Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (9: 3 Queries)

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Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of the class. These are mine.

Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.

Week 9

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Topics: Evaluation plan (feasibility, acceptability, usability, effectiveness; IRB and logistics):

  • Pinelle, D., Wong, N., & Stach, T. (2008). Heuristic evaluation for games: Usability principle for video game design. Paper presented at the The 26th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’06).
  • Baranowski, T., Baranowski, J., Thompson, D. I., Buday, R., Jago, R., Griffith, M. J., et al. (2011). Video game play, child diet, and physical activity behavior change: A randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40, 33-38.
  • Baranowski, T., Baranowski, J., Thompson, D. I., & Buday, R. (2011). Behavioral science in video games for children’s diet and physical activity change: Key research needs. Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, 5, 229-233.
  • Isbister, K., Flanagan, M., & Hash, C. (2010). Designing games for learning: Insights from conversations with designers. Paper presented at the 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’10)

Question1: [Week 9 KB Q 1/3] How Important is First-Hand Experience?

You don’t have to be a hard-core gamer to be able to talk about games. BUT….

If you want to offer an opinion about digital games, you MUST play some. If you don’t play games you have no scholarly authority to talk about them.

Harlan Ellison made the point very well:

When I reviewed television, people said “If you hate television so much, how come you’ve got a television set in your house?”. Stephen King even said “You know, Harlan’s got a big TV.”. Yes, that’s right. I try to  be courant. I try to know what it is I’m talking about. I am not like many people who give you an opinion based on some sort of idiot hearsay or some kind of gut feeling you cannot validate. When I give an opinion, I do my best to make sure it is based on information.

I also think that if you have never designed a game, you are not the one to be telling people how to do it right.

Question2: [Week 9 KB Q 2/3] How Large Does the “Effect” have to be to make a game a viable solution?

I’m not actually expecting a sensible answer to this question, but I am hoping to generate some discussion – maybe even a list…

I personally think games could be important tools in the arsenal of tools to use when trying to change behavior, but I also don’t think they can solve any societal problems alone. So, supposing we have $100,000.00 to spend on some intervention. How do we justify spending that money on a game?

Question3: [Week 9 KB Q 3/3] How do we get academics and industry to connect?

This question is one that has come up a number of times at places like GDC. Things are better than they were a decade ago, but Game industry folks still have a tendency to dismiss academic research as not relevant, and for their part, academics also often ignore the wealth of knowledge that exists in the industry. The Pinelle paper was striking in its lack of industry connection, and I see the same kind of industry blindness in many educational studies. What are your ideas for how we might help bridge the gap between these two cultures?

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (9: Piling on: Comments on the Pinelle Paper, and Establishing Credibility)

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Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.

Week 9

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Topics: Evaluation plan (feasibility, acceptability, usability, effectiveness; IRB and logistics):

  • Pinelle, D., Wong, N., & Stach, T. (2008). Heuristic evaluation for games: Usability principle for video game design. Paper presented at the The 26th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’06).
  • Baranowski, T., Baranowski, J., Thompson, D. I., Buday, R., Jago, R., Griffith, M. J., et al. (2011). Video game play, child diet, and physical activity behavior change: A randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40, 33-38.
  • Baranowski, T., Baranowski, J., Thompson, D. I., & Buday, R. (2011). Behavioral science in video games for children’s diet and physical activity change: Key research needs. Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, 5, 229-233.
  • Isbister, K., Flanagan, M., & Hash, C. (2010). Designing games for learning: Insights from conversations with designers. Paper presented at the 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’10)

This week my comments are about the Pinelle paper. It seems that I am not the only one as a number of other classmates have also had some comments.

My perspective comes from that of a long time computer scientist – someone who watched the field of HCI (Human Computer Interfaces) from its very beginnings. This is where theories of usability came from. The idea of studying users to find out how to design better interfaces is a laudable one,  but in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I have not found the field to provide a great deal of insight.

On the one hand, the goals of the Pinelle’s study are really good: they want to look at usability in popular games in order to generate a set of heuristics others can use when they design their games. This is great idea. I also think they have a pretty good start, but that’s all they have – a start.

This study gathered data by analyzing game reviews. Other people in the class have already pointed out some of the shortcomings of that approach, not the least of which is that game reviewers do not look at games the same way players do. Player reviews would be better, but we are still talking about a self-selected group of people who care enough about games to voluntarily write their opinions and submit them.

For me, there are two things that really stand out as problems with this study:

  1. They did not do any actual use testing. In other words they did not watch people actually playing the games. I know that the developers do this themselves, but they rarely release any of their data, so it is inaccessible.
  2. It is not at all clear that any of the researchers actually understand games. I recognize a few names, both in the author list, and in the acknowledgements, and references. The names I recognize are academics who study HCI. To my knowledge, none of them have any game industry experience. Now, this is not necessarily a problem, but it does speak to credibility.

Ben Sawyer always asks his presenters to include a slide outlining what they are playing now in any talk they do for an organization with which he is involved. I think academics who write about what we should be doing to make batter games should similarly have to reveal their own game experience. Academic credentials aren’t enough.

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (9: 3 Responses)

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Approximate Reading Time: 5 minutes

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

Each week, we are required to post three responses/reactions to queries posted by other members of the class in the previous week. These are mine.

I have paraphrased the queries to preserve my classmates’ privacy.

Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.

Week 9

These are the readings we had last week:

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Theories: Self-determination theory; Topics: Planning a research study; Budgeting)

  • Barab, S., Dodge, T., Tuzun, H., Job-Sluder, K., Jackson, C., Arici, A., Job-Sluder, L., Carteaux, R., Jr., Gilbertson, J., & Heiselt, C. (2007).  The Quest Atlantis Project: A socially-responsive play space for learning. In B. E. Shelton & D. Wiley (Eds.), The Educational Design and Use of Simulation Computer Games (pp. 159-186). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
  • Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268
  • Thompson, D. I., Baranowski, T., Buday, R., Baranowski, J., Thompson, V., Jago, R., et al. (2010). Serious video games for health: How behavioral science guided the development of a serious video game. Simulation & Gaming, 41, 587-606.
  • Mount Olympus (video) http://www.gel.msu.edu/olympus-short-and-long-term-effectiveness-exergames-young-adults

Response 1: [Week 9 KB dialog 1/3] Cut Scenes

Growing up I always skipped cut scenes, I just wanted to play and thought I could figure out the game and story without watching them. Should one design a game with unskippable cut scenes?

When I evaluate a game for learning, I like to try and see how far I can get without actually learning any of the stuff they want me to learn. I can get surprisingly far in a great many educational games this way. I purposefully avoid reading the things I’m supposed to read, because most kids (and a great many adults) will skip that part anyways. I also try to see how far I can get by sheer brute force and random chance.

I think your question connects with this because like the text, the cut scenes are supposed to be there to full out the story (or experience). There are some we might watch simply for their own sake – they may be cinematically wonderful, or entertaining in and of themselves. BUT, if there’s nothing in those cut scenes that’s useful to your success in the game, then you have to wonder why go to the trouble? If it’s a purely entertainment game, then offering a cut scene that doesn’t really add much may well be fine, though most of the time, if they are producing nice cut scenes they have also written them to add something worthwhile to the story. Even if it just backstory to help you understand the character’s motivations, it still adds to the experience as a whole.

That having been said, it can get very annoying very fast to HAVE to sit through the same cut scene multiple times – even if it’s good. I think players should be given the option to skip the cut scenes or the text if they want, but they should always have the opportunity to go back to them any time. I think a good design is one where each part adds something to the whole, and in a game that whole is usually held together by the goal of the game. If it doesn’t help you through the game, then it had better be worthwhile in some other way.

Response 2: [Week 9 KB dialog 2/3] Do games inspire good writing?

 

I found it interesting that data collected from Quest for Atlantis users showed that boys wrote more in response to questions presented as a Quest for Atlantis activity than in response to the same questions presented as an online worksheet. They wrote more of substance, too, reflecting deeper thought on the topics. What might account for this?

It would have been nice to know if the writing styles differed between the QA and worksheet – in particular, was it more casual in the QA? I think the fact that it is a game is far less significant than the fact that the subject matter and the environment connects with something relevant to them.

The subject matter makes a huge difference. For 22 years I have been doing a duck hatching program with local schools where we provide fresh, or almost ready to hatch duck eggs to local schools and they hatch them in the classroom. They usually keep the ducklings for about two weeks and then return them to us. Most of the teachers I worked with teach K-3. In most schools, for the few weeks leading up to getting the ducklings and those weeks that the little critters are in the classroom, EVERYTHING is about ducks: science, art, music, English, even gym. In many schools the duck theme spills over to the whole school.  Every one of them comments on how MUCH the kids write (including the boys).

The environment also makes a difference – we spend more time with a tool we like than one we don’t – even if it doesn’t actually work any better. I would imagine that the actual reasons why boys wrote more in the QA than the worksheet includes all kinds of factors, at least some of which are part of the formal educational culture.

To answer your question, I DO think that games can inspire good writing, but so can comics, television, film, and real life experiences. I think the common thread here is that the subject matter is something the students actually CARE about, in an environment where they feel supported and confident.

Response 3: [Week 9 KB dialog 3/3] Alternatives to violence theme

This breakout from Simulation & Gaming seems like a great resource and I wonder if further analyzed, what an optimal mix would be that included at least two or three (or more) of these elements that engaged intrinsic motivation.

  1. central character  who is captured and rescued
  2. antagonist who has an army
  3. romantic feeling between characters
  4. obstacles that impede progress
  5. central character who acts as a traitor
  6.  central character with an interesting history or genealogy
  7.  story centered around exploration and clue finding

I found this interesting too. I would have loved to have seen a more detailed analysis of this, in particular, what the distribution was by gender. I would suspect that (2) and (3) have gender biases. One of the first things that struck me was that they had specifically asked for nonviolent themes, and one of the resulting themes is STILL military. It can be done, but it’s hard to imagine an army scenario that does NOT include fighting (i.e. violence). They didn’t address this paradox at all.

Also, these items are kind of mixed up with respect to type. It seems to me that (4) and (7) are not like the others. The other five have to do with narrative, while (4) and (7) have to do with mechanics. I will admit to having a soft spot for lists – it’s part of what got me into computer science in the first place (a LOT of CS is about organizing and making lists), so as soon as I noticed we were having a list, I also re-wrote it. I’m not as familiar as I’d like to be with the literature in this area (too many interests; not enough time), but I wonder if there are other lists like this? I think they’d be quite useful. I’d also like to see more detail about what, if any gender differences showed up. I have it in my head that there is a middle ground that we should be paying attention to that doesn’t stray too far into male or female preferences. It seems to me that this is where we need to be looking when making serious games, unless of course we are targeting a particular gender or group.

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Should Game Designers Learn How to Program?

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These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

I’ve already posted my meanderings for last week, but there was another question asked, which I think is a really good one, so I’ll add it here, even though it isn’t officially part of the course assignments.

I wonder if we should learn programming since hiring them can be so costly.  C++ is supposed to be a good one for gaming and I know there are ways to learn it in a user friendly environment.  For example, Game Salad allows you to modify existing games and publish them and it’s fun.  I know this is not the solution for a comprehensive serious game but I think even if we are not doing the coding, it is beneficial to know the basics so you can talk the language.

Can’t resist this one. My first 2 degrees are in computer science (BSc & MSc). I ran my first programs on punched cards before there were PCs. My answer to your question of whether we should learn to program ourselves is most emphatically YES, but not for the reasons you suggest.

~Warning: this is a soapbox issue for me, so I tend to go on (and on…)~

 

Learning to program is not that hard, but learning to program WELL is. It takes most people years of study and 10’s (or 100’s) of 1,000’s of lines of code under their belts to get really good. I would not expect someone to do that unless they were really serious about needing to be able to program.

If your project needs programmers, then it needs GOOD programmers – people who understand algorithms and who know what’s important in game programming.

You may not need programmers at all. There are getting to be more and more tools that will allow you to build games without having to be a programmer, so you don’t need to learn programming in order to build your own games.

Whichever way you approach it though, you are likely to need tech people of one description or another.

On the other hand, learning to program teaches you something that is extremely important: it teaches you how programs work. If you don’t actually know how computers and programs work, then you are at the mercy of those who do. This is no longer a trivial concern.

I think far too many people end up being at the mercy of the tech guys who tell people what can and can’t be done. It’s one of my personal peeves – after teaching programming for 25+ years, I can say with confidence that MOST of the annoyances in everything from drop-down lists to online ordering to university registration systems are a result of poor design (and lazy programmers). I ranted about this on my blog this summer. The book I co-wrote with my partner was intended to address part of this problem too – it talks about the technical aspects of computer simulations and games for people who are not programmers.

 

 

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (8: 3 Queries)

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Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of the class. These are mine.

Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.

Week 8

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Theories: Self-determination theory; Topics: Planning a research study; Budgeting)

  • Barab, S., Dodge, T., Tuzun, H., Job-Sluder, K., Jackson, C., Arici, A., Job-Sluder, L., Carteaux, R., Jr., Gilbertson, J., & Heiselt, C. (2007).  The Quest Atlantis Project: A socially-responsive play space for learning. In B. E. Shelton & D. Wiley (Eds.), The Educational Design and Use of Simulation Computer Games (pp. 159-186). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
  • Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268
  • Thompson, D. I., Baranowski, T., Buday, R., Baranowski, J., Thompson, V., Jago, R., et al. (2010). Serious video games for health: How behavioral science guided the development of a serious video game. Simulation & Gaming, 41, 587-606.
  • Mount Olympus (video) http://www.gel.msu.edu/olympus-short-and-long-term-effectiveness-exergames-young-adults

Question1: [Week 8 KB Q 1/3] How does gender affect design for autonomy as defined in SDT?

It’s been said that boys and girls approach technology differently. For example, boys tend to attribute success to skill, while girls tend to attribute success to luck. Boys tend to blame the technology for failures while girls blame themselves, and boys tend to show their teachers what they can do while girls tend to show them what they CAN’T do (Meelissen, 2008). One of the aspects of SDT is the need for autonomy. I beleive that the gender differences related to how technology is approached has implications for fostering autonomy in games. Are there ways to foster autonomy that work better for girls than boys, or vice versa? Are there techniques that are gender neutral?

Meelissen, M. (2008). Computer Attitudes and Competencies Among Primary and Secondary Schoolstudents

Question2: [Week 8 KB Q 2/3] What game mechanics relate directly to one or more of the three needs, namely competency, autonomy, and relatedness?

I’d love to see some sort of table or graphic that proposes a mapping of these concepts.

Question3: [Week 8 KB Q 3/3] What are the design patterns for health interventions? 

I have a kind of love/hate relationship with the concept of design patterns. They can be very useful, but they can also stifle creativity, as well as encourage people to try and make a problem fit a pre-defined solution. Still, design patterns can be a great way to learn about the common approaches to solutions in a particular field. So, I wonder if there are any design patterns for the design of health interventions, and if so, are there references or resources we can turn to for more information?

References:

Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., & Vlissides, J. (1995). Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software: Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc. Boston, MA, USA.

Brown, W. J. (1998). AntiPatterns : refactoring software, architectures, and projects in crisis. New York: Wiley.

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (8: Self-Determination Theory and Games)

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Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.

Week 8

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Theories: Self-determination theory; Topics: Planning a research study; Budgeting)

  • Barab, S., Dodge, T., Tuzun, H., Job-Sluder, K., Jackson, C., Arici, A., Job-Sluder, L., Carteaux, R., Jr., Gilbertson, J., & Heiselt, C. (2007).  The Quest Atlantis Project: A socially-responsive play space for learning. In B. E. Shelton & D. Wiley (Eds.), The Educational Design and Use of Simulation Computer Games (pp. 159-186). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
  • Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268
  • Thompson, D. I., Baranowski, T., Buday, R., Baranowski, J., Thompson, V., Jago, R., et al. (2010). Serious video games for health: How behavioral science guided the development of a serious video game. Simulation & Gaming, 41, 587-606.
  • Mount Olympus (video) http://www.gel.msu.edu/olympus-short-and-long-term-effectiveness-exergames-young-adults

This week we are reading and thinking about motivational theories, in particular, Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and intrinsic motivation. Curiously, this week I also came across Sebastian Deterding’s Microsoft Research Talk that was posted on Oct. 12. It was about gamification, but it is also about games more generally, and touched on the motivational theory from this week.

In his talk, Sebastian offers some answers to the question above, and gives quite a nice explanation for how self-determination theory is embodied in games. One of the things he says is that many people using “gamification”, as well as many serious game designers confuse extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. He says that the fun in games chiefly arises from intrinsic enjoyment, not extrinsic incentives. Gamification tends to focus on the reward structures in games, and I think there is a tendency to do that in serious games too.

Deci & Ryan outline 3 basic psychological needs that affect human motivation: namely, the need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Sebastian connects them to the enjoyment of games by looking at play, and those elements of play that exist in games.

Competence:

This is an area where designers often get it right. The usual game mechanics and assessments already do a pretty good job of allowing players to experience a sense of competence. All we need to do is *not* mess it up. (Easier said than done for sure!)

Autonomy:

Play is voluntary (Huizinga) and autonomous (Deci & Ryan), therefore, we need to provide choice in goals & strategies concordant w/ values and needs.

Relatedness:

“It is the nature of a fun community to care more about the players than about the game … We are having fun. We are caring. We are safe with each other. This is what we want.” (DeKoven, 1978) Sebastian used this quote to make the point that play is attunement; it is the shared process of getting into a shared space. This attunement comes from a shared focus and attitude of exploration, mastery, benign transgression, and fun. This, he says, is Deci & Ryan’s relatedness.

This all means that we should focus on facilitating mastery, exploration, benign transgression, shared joy in our games.

I think that this may not always be possible in a serious game. It may even be possible to address them all only rarely. If we admit that, we stand a better chance of designing a game that still delivers on its message. It’s a mistake to pretend a game is something it’s not, and there is a tendency for serious games designers to over-sell their games. This can’t help but result in disappointment on the part of the player.

 

DeKoven, B. (1978). The well-played game : a player’s philosophy (1st Anchor books ed.). Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press.

Deterding, S. (2012). 9.5 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Gamification (Microsoft, Trans.) Microsoft Research Presentation. Redmond, WA. http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/dl.aspx?id=174677&l=i

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (8: 3 Responses)

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Approximate Reading Time: 6 minutes

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

Each week, we are required to post three responses/reactions to queries posted by other members of the class in the previous week. These are mine.

I have paraphrased the queries to preserve my classmates’ privacy.

Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.

Week 8

These are the readings we had last week (Topics: Theories of Behavior Part 2: Community Organization, Diffusion of innovation, Media Effects, Putting Theory into Practice Using Planning Models):

  • Peng, W. (2009). Design and evaluation of a computer game to promote a healthy diet for young adults. Health Communication, 24, 115-127.
  • NIH Theory at a glance (pg. 22-31, 35-46 – USE PAGE NUMBERS IN DOCUMENT, NOT THE ONES IN ACROBAT) National Institutes of Health (2005). Theory at a glance: A guide for health promotion practice. Retrieved August 15, 2010 from http://www.cancer.gov/PDF/481f5d53-63df-41bc-bfaf-5aa48ee1da4d/TAAG3.pdf
  • Optional:  Daley, A. J. (2009). Can Exergaming Contribute to Improving Physical Activity Levels and Health Outcomes in Children? Pediatrics, 124, 763-771
  • Optional: Anderson-Hanley, C., Snyder, A., Nimon, J., Arciero, P. (2011). “Social facilitation in virtual reality-enhanced exercise: competitiveness moderates exercise effort of older adults,” Clinical Interventions Aging. 2011; 6: 275–280.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3212419/

Response 1: [Week 8 KB dialog 1/3] Anyone care to decode PRECEDE-PROCEED for me?

For the most part, I’ve really appreciated the NIH readings.  They introduced a number of new concepts, explained them clearly, and gave great real world examples.  And their tables summing up the highlights of a new theory are really great for a visual learner like me.

But they lost me with the PRECEDE-PROCEED planning model.  I reread that section a couple of times, but I just don’t get how this is supposed to be helpful.  Logically, I follow, but why use this?

I had some trouble trying to figure it out too, so I’ll take a stab at it. This is different kind of model from all the others, so it looks out of place.  All the others are theories explaining why things are the way they are, while this one tries to prescribe how to go about making something.

They call it a planning model, but it looks like a design process model to me, so it has more in common with instructional design models than it does with the theories of motivation and behavior we’ve been looking at. This is just my personal opinion, but I think their attempt to turn the whole thing into an acronym generates more confusion than it alleviates. I chose to ignore that part altogether and just look at the process.

Something that often works for me when I’m having trouble with an idea is to try and re-present it. I try and re-frame it in a context that suits me better. As a result, I’ve taken some liberties – translated in some places, and re-framed in others.

I see it as have 3 primary phases rather than 2:

Phase 1 is the Planning phase (PRECEDE). This is the assessment phase. In other fields it is often called the analysis phase and includes the needs assessment (gap analysis), learner/user/worker/etc. profile, setting profile, job/task analysis, creation of performance objectives, measures, and instructional strategies.

If you ask me, the first step of their Phase 2 should be a separate phase, namely the implementation phase. If you put that in a class on its own, that leaves the evaluation stuff for phase 2, the evaluation phase (PROCEED). This is where the summative assessment happens.

I found a graphic connected to the reference in the section (http://lgreen.net/precede.htm) that helped me somewhat.

Still, I think what is missing from this, as well as from most process models is recognition that things don’t actually get built this way, at least not ones that are effective. This is true in software engineering and instructional design too. People are always looking for recipes that they can follow to generate good software/instruction/interventions/whathaveyou. The problem is that most of these things are complex problems at best, and wicked problems at worst. A recipe should only ever be seen as a rough guide to help you make sure you don’t leave things out.

Response 2:[Week 8 KB dialog 2/3] Staying Updated: Food Pyramid Replaced by a Plate

Peng’s article mentions and measure using the food pyramid, which has been replaced by the Plate. How should or can Rightway Cafe be updated?

If it’s OK, I’d like to address this question by taking it to a higher level, namely, should we be regionalizing our games by focusing on approaches used in only one country? I suspect the answer is yes, sometimes, but if it is only OK sometimes, how do we decide?

I’m from Canada. We created our own nutrition guide during WWII, and virtually every Canadian has at least some basic understanding of its contents – we study it in school, and it is on the wall of most doctors’ examining rooms. We’ve been updating ours about once a decade. Our most recent came out just a few years ago. Ours is neither a plate nor a pyramid so we wouldn’t use the game in a formal setting here.

So, suppose we wanted to make a game that could be used in any country. Would that even be possible? I think it would depend on how we took advantage of the visuals afforded by the concepts – it’s not clear from the paper. The screenshots don’t look like they are based on the visuals, so in this case, it might not be that hard to adapt it to the guides of other countries. If the game offers food lists, that could also be localized. The Canada Food Guide has a variant created for First Nations that includes wild game and plants as well as traditional foods.

References:

Canada Food Guide: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/index-eng.php

History of Canada’s Food Guide: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/context/fg_history-histoire_ga-eng.php

The politics of food guides

First guide, Canada’s Official Food Rules, released 70 years ago http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/07/27/f-food-guide-70.html

Response 3: [Week 8 KB dialog 3/3] Reflection & discussion in media effect pathways

The NIH reading describes several pathways (media effect levels) through which a health communication message can influence people’s beliefs and behaviors. As mentioned in the lecture, some of these (delayed learning, generalized learning) require reflection, and social diffusion requires discussion. How can the requisite reflection and/or discussion be “packaged” in a serious game?

That’s one of the big challenges in serious games, and it’s the one place where games don’t excel. I don’t think we do a very good job of that part, perhaps because we don’t understand that part well enough yet.

On the other hand, it is also one of the challenges of distance learning. I just finished the Coursera Gamification course, and although the peer assessment is a terrific idea that adds a dimension missing from a lot of other MOOCs, it still amounts to the blind leading the blind.

In the military, where they’ve been using games and simulations, pretty much always, one of the key elements in any intervention/training/learning event is the de-briefing afterwards.

Often, that is where the lasting and significant learning happens. It’s also where the “ah-ha” moments happen most often. Personally, I think that the best way to do the reflection part is *still* with a real live human, and preferably with someone who has sufficient expertise or experience in the domain to be able to connect those dots in meaningful ways. You need someone who recognizes misconceptions, broken mental models, and ideas that will lead you astray AND who can point you in the right direction.

Without someone who can guide, interpret, and nudge people it’s missing that key dimension. Discussion is great, and there are plenty of ways to foster discussion in a community, but that usually happens outside of the game, and even then, if you don’t have someone who is mentor/guide/expert, you’ll never know if you are actually learning something useful or just talking back and forth.

A martial arts class that has no master can only go so far. I can’t become a chess master unless I play people who know way more than me.

Ian Anderson, the lead member of the band Jethro Tull, and a world renowned flautist had never taken lessons. After 40-some years and 20-some albums, he tried taking some lessons and discovered he’d “been doing it wrong all along”.  He ended up taking time off to study flute formally. What he said was that with those lessons he had learned to do things with the flute through those lessons that he never could have done before.

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Where I’ve Been Online (to Oct. 27)

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  • TinEye Reverse Image Search

    Looking for the source of a photo? Try this!

    tags: image search photos searchengine

  • Gamification: Beyond Badges & Leaderboards

    The world is suddenly abuzz with "gamification" a new word that has been created to describe the use of game dynamics to boost customer engagement and loyalty. But on closer examination of of how "gamification"is currently being practised, it’s pretty clear that its evangelists have missed the point about what games and game dynamics are all about. Gamification as it’s currently practised mainly uses points, badges and leaderboards as a means to engage consumers with products, services, applications or websites. The heart of the problem here is that points and badges are being used as if this is the stuff that engages and absorbs people with games. They’re not. They are only the tools that are used to represent the final outcome of a quest, mission or adventure that a gamer has had to work hard to earn.

    tags: gamification badges PBL

  • 25 Classic Fonts That Will Last a Whole Design Career

    Eric Gill, Adrian Frutiger and Max Miedinger are names we associate with the classic typefaces designers use on a daily basis. Their font creations are timeless designs that look right at home no matter what century we’re in. This collection of 25 classic fonts is a round up of the best and most popular fonts every designer should own. You can be sure that they will last your whole design career.

    tags: fonts typography design graphic

  • Quality Matters Program |

    Quality Matters (QM) is a faculty-centered, peer review process that is designed to certify the quality of online and blended courses. QM is a leader in quality assurance for online education and has received national recognition for its peer-based approach and continuous improvement in online education and student learning. QM subscribers include community and technical colleges, colleges and universities, K-12 schools and systems, and other academic institutions. There are three primary components in the Quality Matters Program: The QM Rubric, the Peer Review Process and QM Professional Development. If you are new to QM and wish to learn more, download the Overview and Introduction Presentation and Guide.

    tags: assessment elearning evaluation education courses

  • List of Learning Management Systems: Part 1

    I receive all the time requests from fellow eLearning developers, instructional designers, training and learning professionals concerning Learning Management System solutions. This is why I begun a broad research to create the Ultimate List of Learning Management Systems. This blog post is the first of a series that will cover 300+ of Learning Management System Solutions, so stay tuned! At the Learning Management Sys

    tags: list learning management LMS

  • 50 GREATEST GAME DESIGN INNOVATIONS | Features | Edge Online

    From gameplay, to presentation to input devices, videogames are a hotbed of innovation. Ernest Adams notes 50 game design innovations, some that have already made their impact, and others that will shape the future of the medium… Digg this article here. Fifty years ago William Higinbotham built the first videogame with an oscilloscope and some analog circuitry. While games have changed enormously since then, even today’s AAA blockbusters owe some of their success to design innovations made years earlier. In this article I’m going to look at 50 design advances that I feel were especially important, or will prove to be some day. Many of them are actually enhancements to older forms of play; sports, driving, and shooting go back to fairground games and mechanical coin-ops. Other genres, such as turn-based strategy, logic puzzles, and RPGs, began life on the dining room table. We have improved these earlier games in many ways, and the computer has allowed us to create new genres that would be impossible in any other medium. Unfortunately the true innovator of a design idea is often forgotten, while a particularly successful later game gets the credit. For example, more people remember Pong than remember Ralph Baer’s non-computerized design for the Magnavox Odyssey, even though Baer’s work came first. To correct this tendency, I’ll list both the original inventor of the idea (if I could find it) and the best-known early example of the innovation. I don’t promise to be right all the time; corrections are welcome.

    tags: game game design innovations

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