Keeping the Play in Learning Games

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Keeping the Play in Learning Games

• Scot Osterweil
• The Education Arcade/MIT
• November 15, 2007
• scot_o_at_mit.edu

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Play, observable throughout the animal kingdom,
is the fundamental way we learn.
"Now in myth and ritual the great instinctive
forces of civilized life have their origin law
and order, commerce and profit, craft and art,
poetry, wisdom and science. All are rooted in the
primeval soil of play."

• Johann Huizinga
• Homo Ludens, 1938

An example with rods and clamps
from The Childrens Machine, Seymour Papert, 1993
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A personal example with blocks.
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Through the informal activity of play, we
scaffold the concepts and ideas that we will
engage with formally in schooland in life.
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Play has no agenda

• The players motivations are entirely intrinsic
  and personal.

The Four Freedoms of Play
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The Four Freedoms of Play

• Freedom to Experiment
• Freedom to Fail
• Freedom to Try on Identities
• Freedom of Effort

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The Four Freedoms of Play

• The Four Freedoms of Learning
• ?
• The Four Freedoms of School
• (as currently embodied)

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Play has no agenda

• The players motivations are entirely intrinsic
  and personal.

How do we channel play into learning activities
while still allowing for plays fundamentally
open-ended nature?
GAMES
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An example
GAMES
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• In games we willingly submit to arbitrary rules
  and structures in pursuit of mastery, but only if
  we can continue to be playful.

The promise of games is that through real play,
the player will build new cognitive structures,
and ideas of substance.
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(No Transcript)
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• What the world needs is

Grand Theft Calculus
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Without playfulness a game is just going through
the motions.
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Its not what you know, but how you learn.

• Spelling Bee v. Scrabble

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How Do We Think About Learning Games?

• They should engage players with reasoning and
  processes relevant to their studies
• Logic
• Ethics
• Design
• Scientific Inquiry
• Historical Inquiry

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How Do We Think About Learning Games?

• They should engage players imaginations with
  places, events, themes and ideas that matter.
• Huckleberry Finn
• Civilization, SimCity

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Enough Talk Lets Play
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Keep in MindNarrativeActivityStructure
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Game Narrative

• A game world that allows players to explore their
  identity
• Not patronizing or flattering
• Non-gendered
• A game world that embodies the subject matter.

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Game Activity

• Not about memorizing solutions - about learning
  strategies, processes, habits of mind
• Students understand that wrong answers are part
  of getting the right answer
• Learning to think like a scientist,
  mathematician, engineer, artist
• Engaging with content in a context
• Activities that are tactile, offer sensory
  satisfaction

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Game Structure

• Multiple passage through challenge (tokens)
• Partial reward for partial success clear
  incentives for more success
• No brick walls
• Emerging ideas
• Not just one way to win
• No time pressure
• Enables conversation
• Collaboration
• Teacher or parent can observe or engage

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Player styles f v. m
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We need a new hand-off between formal and
informal learning
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The Hand-Off

• Students can play game like any gamer
• Teacher can bring game into class, relate
  experience of game to new subject
• Students undertake that subject with the
  enthusiasm of an expert
• Teacher can even use class to discuss future game
  play strategies begin to model meta-cognition
• Individual saved games give evidence of students
  progress

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And we need a new model of sustainability and
growth.
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Labyrinth

• Puzzle Adventure Game
• Hours of Play - engrossing story
• Web Served
• Play anywhere - on several platforms
• Cumulative Progress
• Data Collection for Teachers

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Labyrinth

• Repeat Play
• Partial Success
• Gradual Mastery
• Team Based
• Individual play, team goals
• Promoting collaboration/communication
• Students write about their thinking

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Labyrinth

• Math engaging students in pre-algebra
• Proportionality
• Numbers
• Equations/Variables
• Geometry
• Literacy for the 21st Century
• Writing for communication
• Visual and Verbal Literacy
• Comics-based storytelling

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Labyrinth

• Technology Flash
• Scalable to many screen-sizes
• Stabilizing as platform for handhelds
• Easy to pilot
• A new production model bypassing the Hollywood
  economics of the game industry.

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Keeping the Play in Learning Games

• Scot Osterweil
• The Education Arcade/MIT
• November 15, 2007
• scot_o_at_mit.edu