The Coexistence of Work and Play in Academia

1
The Coexistence of Work and Play in Academia

• Educational/Serious Gaming
• and the Educational System

2
What Makes a Game Educational or Serious?

• The clearly established goal of the gamer to
  learn new academic (educational games) or
  training-based (serious games) content.
• Have academic or training-based content as the
  focus of gameplay.
• Educational games make use of immersive
  entertainment to disperse new content in an
  approachable way (Zyda 27.)

3
The Necessary Ingredients for Building
Educational/Serious Games
Interest is the key to learning (Lewin 273.)

• Elements that are needed when building serious
  games
• (Kelly et al. 46)
• Collaboration. Many experts must work together to
  produce the game.
• Game Design. Games must be entertaining/engaging.
• Integration. Students must have a way to ask
  questions and have them answered.
• Multiple Scales. There must be different angles
  from which to view the learned material.

4
Video Games and Learning

• Video games stimulate chemical changes in the
  brain that promote learning. Merrilea J. Mayo,
  as quoted by Michael Zyda, p. 28.
• A child rehearses what he or she has learned
  through play (Sutton-Smith 37.)
• If children enjoy the experience, it will foster
  an interest in learning a focus on creating a
  game that children will demand to play even in
  their spare time (Zyda 28.)

5
Some Skepticism About Impacts of Gaming on
Learning

• Sutton-Smith the tutorial stimulation effect and
  experimenter effects (Sutton-Smith 40-41.)
• Arguable example Middle school girls and the
  game Supercharged (Mayo 34.)
• Control group and game group received instruction
  and handouts.
• Game group given Supercharged to play during
  class time.
• Game groups test scores went up by 23 as
  opposed to control groups 5.
• Another angle it has shown growth in terms of
  understanding, regardless of the control groups
  lack of access to a third source.

6
Topics to Consider

• Should video games be used as a substitute for
  the current educational system?
• Could video games be a hostile introduction to
  the classroom?
• Who should be the target audience for
  educational/serious video games?

7
Should Video Game Education Replace Academic
Settings?

• Zydas argument My crazy dream is that someday
  we'll replace the education system everywhere
  with emotion-cognizant video games that children
  demand to play even in their spare time (Zyda
  28.)
• Zyda advocates (Zyda 28)
• Games that are aware of human cognition
  processes/states of learning
• Games that adapt to different levels of student
  learning
• The reduction of the current educational system
  to a tutoring service for questions and answers
  not yet incorporated into the online edusphere
  educational atmosphere.

8
What Would Video Games Lend to a Classroom
Setting?

• Introduction to new material.
• Alice 2.0 increases academic success and
  retention rate of at-risk college freshmen who
  either enter college with no programming
  experience or are not prepared to enroll in a
  calculus course (Kelleher Pausch 61.)
• Reinforcement of learned material.
• By using a video game as homework for a course
  students were spending roughly twice the time
  working on the course outside of class compared
  to other mechanical engineering courses (Mayo
  34.)
• Encouraging necessary academic practices and
  skills.
• Reading of introductory text Players who fail
  to read the information have difficulty winning
  action games and is itself another important
  lesson (Kelly et al. 48.)
• If immersive entertainment could encourage
  outside research on topic and foster greater
  interest within students.
• Video games give teachers and parents the
  ability to reach students where they live,
  bypassing many of the challenges of restructuring
  the educational system from the inside out (Mayo
  33.)
• In the case of Storytelling Alice they the
  students were three times more likely to sneak
  extra time after we had called time up to
  continue working on their programs (Kelleher
  Pausch 63.)

9
When Should Video Games Remain Outside of the
Classroom?

• When they are clearly a source of agitation for
  students
• Competition increases anxiety in pupils who are
  performing a motor-steadiness test (Johnson,
  Johnson, Bryant 173)
• It is also proven that subjects students in a
  competitively-structured discussion are more
  anxious. They lose self-assurance, show more
  self-oriented needs, are less able in recitation
  and more dissatisfied with discussion (173.)

10
The Necessity of Keeping the Playground (Not
Play) Outside of the Classroom

• Cooperative learning has been proven to enhance
  learning by 50 when compared to individualized
  or competitive learning (Mayo 33.)
• Example Massive multiplayer online games (33.)
• Turning the classroom into the playground with
  the introduction of playground hierarchies
  (Sutton-Smith 44.)
• Can boost self-esteem of winning students, but
  can negatively impact self-esteem of less
  successful ones.
• Sutton-Smith on playground play patterns of
  negative attachment correlate with dysfunctional
  playground relationships (44.)
• Solution keep video games individualized or
  cooperativeeither let one student play at a time
  or encourage cooperative group play.

11
Educational/Serious GamesThe Concept of
All-inclusive Gaming

• Educational games serve as direct microcosms of
  society
• Have different standards than games that exist
  within fantasy worlds.
• Purpose of informing about unknown content rather
  than creating something entirely fictional.
• Examples Immune Attack (teaches immunology to
  college students), Squires Quest (teaches
  healthy eating habits to 4th grade children),
  Virtual Cell (teaches biology to college
  students) Mayo 34-35.
• Having an audience looking to be educated the
  opportunity to promote awareness.
• What inclusive games are expected to consider
• Societys demographics age, gender, race, class,
  etc.
• Cost and system compatibility.
• Certain games (such as The Sims) and styles of
  games (free, downloadable, casual) have attracted
  a female demographic in the 6080 range (Mayo
  33.)

12
What Happens When Exclusion Occurs?

• Intel Flash advergame developed in the UK,
  2004
• Intel IT Manager Game The simulation of an IT
  department
• Frasca on omission of female employees in this
  game a cultural bugone that only affects
  serious games (Frasca 5.)
• Some argue that inclusion prevents creativity and
  promotes censorship
• Blogger commenting on IT Manager game being
  pulled for fixing, as quoted in Frasca article
  examples like this game keep companies and
  products from being developed over fear of being
  politically incorrect Frasca quoting
  D.Dooler, 6
• In order to most successfully teach everyone, it
  is necessary for these games to appeal to all
  members of society within the level of education
  (3rd grader, 10th grader, undergraduate college
  student, etc.)
• Frasca on games that educate as a cultural
  product As such, it can reflect ideas and
  values. Hopefully, those should be the ideas and
  values that designers actually want to convey
  (13.)

13
The Benefits of Inclusive Games in Education

• Educational/serious games as different from
  entertainment games Fable versus IT Manager.
• Frasca Unlike what happens in the fantasy world
  of Fable, gender inequality is a very real
  problem for IT workers (Frasca 10.)
• Creating all-inclusive educational games helps
  some members of groups who are often left out of
  the world of games to better identify with games.

14
Using Education to Attract Potential Gamers

• Adding diversity to the field (for sake of field
  member and/or profit growth.)
• Using a game-creating program to increase the
  interest of middle-school girls in computer
  programming Storytelling Alice (a program used
  to teach object-oriented programming to
  middle-school girls.)
• Creating an animated movie and learning to
  program a computer can be fundamentally the same
  activity (Kelleher Pausch 60.)
• Incorporates high-level 3-D animations and
  characters, story-based tutorials, and support
  for the creation of complex scenes (61-2.)

15
A Closer Look At Storytelling Alice

• Drag-and-drop system.
• Development of the Stencils-based tutorial
  helps girls better adapt to the system.
• Over 200 middle school girls (aged 11 through 15)
  participated in the formative evaluation that
  greatly influenced the games final design (61.)

Storytelling Alice interface showing the
Stencils-based tutorial.
16
Academic Growth Through Gaming
While many girls do start with simple
sequences, the activity of storytelling provides
a graceful, gradual transition to more complex
programming concepts and constructs (Kelleher
Pausch 60.)
Storytelling Alice interface without the tutorial.
17
Why is Storytelling Alice Successful?

• It caters to the wants and needs of people within
  the target grade range (academic and personal.)
• Designed with optimal learning accessibility in
  mind
• Outlet for creativity (Kelleher Pausch 61)
• Cost and compatibility
• Multiple target audiences
• It provides middle school girls with a slow,
  immersive introduction to programming.
• It provides an approachable motivation for young
  girls to learn O-O programming.

18
Educational Games How They Can Best Benefit
Academia

• Video games should be a supplementnot a
  substitutefor classroom learning.
• Playnot the playgroundcan benefit the academic
  learning environment.
• Educational and serious games need to be
  culturally all-inclusive to be most successful.

19
Works Cited

• Frasca, Gonzalo. Playing with Fire When
  Advergaming Backfires. www.ludology.org
• Johnson, Roger Johnson, David Bryant, Brenda.
  Cooperation and Competition in the Classroom.
  The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 74, No. 3.
  (Dec. 1973), pp. 172-181.
• Kelleher, Caitlin Pausch, Randy. Using
  Storytelling to Motivate Programming.
  Communications of the ACM, Volume 50, Number 7
  (2007), pp. 58-64.
• Kelly, Henry Howell, Kay Glinert, Eitan
  Holding, Loring Swain, Chris Burrowbridge,
  Adam Roper, Michelle. How to Build Serious
  Games, Communications of the ACM, Volume 50,
  Number 7 (2007), pp. 44-49.
• Kilgore, Susan. Bridges from Content Experts to
  Novice Learners in 21st-Century Classrooms.
  Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature,
  Vol. 58, No. 2. (2004), pp. 63-70.
• Lewin, Ann White. Down with Green Lambs
  Creating Quality Software for Children. Theory
  into Practice, Vol. 22, No. 4, Microcomputers A
  Revolution in Learning. (Autumn 1983), pp.
  272-280.
• Mayo, Merrilea J. Games For Science and
  Engineering Education, Communications of the
  ACM, Volume 50, Number 7 (2007), pp. 30-35.
• Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play.
  Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2001. pp.
  37, 41, 44.
• Wardrip-Fruin Harrigan, Pat, ed. Videogames of
  the Oppressed, Gonzalo Frasca. First Person
  New Media as Story, Performance, and Game.
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
  2004. p. 93.
• Wardrip-Fruin Harrigan, Pat, ed.
  Representation, Enaction, and the Ethics of
  Simulation, Simon Penny. First Person New
  Media as Story, Performance, and Game.
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
  2004. p. 80.
• Zyda, Michael. Creating a Science of Games.
  Communications of the ACM, Volume 50, Number 7
  (2007), pp. 26-29.
• Storytelling Alice and Alice 2.0 can be
  downloaded from www.alice.org
• Virtual Cell can be downloaded/registered for at
  http//vcell.ndsu.edu/public.html