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G4C Features
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Notes from G4C + G4LI’s Games for Learning Research and Design Innovation Day
Posted by Hsing Wei on 05-27-10Games for Change moved a few blocks downtown to NYU to round out this year’s festival with another new event, Games for Learning: Research and Design Innovation, a day long series of panels and talks hosted in partnership with the Games for Learning Institute. The day even acquired its own motto, thanks to UCLA’s Greg Chung, whose quip, “hope is not a strategy” bore frequent repeating by both subsequent speakers and audience members. Among the key questions posed throughout the day:
• How do we best determine good game design: through research, or game design itself?
• How do we know when game players have learned, and how do we design for it?
• When designing games, how do we best understand who the audience is and what their learning goals are?
• How do we design for the learning or challenge curve that represents the spectrum of target game players’ abilities and knowledge?
• How is learning transferred from in-game knowledge to real-world application?
Games for Change Executive Director Alex Quinn opened the day with an astute introduction that when we think about games for change, including within the advocacy and outreach work of nonprofits, the most fundamental catalyst for change is education and learning. He handed over the podium to G4LI’s Ken Perlin, who noted that the institute represents fourteen faculty across nine institutions and many disciplines, all with the common goal of trying to understand how to design games so that they can be assessed. Perlin, in turn, introduced the morning keynote, Department of Education Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement James H. Shelton III.
Shelton began by addressing misperceptions in education before moving onto address what he considers to be the major barriers to reform. Shelton disagrees with the common belief that the US education system is falling behind the rest of the world, and feels that the reality is that the US is being passed by, because its system has remained stagnant. He also argued that, when it comes to policy and funding decisions, our education systems fail to recognize that learning happens all the time and focuses too much on “seat time” and the standard six hours of the school day. He asked the audience to consider how we change our attitude toward the types of learning opportunities we can create, as well as how to change the institutions that provide formal learning opportunities. Shelton focused his talk on the idea that the research and development cycle in education is broken: only .1% of annual spending (in what should be one of the most strategic industries in the country) the education sector goes to R&D. He suggested that a future R&D agenda for education might be driven around questions like:
• What do we know about how people learn?
• What do people need to learn?
• How do we figure out what people know?
• What are the technologies to support this?
The first morning panel offered three presentations on “Research Innovations” about:
• motivation and game-based learning
• instructional effectiveness of games
• the learning outcomes of playing action-oriented video games
Richard Wainess of UCLA/CRESST began by dispelling the common viewpoint that motivation directly leads to learning, which furthers a flawed assumption that because games can be motivating, they are necessarily good for learning. Wainess explained that motivation is a moderator (i.e.,without motivation, people are unlikely to learn) that explains the relationship between learning and achievement (as do other factors like expectancy, self-belief, value, and goal orientation). Wainess shared his proposed model, focusing on both potentially positive and negative constructs that might impact learning outcomes, as well as the role of instructional strategies and learning goal orientations. In describing the model, he made several notable points for educational game design:
• manage for the U-shaped curve of challenge and complexity: people don’t want to invest their time in things that appear to be either too easy or too hard
• part of the goal of learning is to store knowledge in a way that is retrievable when it matters
• engagement does not equal learning: wanting to play a game again is not an indicator of learning
Sigmund Tobias of the University at Albany, SUNY and JD Fletcher of the Institute for Defense Analyses presented next, asking as their key questions:
• do games enhance players’ capabilities in non-game environments?
• do people learn from games?
• do people do their jobs better as a function of what they have learned?
• how do we produce transfer?
Tobias and Fletcher aimed to answer these through a review of the research, in which they found that the similarity in cognitive processes in the game and in the real-world context are the key to producing learning transfer, as well as that the cognitive load during game play should be managed, ideally by instructor guidance. Tobias and Fletcher concluded with a proposed series of educational game design recommendations based on the research:
• design/buy games with overlap of cognitive and psychomotor processes in task and game
• give guidance for those who want it
• follow multimedia and cognitive load findings
• the game should include personalization, first person, human voices, and animated agents
• reduce seductive details
• reduce aggression, increase pro social content
• integrate with curriculum
• have a game development team
Third, Daphne Bavelier of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging addressed questions around transfer with her findings that individuals who play fast-paced action games exhibit superior performance on many tasks compared to their non-game playing peers. Bavelier argued that everyone can learn, but skilled performance/expertise does not automatically mean the learning is transferable; likewise, not all games are created equal, so it is not possible to generalize about the effect of games on learning. However, action video games have an unprecedented transfer of learning. Bavelier and her team found that action games lead to improvements in both visual resolution (the ability to see small details amid visual clutter) and visual contrast sensitivity. Her team is now using techniques to treat amblyopia in children. They are also testing the hypothesis that action video games help players learn to learn, how to better allocate resources as a function of task demand and adapt. Bavelier believes these findings have practical applications for rehabilitation, cognitive aging, math skills, and workforce training for professions such as surgeons, pilots, and military personnel. Her conclusion was that, if you embed the right kind of content in a game with the right kind of permissive factors, you can improve brain development and learning.
As respondents, Marc Prensky and Kurt Squire each suggested that the research conversation on games and learning needs to shift entirely. Prensky pleaded that we stop studying whether games are good for learning and begin to make more games, saying that “it’s a terrible situation when we have more conferences about good learning games than good learning games themselves.” Squire suggested that we need to have a more honest conversation about what good and bad games look like, and that the change we seek in creating learning games must be more revolutionary than just fitting games into the current dominant model of school.
The pace picked up in the next session with a round of mini-talks from four academic researchers. Katherine Isbister of NYU-Poly joked that Prensky had stolen her presentation, which argued that game developers don’t publish research about what they do because they are too busy making games. Isbister described her project in which her team interviewed professional game developers about design to elicit best practices. Isbister is now using those key concepts to set design values and rubrics for mini games her lab is creating. She argued that the games and learning community has not done enough to bring professional game developers into the process of designing educational games, nor to understand the rigor they bring to their practice. Katie Culp of the Center for Children and Technology focused on the disconnect between game designers and their target audiences, describing their process of creating a game to help middle grades students build critical thinking and analytical skills. Culp advised bringing content to your target audience, talk to them about it, and bring the findings to bear on the game production process. She argued that although this research may not bring anything new to the academy, it will answer questions for the production team and improve the iteration process. Greg Chung of UCLA CRESST, in addition to popularizing the phrase “hope is not a strategy,” posed questions about game log data and how this information can be used to study kids’ game play and how well they are understanding math concepts presented in the game. Finally, Jan Plass of the Games for Learning Institute described his study of design patterns for effective learning games, with a focus on STEM, and a model he has developed for measuring behavioral, cognitive, social, and emotional engagement.
The morning concluded with a riveting keynote from Jaron Lanier of Microsoft Research, who talked about the future of technology and learning in terms of the cognitive potential in haptic feedback. Lanier noted the success of the Wii as a breakthrough in the integration of continuous motion sensing in games, as well as the forthcoming Natal, which will measure the whole movement of the body in a non-intrusive way in a gaming environment. He compared “the magic of haptics” to how one improvises at the piano: going from having to actively think about each action to internalizing and then experientially understanding how to solve each problem or task. For Lanier, the great hope for computers is that they will improve our acuity with thinking. In terms of games for learning, if we can avoid the crucial trap of making a game that is a fantasy instead of one that connects to an empirical reality, we have the potential to raise the level of human cognition. He urged the community to work toward achieving parity between commercial and educational games in the minds of students. And he reminded the audience that the only way to think about the costs involved in the future of computing and education is in terms of the people, not the machines.
Much of the audience brought their lunch back to the auditorium for a Q&A session with Assistant Deputy Secretary Shelton, following up on his morning keynote. He answered questions on global competitiveness and reiterated his earlier statement that education budget challenges are here to stay, regardless of the overall economy. Expanding on his points about the need for improved research and development in education, Shelton suggested we need a DARPA for education and to create better conditions for innovation in the education sector, coming from both public and private partners. He reminded the audience that the federal government cannot dictate standards of assessment to the states, but can support states doing great work, so he would like to see seeds of innovation develop at the local level, and once they percolate up, have the federal government support bringing best practices to scale.
Following lunch was the third keynote of the day from Alan Kay, who connected remotely via Skype. He recalled his first realization in the 1960s, after meeting Seymour Papert, that kids could learn not just by playing video games, but by creating them. Kay remembered his original vision of computers having the potential for being wheels for the mind, as opposed to the internet and technology being used primarily to admire our own reflections. He presented that anthropologists have identified about 300 human universals across all cultures; the non-universals include progress, reading & writing, deductive abstract math, equal rights, democracy, slow deep thinking, perspective drawing, and agriculture. Kay argued that school seems to have been invented to deal with these non-universals, which are harder to learn because we’re not deeply wired for them. However, most games are best at touching on the universals, and even games intended for learning don’t fully get at the non-universals well. He questioned the level of distraction produced by video game play, and suggested that games like Guitar Hero do not produce a transfer of learning to their related real-world domain. Kay did cite two games, Rocky’s Boots and Robot Odyssey, as great examples of educational games.
The afternoon panel shifted focus from research to design innovation, with presentations considering:
• how to embed assessment within a game
• what types of evidence indicate learning for the purposes of assessment
• the challenges and constraints presented by the various perspectives on the design team for an educational game
Kurt Squire returned to the podium to discuss assessment in the context of a new game in development, Citizen Science, that aims to increase scientific civic literacy in the following ways:
• conceptual understanding of the science
• understanding discourse
• proclivity to participate
Squire described the game, which is more about being a concerned citizen than a professional scientist, as having elements of liminology, activism, and video game literacy. In discussing the limitations in game assessments, Squire noted that if you only assess in-game play, you may miss the evidence of learning found in players’ real world actions. Squire posed a hypothetical conversation between possible members of a design team, such as a measurement specialist, performance assessor, learning scientist, game designer, and critical educator, to show the range of perspectives on what assessment looks like and how it can constrain game play. Squire concluded with the idea that assessment might occur among players themselves, as it often does in multiplayer games, and that there should be an “assessment bill of rights” in which the player has the right to offer his or her own goals and counter-evidence of achievement.
Cornelia Brunner of the Center for Children and Technology presented next on the idea of instructional game design, or what she defined as the sweet spot between pedagogy, medium, domain, age, and school. Brunner put forth a decidedly pragmatic approach to educational game design, stating that some classrooms need games that do nothing more dramatic than the kind of teaching already happening. She suggested that the role of the instructional designer is to figure out how to take advantage of the medium and pull together the various interests and foci of the domain to support existing teaching and learning.
The final presenter of the panel was Brian Nelson, speaking about his work in immersive virtual worlds and on the 21st Century Assessment Project to develop new approaches and tools for assessment supported by immersive games. Nelson explained that his research seeks a theory-based way to design activities and tasks that kids can do that will provide evidence from which you can infer something about what those kids are learning. He has been studying game quest types as assessment tasks, such as delivery, cooperation, collection, assembly, and chains. Nelson has developed a model of understanding actions and quests in virtual worlds as “global evidence channels”, and gave a demo of his work in which students’ actions in a virtual world are intended to reinforce science concepts recently presented in the classroom.
Eric Zimmerman and Tracy Fullerton served as respondents to the design innovation presentations. Fullerton shared a self-assessment of her work as a game designer on educational games, saying that her abilities as a game designer decrease because she is not free to think as creatively as possible, but her knowledge of domains, and of teachers and kids, have increased dramatically during such projects. Zimmerman offered the idea that we should understand games as a more participatory cultural activity than art, architecture, or even reading a book or listening to music. He also commented that the challenge of a designer in a content realm is to design learning content and game play together thoughtfully.
During a second set of minitalks, keeping with the theme of design innovation, the audience heard from Miguel Nussbaum of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile on his work around games and curricular complexity. Marjee Chmiel and Nina Walia introduced games designed to transcend generational divides. Chmiel presented strategies for gradually integrating games in the classroom so teachers have time to build their instructional proficiency with them, while Walia introduced the concept of the passback effect: when a parent hands off a device to a kid to distract them (a term that applies to 2-5 year olds without their own mobile devices). In her work at PBS Kids, Walia is creating games that help kids learn in these contexts, a crucial component of which is content that is both engaging AND quiet (appeals to both kids and adults). She also shared research on which PBS Kids games are designed. Doug Clark of Vanderbilt University presented SURGE (Scaffolding Understanding through Research on Games for Education), in which the initial design principles were to overlay popular gameplay mechanics with key formal physics representations, using specific challenges. Clark described trying to encourage articulation to make ideas and connections more explicit. He also raised the question from the morning about the U-shaped curve, asking how to keep the challenge curve wide enough to support the breadth of players in a classroom setting. Tobi Saulnier of 1st Playable Productions introduced her work with handheld games for kids, mostly designed for Nintendo DS, including Club Penguin. Saulnier described her design team’s approach to the learning curve, both in terms of the game itself and the content. She referred to the stage of “conscious incompetence” as the “unfun” part, and so it is important to think about audience and how to scaffold play style to get them to unconscious competence quickly. Victoria Van Voorhis of Second Avenue Software presented her company’s work on STEM-focused software. Using Porter’s Five Forces, she highlighted challenges due to constraints on innovation and competitiveness in the educational software market: the powerfully large existing suppliers, the ubiquity of substitute products, the fragmentation of buyers, and the bargaining power of customers make very high barriers to entry for independent content providers.
The day ended with a fourth keynote, which Games for Change Board Chairman Alan Gershenfeld introduced with the reminder that it wasn’t a given that Sesame Street would be a phenomenon; it was a revolutionary concept and it took all kinds to make it what it came to be. Michael Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center began his talk with a video of Muppets in a smoke-filled room fighting over what to call “Sesame Street”. Levine recalled that “Sesame Street”—now the most studied property in the history of children’s media—was both on the cover of Time Magazine and banned in Mississippi within the first six months of its premiere, reminding the audience that we should think about the mental and developmental routes of the children’s media movement as we look toward its future. Levine described the work of the Cooney Center, which focuses on middle childhood (5-11 year olds), studying old and new literacies, underserved populations, and learning ecologies across formal and informal settings. He outlined several of their current key research questions:
• how can intergenerational play be intentionally designed and promoted during game play?
• what behaviors are associated with intergenerational game play?
• Which player dynamics attract both parents and children to play?
• Which platforms and play mechanics best support intergenerational engagement?
He also advised researchers to craft studies that investigate the potential of games to address current key policy issues:
• engaging parents in scaffolding their kids’ learning
• personalizing early literacy development
• promoting healthy eating and exercise habits
• inspiring kids to engage in scientific inquiry
• supporting learners with special needs
Finally, he shared how the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is taking a role in sparking more entrepreneurship in this space. Their Cooney Prizes identify and rewards innovations in children’s learning. Levin closed by saying that the one thing that hasn’t changed in the forty years since the creation of “Sesame Street” is that kids are still relying on us to solve the problems that we will leave behind for them to clean up.
By Emily Kornblut
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