Educational Gaming

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Educational Gaming

• Focus on Teaching Event
• January 10, 2008
• Jack Corliss
• Academic Technology Services

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Agenda

• Digital game-based learning
• Factors contributing to surge of interest
• Current state of digital games in higher
  education
  
• Game-based learning at Loyola

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Digital Game-Based Learning

• Exploring games and education controversial
• Games play, can learning really be fun?
• Learning could be both fun and hard work
• Card playing or a game like Jeopardy -- brief
  (five minutes to two hours) and simplistic
  
• A fond look at games

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Digital Game-Based Learning

• Todays games are complex
• Take up to 100 hours
• Require collaboration with others,
• Involve developing values, insights and new
  knowledge
  
• Immersive virtual worlds -- more complex external
  environment
  
• Communities of practice
• Buying and selling of game items
• Blogs and developer communities

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Digital Games

• Provide visual information to one or more
  players
  
• Accept input from players
• Use set of programmed rules but no
  instructional manual programmed into the code
  of the game

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Digital Games

• Adventure moving through virtual world
• Puzzle games, e.g., Tetris
• Role-playing games, e.g., Dungeons and Dragons
• Strategy games, e.g., The Sims
• Sports games
• First-person shooter games, e.g., Counter-Strike

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Factors in Widespread Public Interest

• Ongoing research conducted by digital game-based
  learning proponents
  
• Net generation digital natives
• Require multiple streams of information
• Prefer inductive reasoning
• Want frequent and quick interaction with content
• Have exceptional visual literacy skills
• Increased popularity of digital games.

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Factors in Widespread Public Interest

• Not just for the young
• Average age is 30 years
• 50 of adults play
• One in five over age 50 is a video gamer
• Males and females play about equally
• 63 parents believe games are a Two games for
  every adult in US
  
• 2004 almost 250 million games sold
• Global sales 10 billion in 2006, 27 billion
  expected in 2007

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Factors in Widespread Public Interest

• Scholarly research, e.g., J. Talmadge Wright
  (Sociology) and Steven Jones (English)
  
• Degree programs, e.g., University of
  Wisconsin-Madison
  
• Virtually all children will have played games
  from preschool through high school
  
• Common in college, 65 (with 32 admit playing
  games in class)

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Factors in Widespread Public Interest

• Whether or not we play games, gaming has become
  part of our culture., Diana Oblinger, May 2006
  
• Games still evolving distributed authentic
  professionalism learn how to be a professional

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Effective Learning Environments

• Knowledge and skills built in virtual characters,
  objects and environments
  
• Players must master skills and integrate with
  those of others
  
• Networked communication systems interactive
  chat, internal e-mail, messaging
  
• Adopt certain set of values and particular world
  view ? performing activities within specific
  domain of knowledge

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Effective Learning Environments

• Social social environments large distributed
  communities
  
• Research need to recall prior learning, decide
  what new information is needed, apply it to new
  situation
  
• Problem-solving know what information or
  techniques to apply involves collective action
  through communities of practice.

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Effective Learning Environments

• Transfer games require transfer of learning
  from other venues
  
• Experiential players engage multiple senses
  for every action there is a reaction feedback
  is swift hypotheses are tested and players
  learn from the results.

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Effective Learning Environments

• Games can be effective learning environments,
• not all games are effective
• not all games are educational
• Use of games vs. integration of games
• Understanding of the medium, alignment with
  subject matter, instructional strategy, students
  learning style, intended outcomes
  

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Future of Digital Game-Based Learning

• Massively multiplayer online (MMO) games offer
  potential for education
  
• Bring many players together
• Collaborative and competitive activities
• Goal-oriented
• Often tied to storyline or theme

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Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

• Crafted with specific educational objectives
• Students work in small or large groups, and work
  solo
  
• Larger community of player-learners
• Role-playing
• Mentoring of newer players by more experienced
  players
  
• Competitive team activities
• Collaborative world-building

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Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

• 3D virtual world but
• Many popular MMOs are text-based or built on
  simple graphical interfaces
  
• Resurgence of interest in educational MMOs
• Synthetic Worlds Initiative, Indiana University
• Research center
• http//swi.indiana.edu
• Arden Life and times of William Shakespeare
• 240,000 grant from MacArthur Foundation

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Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

• Entertainment sector 13 million active
  subscriptions to MMOs worldwide
  
• Open-source MMO engines expected to offer
  immersive and engaging learning experiences in
  variety of disciplines.
  
• MMOs lends itself to use by many people,
  spreading the benefits to students

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Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

• Benefits to education
• Discovery-based and goal-oriented learning
• Effective to develop team-building skills
• Design so that a group is required to develop a
  solution and execute the plan in concert to
  succeed

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Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

• Potential applications in education
• Study foreign language and culture
• Virtual immersion reading, writing, listening
  and speaking
  
• Develop management and leadership skills
• Lead a guild or a raid develop transferrable
  skills
  
• Practice strategy and apply knowledge
  competitively
  
• Rich Man Game http//richmangame.com

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Digital Game-Based Learning

• Different games promote different desired
  learning outcomes
  
• Card games
• Jeopardy-style games
• Arcade-style games
• Adventure games

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Digital Game-Based Learning

• Different games promote different desired
  learning outcomes
  
• Card games memorization, concept matching,
  pattern recognition
  
• Jeopardy-style games quick mobilization of
  facts, labels and concrete concepts
  
• Arcade-style games improving speed of response,
  automaticity, visual processing
  
• Adventure games hypothesis testing and problem
  solving

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Mekong e-Sim

• University of Adelaide and University of
  Technology, Australia
  
• Online learning environment
• simulation and role-playing
• Students immersed in complexities of authentic
  decision making to develop communication,
  collaboration and leadership needed to be
  successful practitioners
• Students become stackholders in Mekong River
  Basin and debate the merits of a proposed
  development project.

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Mekong e-Sim

• Structured method exposing students to wide
  range of social, political, economic and
  scientific conflicts affecting complex
  engineering projects
• Multinational in scope (six countries) dealing
  with authentic problems of global importance.
  
• Stakeholders local villagers, government and
  non-governmental organizations, academic and
  research institutions, international bodies, the
  media, and the engineers.
• Learning scenario public inquiry into merits of
  proposed development to manage natural resources
  in the Mekong River Basin.

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Mekong e-Sim

• Grouped into teams of 2-4 students
• Participants are briefed on the problem,
  acquainted with various stakeholders and their
  conflicting interests, adopt a role of particular
  party in the dispute
• Research vantage point of chosen role for two
  weeks
  
• Followed by period of online interaction and
  debate
  
• Completed with period of structured reflection
  and debriefing

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Mekong e-Sim

• Experience conducted during 6 weeks of a 13-year
  term
  
• Hybrid course face-to-face interaction and
  online learning
  
• Takes 50-60 hours to complete
• Involves between 60 and 140 undergraduate
  students per semester
  
• Blackboard is the platform, e.g, discussion boards

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Mekong e-Sim

• Team-based, learn by doing build on
  problem-solving abilities, and develop
  communication, collaboration and leadership
  skills
• Flexible approach -- different learning outcomes
  modifying scenarios, stakeholder groups involved
  and events that lead to student interaction
  
• Learning effectiveness awareness of
  sustainability issues, multidisciplinary and
  multicultural dimensions of engineering issues,
  and importance of teamwork in global environment

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Resources Mekong e-Sim

• Mekong e-Sim A Cross-Disciplinary Online
  Role-Play Simulation, EDUCAUSE Learning
  Initiative, http//www.educause.edu/eli
  
• Introductory slideshow
• http//ajax.acue.adelaide.edu.au/esim/overviewext
  ernal
  
• Mekong e-Sim Student handbook
• http//services.eng.uts.edu.au/robertm/mekong/e-
  Sim_handbook202005.pdf

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Digital Gaming at Loyola

• Management games simulation
• Jill Graham, Eunice Jenson
• Developed in-house
• Student groups

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Digital Gaming at Loyola

• Talmadge Wright, Sociology
• Counter-Strike, reportedly the worlds number one
  online action game series, is a multi-player
  first-person shooter. This team-oriented online
  shooter pits terrorists and counter-terrorists
  against one another in round-based combat set all
  over the world.
• Focus on player in-game behavior, looking at
  textual and nonverbal actions, i.e., determine
  social significance of patterns of game talk.
  
• http//www.counter-strike.net

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Digital Gaming at Loyola

• Textual and non-verbal actions
• Read and code up log text files
• Checking out in-game logos and non-verbal
  interactions as played with other online players
  
• Collected interviews and gathered
  participant-observation data
  

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Digital Gaming at Loyola

• Gender, Gamers, and Peer Friendship Networks,
  Gender Research Seminar, November 14, 2007

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Resources Talmadge Wright

• J. Talmadge Wright http//www.luc.edu/sociology/fa
  culty/wright.shtml
  
• Killing Zombies, Terrorists, and Aliens Video
  gaming and the pleasures and anxieties of
  symbolic violence, paper presented at Midwest
  Sociological Society, April 2006.
• Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video
  Games Playing Counter-Strike, with Eric Boria
  and Paul Breidenbach, in Game Studies The
  International Journal of Computer Game Research,
  vol. 2, no. 2, (December 2002).

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Closing Thoughts
35
Resources

• Aaron Delwiche, Massively Multiplayer Online
  Games (MMOs) in the New Media Classroom,
  Educational Technology Society, vol. 9, no. 2
  (2006), pp. 160-172.
• Joel Foreman, Game-Based Learning How to
  Delight and Instruct in the 21st Century,
  EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5
  (September/October 2004), pp. 51-66.
• Steve Jones, Let the Games Begin Gaming
  Technology and Entertainment Among College
  Students (Washington, D.C. Pew Internet
  American Life Project, 2003).
• The Horizon Report 2007, The New Media
  Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative,
  January 2007.
  
• Diana Oblinger, Simulations, Games and Learning,
  ELI White Paper, May 2006.
  
• Richard Van Eck, Digital Game-Based Learning
  Its Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are
  Restless, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2
  (March/April 2006), pp. 17-30.

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Mil Gracias

• Jack Corliss
• jcorlis_at_luc.edu