is the most important aspect (p. 40-41).  Games have the ability to engage but must have sound educational principles in order that the play does not obfuscate the learning outcome(s).

Achieving the necessary immersion – whereby players (learners) are fascinated and increasingly challenged – relies on the authenticity of and identification with a particular context for a user.  This leads to the experience of ‘flow’ (as defined by Csikszentmihalyi) whereupon the player enters into the optimal state of learning, and is in complete control of this experience.   But motivation is seen as a complex process.  Students’ intrinsic motivations for school decline grades 3 to 9, as a result of extrinsic motivations – grades, expectations, etc. Fun, joy, meaning, challenge have been stripped out.  So what are the differences between this traditional school-based learning and digitial games-based engagement?

Malone & Lepper developed a taxonomy of four factors in intrinsic motivators when playing games: game challenge, curiosity, control and fantasy, with ten additional factors being defined by Tuzun (2004): identity presentation, social relations, playing, learning, achievement, helping, rewards, immersion, uniqueness and creativity.

Relating to the idea of the expectations place on appropriateness of a learning activity or game, the greatest potential is in developing high-level, transferable skills: autonomy, analysis, critical evaluation and team working.  Experience, discussion and application is the constructivist approach, a theory deployed by Vygotsky.  In order to support this optimized state of ‘active learning’ constructivism suggests:

- Situated cognition
- Cognitive Puzzlement
- Social Collaboration 

and I would suggest that many digitial games – specifically designed for learning or otherwise - offer such a constructivist learning environment:  "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."

Honebein (cited in Whitton, 2010) presents 7 pedagogic goals of the design of constructivist learning environments: 

·          Responsibility for how/what they learn
·          Multiple viewpoints
·          Ownership of learning process
·          Authentic and relevant
·          Real-life activities
·          Support social learning
·          Multiple modes of learning

Additionally, game play must be offered in conjunction with periods of structured reflection, whereby the player can reflect on the activities just taken place with a view to tuning and restructuring their schematic models for use in further play or in transferable application.

At the heart is the learner or the player – the teacher acts merely as a learning facilitator, with opportunities for communities of practice (both bodied and disembodied) delivering additional critical support.  This ‘experiential learning’ (Kolb) requires feedback being given to the user in a timely and relevant format in order for the user to check their progress.

So, digital games can support the main educational theories of learning: active learning and constructivism, experiential learning, collaborative learning and problem-based learning.  

What succeeds is academic learning disguised as contextualized with important social issues, aesthetically-rich dramatic play.

Malone makes a distinction between toys and tools. He says that: A good game should be easy to learn but difficult to master.

Whereas: A good tool should be both easy to learn and easy to master. 

tool users should be able to focus most of their attention on the uncertain goal, not on the use of the tool itself p. 66

This distinction is relevant for my work – training and consulting in CAQDAS – tools that support the analysis of qualitative data (such as ATLAS.ti, NVivo, MAXqda etc.)  All these tools are difficult to learn – and many people who start to use these tools are new to analyzing qualitative data – so they are learning two new big areas at once.  But even those people who are experienced qualitative analysts need to learn what the new affordances a software package can offer qualitative analysis.  These tools are both difficult to learn AND difficult to master – which could explain why they have been slow to be adopted, even though they have been around since the 1980s.