Game based learning

Game based learning is a hybrid area of development taking the best of games technology and trying to shoehorn it into some serious educational contexts.  This area of R&D is growing in popularity. See my previous posts on what Sony (PSP) are doing in this arena.

I attended a webinar the other day that was co-orgnaised by the www.elearningnetwork.org
 and www.alt.ac.uk.  

• Access the recorded webinar on ALTs own Open access repository 

I took some notes from the webinar & would like to share them with you plus some related videos that will feed into this blog post neatly.


Scott Hewitt from : http://stressmeless.org/?page_id=308,  gave a first half presentation encompassing some very interesting topics and some current projects and platforms.

• revising to combat revision stress - Flash based learning game. It included easter eggs + combination scorings. planning revision breaks was paramount - they scored higher if they did this.

• Wii games developing book : : http://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-Flash-Game-Creators-Guide/dp/0071545255

Scott then talked about another tool Open simulator :  http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page currently in alpha version - create own virtual environments - d/load onto own server - Open Source - similar to SL. Can build your own "worlds", and make it private - UK Army are experimenting with it.  BCU have built Shareville as a 3D immersive world as a learning resource: http://shareville.bcu.ac.uk/

• UoE are using it on various projects : http://www.vue.ed.ac.uk/openvue/

• Unity : multiple platform development tool - very advanced, but need some experience to use it. A widespread community.  http://unity3d.com/

• Thinking worlds (Caspian) : a rapid development engine, SCORM output, scoring and links to LMS to record scoring, shallow learning curve - advantageous to elearning devleopment teams (and as a teaching + learning tools) . Using with Students - pushing the boundaries: http://www.thinkingworlds.com/

• I've attended a very good course on creating learning objects run by Rob Hubbard, who is an exceptional elearning expert.  He has designed a course using WEb 2.0 tools and thinking worlds. It's a very good course, and pushes the boundaries of learning platforms, social media abnd 3D/games integration.
  

• SL is also being used for some games design.

• Blackberry, iphone,  ipod touch are all being used for innovate games design, in schools. Flash support for iphone comming soon, which will help release more applications, quicker and easier.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/13_tools_for_building_your_own_iphone_app.php

• Games salad-  create UR own iphone apps : http://gamesalad.com/landing/overview

• Can you develop a game in a day? Yes they did with 35 games design students, see the project @ URL:

 http://www.realprojects.co.uk/gamebasedlearning/eln%20resources.php , see 1/2 way down page for brief they gave to students to deign the games. They used thinking worlds for this. Split into roles and went through the whole process, including narrative, rewards, learning outcomes, flowchart, storyboards, testing and pilot, etc. All groups (about 6 in each group) did at least 1 game each in 1/2 day. nb/. dentisry looking at the wii controller to teach techniques.

www.realprojects.co.uk/gamesbasedlearning

See also this useful video on hacking the wii:



Second half of the session was run by Steve Harris - Northumbria Uni. His talk was equally interesting, but focussed on the underpinning principles of effective games design he teaches. High level concepts about game design and how education can benefit from these high level principles. Some notes I made:

• Pace of learning - using games for differentiated learning design.

• Recouperation is good for this- command and conquer, ie. intense period of action, then relaxation to reflect. Don't throw a constant barrage of info' at learners. Give time to reflect.

• Motivation - fallout 3 game: sense of freedom (like ps2 game) - sense of discovery (not critical to quest) like easter eggs! Player feels as if they are in more control of the narrative - like GTA. ie. medical sim game - delivering medicines - add other medicines. They can discover to use in other situations.
  

• Conflicts : places player in a situation where they have differing situations - like mad dash racing. Developing tactics and strategies to cope with rules of games. Helps to develop thninking, by allowing them to develop specifc skills i.e. time management.

• Condorcet Paradox in gaming : remove dominant strategies: few number of paramenters create larger number of possibilities. Don't allow the learner to always win. Desgin in simple strategies.
  
  
• Reward systems - fundamental in games: Operant conditioning - the more you use a technique or method, the better you become. It has to be balanced with other strategies to make you follow game rules. And Xbox 360 gamer acheivements online tag, to show others your skills. Simple to bolt on to a platform.

• Apply thorough testing: ie. Halo 3 heat maps : bungie has these heat maps on their web site - in relation to specific weapon use - live payer date captured to allow you to learn from others. Intelligent use of gamer data.

• Player assistance: i.e. player 2 can take temporary control to help player 1. Works with young and special needs games design.

• Look at existing board games for ideas for effective learning/game design.

I posed the question "are games designers utilising existing educational pedagogies to make their games educational?"  The answer was a no!  Which I thought was very strange indeed.  It seemed like a one way street, i.e. educators are looking for games based applications/platforms/technolgoes/graphics to make learning objects or content more engaging, but why are'nt games designers looking at the many (thousands of years) of teaching and learning experiences to make their games better? Or are they?  Let me know.

Links and related books:

• http://www.gamasutra.com/
• free book covers baisc principles : http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html
• http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html

• Understanding Video Games. Nielsen, Smith &  Tosca. (2008) . Routledge. ISBN: 0415977215. Gee, P. (2007) What Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and

• Game Design Workshop: designing, Prototyping and Playtesting Games Literacy. Palgrave. ISBN: 1403984530. Fullerton, Swain &  Hoffman. (2004) . ISBN: 1578202221

• edge magazine : http://www.edge-online.com/
• games tm magazine: http://www.gamestm.co.uk/
  

• http://wowinschool.pbworks.com/

• ARGs - the work of Nicola Whitton is excellent. new book (2010) just out. http://playthinklearn.net/

• + The cube   I love bees + NiN ARG (Wired article)

• http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/usersandinnovation/argosi.aspx - ARGOSI project funded by JISC -

• http://www.realprojects.co.uk/gamebasedlearning/alt-eln.php : this link has example thinking worlds materials and game documents that you can review

• http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article6934169.ece - Navy and psps -  article here on this -

• UK army gave personel DS Lites for eLearning: Developed by Epic (Stuart Chadwick) - won an award this year

• Digital games in schools - A handbook for teachers (looks useful)
  

Finally have a look into the future at Project Natal

second lifers

A couple of weeks ago two RSC staff held an "in-house" Second life training/awareness session for UK RSc staff. The event was very well organised, as you can see from  the event images.

A whole range of basic SL skills and uses of SL were demonstrated and experienced by delegates.  If you are thinking of running your own CPD sessions, contact Jane Edwards of JISC RSC West Midlands for some advice.

• Jane is also responsible for a new SL project that allows our new SL island to be experimented with by local learning providers. The list of local learning providers particpating in the project is currently full, but if you need to know more please contact Jane (contact details on above wiki page).

• If you want to know more about SL in the Midlands, book onto our free event on 02/12/09
  
  
  

  Virtual Worlds In Education Forum

   

  
  
  

• You can keep an eye on all things virtual in education, by heading over to the virtual world watch website.
  

• RSC South East also ran an event to launch awareness of their new ISland. This island is also open to educators to use for various teaching & learning projects. Contact Harold Fricker (HE coordinator) to find out more about how you can get involved in their SL project.
  
  
• Did you know that : As part of its Transforming Undergraduate Education Program, the University of Texas SYSTEM has initiated a statewide virtual learning community of students, faculty, researchers and administrators, that offers a creative approach to undergraduate instruction through the innovative use of a 21st century low-cost online virtual world technology.

Multiple Intelligences in 3D

Derby University have their VLE linked to SL academic writing area

I have created a webquest to introduce educators to the principle of Howard Gardners Multiple Intelligences and also as an introduction to Second Life.

http://wiki.rscwmsystems.org.uk/index.php/Webquests

Feel free to download the exemplar webquest and repurpose it.


This is also a pre-conference activity for our HE in FE conference on May 13th :

HE conference in partnership with the Academy : playing with learning 2. May 13th. Book your place now:

http://info.rsc-wm.ac.uk/events/event_details.asp?eid=412

Programme:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/heinfe/Playing_with_Learning_II_Programme.pdf

• Dr Colin Beard & Professor Alan Mortiboys discuss emotional intelligences
• Kirsten Hardie – Problem based learning
• Kim Jackson & Gary Hargreaves
'The Art of Communication with Digital Natives
• Julie Hughes & Kevin Brace
‘The Trojan Mouse’ – hands on workshops covering blogs and wikis for collaboration and reflection.
• Darren Bourne
'Playing with Learning - the opportunity to learn powerful questioning techniques. NLP techniques employed.

Everything Bad Is Good for You

I've just completed reading the thesis by Steven Johnson "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. "

In this book he describes how the sleeper curve that defines the increasing rise and complexity of popular culture is actually making us smarter. Rather than popular entertainment (films, DVDs, email, texting, instant messaging, computer games, and TV shows) dumbing us down, the effect is opposite. Johnson attempts to persuade us that the increasing complexity and multi threaded narratives that exisit in shows like 24 & lost, games like world of warcraft (WoW), simcity, and grand theft auto require greater congnitive processing than their forbears (Pacman, Starsky & Hutch, for example). The net effect of us being exposed to ever increasing multimodal channels of interactive edutainment is improving cognitive ability, he argues. It is a very persuasive arguement and makes great research for anyone interested in gaming/simulations for educational purposes.

As technology continues to influence our lives with us reading more from screen, writing more blogs and emails, we begin also to use hyperlinks as a mode of search strategy and information research. An attempt to define this new epedagody has emerged recently called connectivism.
I recently witnessed an undegraduate nursing student give a presentation using her eportfolio. She described quite matter of fact, how using hyperlinking to connect and display assessed pieces of work (reflective pieces) could not be achieved using traditional paper based portfolios. That was quite a eureka moment for me, when I witnessed first hand the difference between product & process. She was demonstrating that an eportfolio tool was not a mere product (like a VLE), it was enabling her to adapt a perfectly natural process of hyperlinking related education using an electronic eportfolio. The google generation that are comfortable with myspace & facebook, etc, routinely use hyperlinking in the creation of profiles and updates.

This also attempts to make sense of the use of 'tinternet for our primary mode of communication and research. Of course you can't beat a good book, and Johnson acknowledges the complete and total immersion that one experiences when engrossed in a good book. Of which most modern entertainment channels often miss out on. But, you try telling that to an online gamer who invests hours & hours & hours of time online (with friends) building characters abilities and learning the complex nuances of games like WoW. I love the types of open architecture of games like Halo 3 and Grand theft auto, and can become deeply engrossed, in a similar way to a good book. It's real escapism. As is a good film like Starwars or Lord of the rings. Both of which require a degree of concentration to follow complex intertwined characters and subplots.

Of course there are counter arguments that insist that the sheer volume and complexity of multimedia information at our finger tips, is proving too much for us to handle, evaluate and synthesise. The terminology Agnotology is used to describe this increased ignorance, proportional to the increase of (mis)information we have access to. I suppose that the rise of blogging of which we are all pseudo experts, exacerbated by casually linking to hastily scanned stories is part of this problem? Myself included! Yes, there is a definate power of the crowd mindset on the increase, proliferated by web 2.0 types of tools ( wiki, blogs, twitter, etc), but how accurate is it? The shear quantity information we can access is also compounded by new ways of accessing it (like the new Kindle ebook reader). But few web 2.0 contributors/authors are real experts? That's one of the main arguments against the reliance of user generated information repositories such a Wikipedia. Then again there's always RSS feeds and the semantic web which should help us filter and search information more efficiently?

MUVLE

MUVLE and MASHUPS



At last weeks second virtual worlds forum at Keele University we watched a presentation by Joel Cockrill of Movix Media. Based in Bangor, this media company has spent the past two years researching and developing a new Multi User Virtual Environment (MUVE ), a bit like Second Life , only much better ( they claim). Joel spoke at length about their involvment in Second Life projects, which has lead to the development of a new MUVE called MUVLE. They seem to have learned alot and have taken the best bits of SL and developed a completly hosted MUVE "solution". They are currently on the look out for beta testers in education. So if you are a College or University and want to host and develop your own MUVE within the safe confines of your institutional firewall, then MUVLE could be the answer? As an alternative you could also consider Twinity, or you could try Googles new app called Lively which may do the job?

At the same forum Mark Childs discussed the Theatron (Eduserv) project at King's College London, and his MUVE reseach at the University of Warwick. The theatron project allows educators to book time to used virtual theatres (eg, the globe) to run virtual performances in Second life. The ancient stages have been built to a very high degree of detail. You will need a good T1 connection and alot of (rendering) patience then?

Also of note, was a short presentation by Jerry Foss, who had managed to build the Birmingham Millenium Point in stunning detail, as part of a film makers course pilot study. Unfortunately no one can view it or even see it ( due to IP issues)! This was constructed by Daden ltd ,who was also showing off a mash up between SL and Google. David Burden of Daden was demonstrating a kind of sphere that rezzed up maps of local areas using 2D & 3D Google maps. Very neat stuff. You have to watch the video to really see what it can do, it's fab. An engaging way to teach geography, mapping, geotagging, data mashups, spatial awareness, 3D modelling, etc. Geography never looked so interesting.




Before I forget. Stuart Thomason of Keele University used SL in his teaching last year. An IT student used SL to create a virtual rubic's cube. This is one of the very few examples I've come across of SL being used in teaching (to attain credits). Although it was mentioned that Solent are using SLOODLE? Can anyone confirm this?





Continuing the Sim tip , I started..... I received a call this morning from sim venture Ltd. They won a BETT award this year for their business educational "games" based software. It's used right across the UK (in HE & FE), and is soon to be licenced by the excellent Bized website, that also hosts some sim type educational games.