Worth a Read: Can an Immersive Video Game Teach the Nuances of American History? | MindShift | KQED News

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Can an Immersive Video Game Teach the Nuances of American History? | MindShift | KQED News.

“The most encouraging to see is the games being launchpads for really in-depth conversations in which kids at varying academic levels feel equipped to participate and draw on their experiences with the game and the learning materials,” said Leah Potter, an instructional designer with Electric Funstuff.  Farber says they are great for inculcating his students with the idea that everything is connected and that changes in one arena of life affect what happens everywhere.

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Is More Choice Always Better?

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Picture1No.

Too much choice often interferes with learning; just like creating a simulated environment that is too real becomes counter-productive, especially with novices. Giving the learner too many things to think about too soon makes it much harder for them to navigate their way through to the destination you want them to find. There’s even a theory of choice overload: “The choice overload hypothesis states that an increase in the number of options to choose from may lead to adverse consequences such as a decrease in the motivation to choose or the satisfaction with the finally chosen option.” (Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder, & Peter M. Todd, 2010)

On the other hand, insufficient choice is also a problem. Clearly there is a sweet spot for how much choice to offer at any given moment, but I suspect the right amount will depend not only on what it is you are trying to teach, but also on who your learners are, and what they already know. Even worse, it is unlikely that your target audience will be uniform enough to allow you to set up exactly the right amount of choice in any serious game or other learning application.

 

Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder, & Peter M. Todd. (2010). Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta?Analytic Review of Choice Overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 409-425.

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Where is the line between good instructions and hand-holding?

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One of the great things about games is their potential for delivering just-in-time instruction.

Most games require some sort of user assistance, whether it be instructions, in-game tutorials, or a help system. Many games integrate help and tutorial information into the gameplay as much as possible. As designers, how can we know when it is is too much? At what point does a design start to keep a player from feeling autonomous because it’s too helpful?

I think the answer to this is going to be different for entertainment games than for serious games, and there is probably variation even within serious games. Games that try to change your attitude, for example, will likely need to be much more cautious about forcing people to spend time in a tutorial than a game trying to teach math. It also depends a great deal on the complexity of the game as well as the complexity of the subject matter.

Personally, I think people should have access to tutorials and other help but there is very little they should be forced to do.

A game like Machinarium has a very short intro tutorial that gets you started. I think it is very well designed. Its “help” pages are incredibly cryptic, on purpose, in keeping with the whole spirit of the game. You even have to do a mini-challenge before you can look at the help pages.

Splash 01A few years ago, we were asked to design a game to teach concepts in machine learning to middle schoolers. This one presented a huge challenge – there is nothing insightful about watching a machine while it’s learning and without an idea of how the machine is doing what it’s doing, you really can’t get any idea of what this is all about – all you see is that the machine (or program) just gets better at what it does. Also, machine learning is not part of any normal middle school curriculum.
It’s a fairly advanced topic, for good reason: it assumes a fair bit of background in probability, statistics, and CS. Our approach was to design a game where the player is the one who is asked to learn the way a machine does. The player is to create a program for a probe to be launched to Europa. It was not designed to be easy, but the intent was to give kids a feel for how machine learning works, without all the math and CS (a tall order). The publisher kept asking us to make it easier. They wanted us to add all kinds of hints and pop-ups telling players what to do next and we got into a lot of trouble for resisting. viper2Making a game easier rarely makes it more fun, and providing the right kind of help in a game can be as difficult as designing the game in the first place. In the end we created a fairly substantial ‘manual’ that players could access whenever they wanted. We had offered to do far more (video tutorials, lesson plans, etc.) but the publisher didn’t want to pay for them. The game is good, but it doesn’t stand alone. The help we created is also good, but insufficient. Good games aren’t cheap.

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Educational Videogames and Other Repeats

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ID-100184461Far too many educational games out there are nothing more than template games skinned with educational content. I wonder why people make these kinds of games. Is it because they are easy to design, or do they really not understand what it is about a game that makes it a valuable learning experience? Is it games they don’t understand, or instructional design? Both?

There are still a lot of classroom teachers who think ‘Jeopardy’ qualifies as a game in the same way as Black and White or Rollercoaster Typhoon. Jeopardy may be a fun way to skin a drill exercise, but I would not call it a game in the same sense as the other two. I think Jeopardy has a place, as do Bingo games and others. Some things need to be memorized, and if wrapping them in a game makes them a little more fun, then that might not be a bad thing.

0603-content-pillarHowever, the notion that the creation/appropriation of a few templates passes for actual game design is misguided. Personally, I’d like to see these kinds of games placed in their own category. If I can take the same mechanic and use it to create a different game, then it’s a template game. If the content in the game can easily be converted to a worksheet, then it’s a template game.

If you can design a game where the learning goals are actually integral to the game itself, it’s not a template game. These are much (MUCH) harder to design, but they have the potential to deliver a much more powerful message.

Just in case you still don’t know what I mean, here are some examples of template games that use the ‘Diner Dash’ mechanics. This is the kind of game where players must deal with a customer who places some sort of order before the customer gets tired of waiting and leaves. As educational example is Dr. Transplant. The problem with using this template for an educational game is that unless the actions within the game actually connect with the learning objectives, the game ends up being nothing more than window dressing.

I came across another example just the other day. Wonderville, Alberta’s science site for youth recently released its newest game called Allergy Invader. From the game’s description:

The body’s immune system protects the body from harmful agents but sometimes it can also react to things it should ignore like insect venom, pollen or food, an allergic reaction. As an evil apprentice take control of some common allergies (bee venom, pollen and food) and navigate the systems of the body to see how an allergic reaction is caused. You’ll have to be quick to make it through the body and cause the allergic reaction.

Sadly, the game is simply a re-skinning of a common scrolling obstacle course (like Mario, only less functional, and far less fun). There is nothing about the mechanic that connects with the content. I am disappointed at the lost opportunities to create a mechanic that actually demonstrates the actions of the B-cells and T-cells. It really wouldn’t have been all that hard to do while still using the side-scrolling idea.

Another stellar failure in this genre is the flash game called Number Cop.

Sigh.

Crappy games are crappy games – you don’t get an exemption just because it’s educational too.

Don’t make it into a game just because it’s the “now” thing to do. You are far better off making an interactive worksheet that is interesting and engaging than making an educational game that isn’t.

Being pretty isn’t enough when it comes to games. (See my posts about the decorative media principle).

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Is Learning Really Work, or is it Education that is Work?

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ID-10097423Jim Gee says, “When we think of games, we think of fun. When we think of learning we think of work”. (P. 43, 2007, Good Video Games + Good Learning)

Is that really true? Somewhere along the line kids begin to associate what they do in school with “work”, where “work” is seen to be unpleasant. I have yet to meet a single 6-year-old who feels that way, so what happened?

Is it really learning that we dislike, or is it formal education?

At some point many kids begin to associate negative feelings with schoolish subjects, yet most happily spend hours in a game and have no problem talking about what they learn there.

OK. So the leading question is probably somewhat rhetorical, but here’s one that isn’t:

What qualities does a low-budget educational game need to have in order to avoid being lumped in with all the other “education” they are required to do?

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Is Fun Really Necessary for Serious Games?

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Many people in Education seem to believe that fun and education are at odds with each other.

The "Serious Games Continuum"

The “Serious Games Continuum”

Some years ago I did a survey with public school teachers to see if they were using games in school, and if not, why not. Some of the obvious and significant barriers were highlighted: lack of admin support, lack of resources, lack of time to learn, etc.

The comment that still sticks with me today is this one:

As a parent I object to having my child “play” on the computer when he has completed some piece of work. I want my kids working at school. I can use computer games at home for there entertainment. I also think that “edutainment” as a name is attempting to give computer games some degree of educational value. My students come to school to learn not to be entertained. Would you want your university profs. entertaining you?

I do understand the pressure on teachers to not “waste” time, but the sentiment voiced by this teacher still lingers in the heads of many educators. As soon as we start to have too much fun, educators become suspicious that there is not enough learning happening.

This is something that interferes with our ability to make inroads in formal education with games. While “fun” is typically THE most important measure of viability in commercial games, it is possible that we need to use a different word when it comes to measuring serious games (and just in case you are so inclined, I think “engagement” is too nebulous to be useful).

What would you use instead of the word “fun”?

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Do All Games Include a Conflict?

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ID-100121611Yes. And: No.

It depends on how we define things.

First, I think it’s important to distinguish between digital games and non-digital or ‘analog’ games in these discussions. Few can agree on a precise definition for ‘game’ and there has been much discussion about it over the years (Wittgenstein, 1953, McLuhan, 1964, Sutton-Smith, 1997, Salen & Zimmerman, 2004, Juul, 2005, Egenfeldt-Nielsen et. al., 2008). Given that, we stand a better chance of getting to meaningful discussions of we can constrain the domain a bit. So, I am excluding non-digital games from my response.

Having established the domain, the answer to this question is completely dependent on how one defines “conflict”.  If we define “conflict” to be some sort of challenge, then yes, all games must have this. If they don’t then they are toys rather than games. The word “conflict” has negative connotations for me as well as others, and I personally tend to avoid games that have the kind of conflict that pits people against each other – even virtual ones. I’m not a fan of shooters, fighting games, or war games.

Given that, it should be no surprise that my favorite genre is puzzle games, and I would say that while puzzles can have considerable challenge, they tend not to have much in the way of conflict. On the other hand, games with a narrative, often do involve some identifiable conflict: Phoenix Wright is about finding out who committed the crime, and Professor Layton has a mystery to solve that usually includes some villain and very clear conflict.

???????????????????????????????????????Thiagarajan is a well-respected training specialist and designer who specializes in in-class and paper-based learning and development activities. He identifies five critical characteristics of training simulation games that I’ve found quite useful (Thiagarajan & Stolovitch, 1978):

  1. conflict (which can also be described as challenge) – I prefer the term ‘challenge’.
  2. constraints (on players’ behaviors; = rules)
  3. closure (the game must come to an end)
  4. contrivance – all games are contrived situations
  5. correspondence – designed to respond to some selected aspects of reality (It turns out that the degree to which people insist on this connection lies at the heart of many arguments over whether or not some learning and development activity constitutes a game or a simulation. This is a judgment call and highly subjective.)
  • Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J. H., & Tosca, S. P. (2008). Understanding video games : the essential introduction. New York: Routledge.
  • Juul, J. (2005). Half-real : video games between real rules and fictional worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
  • McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media : the extensions of man (1st ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of play: game design fundamentals. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
  • Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The ambiguity of play. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  • Thiagarajan, S., & Stolovitch, H. D. (1978). Instructional simulation games. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Educational Technology Publications.
  • Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. New York,: Macmillan.
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Game Based Pedagogy and the Importance of Teacher Support

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0604-support-pillarIn my upcoming book I talk about the importance of teacher support for educational games. It is the 3rd pillar in my 4PEG model.

In order to gain acceptance in a traditional classroom, GBL ‘objects’ need to be “canned”, meaning they need to include everything a teacher might need to take it in to the classroom and use it right away. This is in no way meant to be critical. Teachers don’t have time to prepare lessons very often. Dedicated teachers especially don’t have time because they are busy helping their students.

Over the years I have become quite convinced that most games will never even get a second look in a traditional setting without the following three things:

  1. 0603-content-pillarCurricular Ties: Teachers are often under tremendous pressure to make “good” use of their class time. If they can’t show that this game can meet a required curricular objective, their principal is likely to tell them they can’t use it. (This is part of the second pillar)
  2. Assessment Connections: The forms of assessment provided by the game must align with the assessment currently being used in the class. If it doesn’t, then the designers need to make explicit connections between the in-game assessment (scoring, leveling up, etc.) and the assessment being used in the class. (This is also part of the second pillar)
  3. Teacher Support: This one’s huge. Teacher’s simply don’t have time to play a bunch of games on the off chance they might end up being useful in one of their classrooms. If this information is not supplied with the game, most teachers won’t give the game a second look. If we expect them to use the game in class, then we need to provide lesson plans and other materials.

Example: I did a Google search (Just now – August 4 2015) using these two terms: webquest flight. The result: About 84,800 results (0.38 seconds). The first page of hits included several ready-to-use webquests about flight. They included grade level, activities, evaluation – basically everything I needed to use that lesson in my classroom tomorrow. It took a total of 3 minutes to find them, have a quick look at them, and pick one I could use tomorrow. Then I did another search: “educational game” flight air. I even put quotes around “educational game” to narrow the search. I had to  add the word “air” because without it I got a lot of links to a games about refugees and fleeing. This is the result. educational game flight air Google SearchThere are some games that involve airplanes, but they are all drill games – the plane is the wrapping, not the subject. I got NOTHING that was of any use to me for tomorrow’s class. While I think there are quite a lot of games out there that have educational potential – both big and small, VERY few of them are useful immediately. Almost all of them require the teacher to play the game, analyse it, and build a lesson from scratch, including assessments that the principal will approve of AND ties to the required curriculum so that the use of that game can be justified to administration.

 

If you are a builder of educational games, be sure to include teacher support.

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