Bob Moore

researchers are striving for “omniscience” in real life
– PlaceLab (MIT): attempting to capture near-total behavioral data through hundreds of sensors in the home

omniscience in virtual worlds is much easier – far less expensive

PlayOn – http://blogs.parc.com/playon/

mixed methodology in PlayOn
1. Virtual Ethnography - main focus is the virtual persona of the participants; the person at the keyboard
observe —> field notes —> pictures; can access the “field” from any PC
focus on identifying critical episodes; can use virtual cameras;
is it too easy to capture this data?

Star Wars Galaxies – first major game to have combat– and non-combat-oriented professions
– doctors, dancers, musicians, architects, droid engineers, chefs, tailors, mayors
team created a combat player and a non-combat player to explore the game
as sociologists, they were interested in the “hot spots” – turned out to be starports and cantinas

cantina practices: seedy places where players seek “mind healing;” game developers did motion captures of real dancers for the virtual ones
you have three kinds of health, one of which is “mind;” you have to spend a few minutes in a cantina to rejuvenate your mind health
“a mind buff” – temporary mind boost that you pay dancers and entertainers for
“xp grinding” – entertainer & medic
best way to level up is to join other entertainers; can even set your character to a macro to loop it so it keeps dancing, playing music, etc.
get varying degrees of socializing/role playing around all of this; even though it’s an RPG, users don’t “play” as their character, they play as themselves
the game is so complicated that there is lots of knowledge sharing
cantinas have different reputations
“ooc” = “out of character;” they’ll mark their conversation when they’re speaking out of character

2. Going Deeper: Conversation Analysis
a “microscope” for examining conversation; recordings of naturally occurring interaction (face-to-face and technologically mediated)
record —> compress (MPEG-2) —> transcribe
can use screen capture software, but there are problems with file size; use a video camera connected to the computer
then digitize them and annotate system logs

showed a “mind healing” sequence; self-serve model of service delivery with very few opportunities for social interaction because you just click on a dancer to “watch” and mind heal; the player that needs the mind heal initiates the game command

showed a “mind buff” sequence; player has to ask others if they mind buff; dancer has to direct their attention to that player; provides opportunity for social interaction (convention is to sit down to watch them dance), so they end up talking; takes about 8–1/2 minutes; “it’s like when you go to get your hair cut” – you don’t have to talk, but you generally do; full-serve model because the entertainer has to initiate the command

Nicolas Ducheneaut

3. Going Broader: Analytic Software
what kind of social spaces are SWG’s cantinas?
– a virtual “third place”
– what are the opportunities for interaction and learning

Studying sociability in online communities
– they placed “bots” in key game locations and recorded activities 24/7
– they wrote software to format the data prior to analysis
– they wrote applications to compute key metrics and visualize patterns of activity

had to program the bots to do something periodically or else they’d get “kicked out”

program bots —> capture logs —> process and visualize data

“Beggar Bot” – when you get more data than you planned for; they had collected 300,000 credits in tips after just one month (enough to buy three starships)!
some people came up to the bot saying they’d seen it in the corner all alone for months - don’t be afraid, come join us

Putting It All Together
nothing replaces immersion

did some hands-on data analysis
one group had lots of advertising spam instead of socialization

Kurt Squire and Levi Giovanetto: Apolyton University: The Higher Education of Gaming

Civilization 3 – http://www.civ3.com/
can use real maps to play or not; most gamers don’t use real maps because they need more novelty

elearning systems are not particularly compelling content; we can rethink this and do better
Apolyton University IS a compelling model – http://www.Apolyton.net/; the university is just one part of the community
a self-organizing learning community; it’s international

games change how we interact
there’s a need for critical reading of simulations
need a design level of understanding

1. predictive simulations – predicting the weather; build many models; political discourse
2. “idea” simulations – gives you ideas; lets you see what could happen and then change things

setup and debrief are important in any simulation

Civ3 shares a lot with Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel”
“Civilization III as a world history sandbox” – article by Squire

study game communities as models for next generation learning communities

Apolyton – “a school of strategy, where students sharpen their Civ3 skills and share their experiences in a series of thematic games…. Participants are encouraged to share their strategy after the game….”

Example course: AU102: Give Peace a Chance - have to play the game without militaries

Kurt and Levi used cognitive ethnography to study Apolyton – participant observation, played games

a site of collective intelligence; one player used the site to get better and gain knowledge before the multiplayer option was released

after about 300 hours of playing Civ3, the pattern is that you get bored, which is where AU comes in; rejuvenates the game by offering new ideas, new strategies, new scenarios, etc.

“documenting mistakes helps prevent repetition, recording success helps recall the best practice….” – player
“During Action Reports” (DARs) – turn by turn transcripts written by players
provides reflection on actions, accessing expert cognition
also offers an interpretive frame of what happened and provides a recap of specific moves; can also put up screenshots
can ask questions – “what should I do next;” experts answer
showed one example: expert replies yes, but also explains why person should consider upgrading their military units and how to plan for the future; tries to promote flexible knowledge rather than just one answer
these players have a design-level understanding of the game

Conceptual Tools
– emergence of technical terminology (REXing, Settler Pump, Alex’s archer rush, “culture flipping”)
– ideas, learning have a history

large lurker community just reading the posts; fewer people posting now, but more lurkers than in the past

AU actually evaluates its learning structures; when one is no longer useful, they’ll eliminate; if they see a need, they’ll add one; will modify existing ones

success depends on players’ goals
– newer people gained mentorship
– old players sharpened skills
– developed a community of expertise
– a design level understanding of game simulations

interviewed players and asked “do you ever draw comparisons between current events and a civ game?”
“Yes – culture affects occupation;” found that players use terms from civ to describe current events (golden age, flip, cultural victory); now understand cultural outposts, American ideology; “I actually learned a lot more history and geography through Civ3”; is trying to convince teachers to let him use it in class (kid was in college)

AU functions as a way to move users to become designers; users even interact with the designers

AU participation is lessening becuase they’ve completely explored Civ3; moving on to Civ4; everyone is participating in the beginning of the Civ4 site, not just the experts

“Movement & Supply” section has more words than the New Testament!

Is Civ just a special case? Yes, and that’s why they’re studying it, but it’s a great model

can also look at Madden, Quake, etc. to note how complex the games are but how many sites have sprung up online to meet needs and bring players together
on the Madden site, users have started creating rules for play calling – showed the long list (that would be a lot to track in a game)

AU serves as a powerful model of a self-organization learning system indigenous to an age of simulation. Driven by participants’ desire to learn as a natural extension of pleasurable game play, participation in AU requires “students” to start becoming designers. …a quintessential example of how contemporary pop culture operates
– this is what schools need, this is the model

http://adlacademiccolab.org/gapps.html http://www.academiccolab.org/gapps.html

Richard Halverson: Leadership for Games, Games for Leadership

theories of expertise are too generic
Aristotle: expertise is particular, moral, and gained over time; practical

games provide just the right level that professionals need to help them learn
however, computer and console video games are our generational rorschach test (!)

doesn’t think schools are broken; teachers can change practices in loosely coupled systems, but…
leaders need to organize systemic changes outside the scope of teacher
leaders have resisted games and gaming as the enemy
the new porn; No Child Left Behind prevents games in some classes - constrains curriculum

leading to integrate gaming
rewarding curricular innovation
social and technical transfer systems – creation and maintenance IS the point
biggest issue is that gaming is alien to them; they have no context for it at all

GAPP: what if we created a game that they would actually use professionally to help illustrate all of this? = Instructional Leadership Game
capturing the practical wisdom of school leaders; used a case study of someone changing her school
the representations were dull and “thick” to the school leaders because there was no narrative
investigated simulations, but other examples had too much detail or too little, so the mix was wrong
they haven’t been able to build something with the right mix yet

what they would like to build during the next couple of years:
what’s the right level of representation?
goal of school leaders is always to improve school learning, so their goal is to help school leaders implement systemic change to improve student learning?

Design principles
context authenticity - how to represent practice at the right level? (not just “here’s your plan and here are the outcomes”)
expertise – how to communicate achieved wisdom and strategies?
verisimilitutde - how to make sure research-based practicies actually pay off legitimately

Game Design
players establish resource pool
players engage in mini-games in monthly turns, committing resources

have goals which are tied to strategies that are open to you using resources

your moves affect parents, teachers, and the community, not just the students
building social networks into the game in order to use professional development, friendships, how long the teacher has been at the school, etc. as components that influence the game
want the play to track several years to view consequences of decisions

Questions:

how have you attempted to model counter-implementation?
Richard: that’s the key problem; if you provide professional development that doesn’t require a lot of time, you don’t get a bump in expertise of your teachers - their sociability and expertise will go down

what they hope to show in the game is that real change is expensive and difficult, but POSSIBLE

Kurt actually mentions libraries in the context of gatekeepers, but only in passing as part of a list  :-(

know of any games that are meant to help students perform better on standardized tests?
James Gee: it could be done, but that’s like using a Ferrarri to go afoot; it’s what else you get from this that goes so far past standardized testing
Kurt: “Standardized Test: The Game” – subvert the whole thing! “Pick which answer is the typical WASP one….”
Richard: it’s the assessments that are the issue; schools are adapting to what NCLB requires - could get them to adapt to gaming as assessment

have you thought about how to get parents to understand the effects of gaming? can you build a game for the community?

from a practical standpoint, how do we reward curricular leadership?
Richard: there are migrations of talent in urban school systems – good teachers end up teaching under good principals; problem is not enough leaders try; they feel constrained

JUCCO in Johnson County, Kansas has a gaming curriculum and is doing outreach to the community; finding that parents aren’t the problem - they find it invigorating that kids are interested in this
GameMaker program - use it to teach kids

David Shaffer, Kelly L. Beckett, David Hatfield, Alecia Magnifico & Gina N. Svarovsky

David Shaffer:
the problem is that Star Trek is a world where people can communicate across vast distances, has the holodeck, etc., and yet in this world, education looks the same as it does now
– a failure to imagine

because the power of school is so well-documented; it’s a very well-evolved system
little ball in the little valley metaphor (can’t go backwards or forwards)

distinction of game engine vs. game (dice vs. craps)
recruits skills, identity, knowledge, and values – a game is always a culture
all tied together by an epistemology
you see the game through that epistemology
every subculture has an epistemic frame

anyone who works in an area of uncertainty, where they have to make judgment calls and requires autonomy is a candidate for an epistemic frame
requires reflective practice; gets created in a practicum (doing to knowing); cycle of action and reflection-on-action
gives the opportunity to create a simulated practicum (built on needs, abilities, interests)

mediation as an example
xenotransplantation as one example – players take on the role of a stakeholder in this arena
players get a confidential score, which you want to maximize; if you win your mediated point, you get the points associated with it
tested what students learned using a concept map before and after the game; see more lines after and they can explain why
compared a student’s answer to what should a specific patient do, before and after; much more in-depth understanding after
students are cast in a specific role (which ends up affecting their perspective) - gives them identity

there are 45,000 after school programs, and 100,000 home schoolers – fertile ground for change?
— Jenny notes to herself that David is not even considering libraries  :-(

2nd game: digitalzoo: sodaconstructing the next generation of engineers
Gina N. Svarovsky’s slides, but she couldn’t attend so David presented them

the engineering design process - taking things from idea to market
design—>build—>test model

kids design things in sodaconstructor and can test them – http://www.sodaplay.com/constructor/
they solve the problem first, and then they’re given the knowledge (opposite of school)
can create stuff that is hard to build in real life

an “exploratoid” – a brief snippet of exploration (like an explanatoid); eventually, they add up and provide a foundation

David Hatfield & Alecia Magnifico: Science.net

Alecia:

science journalism – an epistemic game they’ve created; epistemic RPGs (in this case, of a profession)

students do journalistic interviews, stories (write and then receive copy-edits), get peer review, and “power up”
copy-editing is very different from the spelling and grammar correction you see in school
the kids understood that school was all self-editing to see how good a grade you can get, whereas copy editing wasn’t about grades and it’s not a contest - it’s about improvement
Alecia compared an initial storydraft (personal voice, no facts, no balance, no sourcing), showed copy edit comments, then the student’s edited copy (much-improved, had neutral voice, a source, and a balanced perspective)
stories end up being published on science.net – http://www.science.net/ http://coweb.wcer.wisc.edu/science.net

binding is tied to identity development (felt like a journalist, did what journalists do) and journalistic epistemology

David:

“Byline” - the game engine for science literacy (the one in science.net)
a web-based editing, journalistic tool; has special tags, similar to HTML ones, for journalistic terms (lead, byline, jumpline, etc.)
as kids wrote more stories, they began using the tags more often and sooner

James Gee: Respondent

you’re not just learning facts about x; you’re learning about the practices of x, and along with that comes facts

have you thought about other contexts other than professional? eg, participating in a democracy, how to be a good parent, etc.?
David S.: any subculture has a potential epistemic frame, so sure; we’re choosing the professions for pragmatic reasons that are valuable in the real world; “what is in fact worth being able to do, learning to think as?” – journalist, historian;  “this whole approach is a giant cheat;” others have already figured out how to make a good journalist, so they’re just copying it (it’s harder to figure out how a good neighbor makes another good neighbor)

is moving the little ball from one place to another done by enculturation?
David S.: each of the games we’ve seen today is a possible red ball, they’re not how to get there; the point of the exercise is to step out of the school environment and all of the baggage it brings; they show you a place you could be, but not necessarily how to get there

David S.: ultimately, identity and values are not separate, but the kids come to this with these things disintegrated; the challenge is to link them all for the student

David S.: having seen yourself as an expert once, it radiates through everything the student does afterwards, especially when they go back to the rest of school; you’re always an expert in something now; these are valuable ways of thinking, too

physics teacher in the audience agrees with this approach (we already do the one-on-one coaching for graduate students), but it costs a lot of money
David S.: can’t get rid of “school” because someone has to babysit the kids; would mean a massive change in our educational system; would have to start small; let’s see what this could do and then decide what we’d have to compromise on

as a precursor to using one of these epistemic frames, they would have to meet my abilities; what kinds of preconditions are you looking at in terms of accessibility?
David S.: yes, what if there are things kids really have to know and do in order to be able to do this?
the teachers have done architecture, engineering, urban planning, journalism; with middle, high, elite school, and charter school students, all from different backgrounds
– no indication from any of this that there is a systematic reason kids can’t participate in this; has scaled well enough so far, and it seems to work for everyone