(More from the 2007 Games, Society, and Learning Conference)

Using Videogames as a Strategy for Teaching Complex Concepts — Robert Brown

showed a trailer for their Econ201 game - pretty cool because it's all narrative
a college credit course about "principles of microeconomics"
a complete replacement for the undergraduate economics course or can be taken in conjunction with the lecture
the game runs 24/7, students can play it anytime, anywhere
students can play the game for the semester rather than attend the course

multiple levels of quests
all of the assessments are done within the game itself
can see how many of your classmates are engaged in the game at the same time you are
tools in the game - calculators, etc.
in-chat game
you have a "bot" in the game that can access the "earth archives"

the only assumption designers make is that the student can use a mouse
move students through the storyline and into economic problems
spaceship crashes on future earth with no humans
first problem is have injured crew who are sick and need medicine
ethical dilemma - who do you save?
must apply principles immediately

had faculty support across the board (!)

multiple scenarios (find food & water - vegetarian or hunt rabbits?)
must decide which resources they are acquiring so that they can go up the mountain to search for other survivors

students across the board need to take this course because it has a broad base of majors (broad range of ages, too)

there are a few places where all they can do is push "next" but still figuring out how to deliver basic content students need
- hoping to work on these pieces
show students how to graph

"in quest quizzes"
final quiz is gameplay
professor always knows where the student is in the game throughout the semester, can always check current assessment
have narrative scenes at various points that lead into new quests or scenarios

when shooting rabbits, teaching the law of diminishing returns
does offer some actual gameplay (showed shooting targets)
they plot results on a graph (see the point where weapons can't shoot any faster so just can't do anything more)
should you now pursue berries instead?

students learn that technology affects production
storing all of the results on the server
at the end there's a dream sequence of the main character that is a mini-quiz ("gepardy")
immediate feedback if they got the question right or wrong
get a final score after the final quiz - can only take it once
can re-take other quizzes until they pass

"mockumentaries" within the game - showed a funny, fake video from the "earth archives" that was a take-off on Martha Stewart

have run the game for 3 semesters, run 300 students through it
seeing that they do as well, if not slightly better, than the lecture course
only one section of the online course, versus multiple sections of the lecture

using multiple choice for assessment because easier to program and assess
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Serious Games by Serious Instructional Designers — Jaime Henderson & Valerie Hainley
from imedia.it in Houston

company has moved to more game-style learning
"serious games" - games used for training, simulation, or education
for them, especially for the military, it's all web-based so you don't have to install anything
run on PC or video game consoles
- rules guide the learner (content becomes the rules)
- positive outcomes (desired goal)
- negative outcomes (failure to accomplish goal)
it's difficult for instructional designers to create something that makes people fail but it's not fun if you're always succeeding

elements of good serious games
- story
- goal
- challenge
- meaningful action
- appropriate feedback

"Tactical Questioning" game for the Army
you are a soldier deployed to the Middle East
your goal is to apply tactical questioning techniques while conducting operations
the challenge is to ask questions to gather critical information
meaningful actions are life-like tasks
feedback is through menus, mood meter, AAR
previous training was via Powerpoint slides, getting poked when they fell asleep

worked with a Flash developer in the Army who had been in Iraq, was just back one year so still fresh in his mind and he could help shape the scenarios
weren't advanced enough to use artificial intelligence, so just used list of questions

designing serious games
- understand video/computer games
- change thinking about instruction
- align instructional strategy with engagement strategy
- design for learning experiences
- design for failure
- adapt design practices

showed how definitions of instruction are very similar to those for games (achieving goals)

change thinking about instruction:
- move away from basic presentation of facts, including in the minds of the client
- move toward more immersive environments
- learning in context

balance between instructional strategy (the method used to achieve learning objective - how best to sequence, organize, and deliver the material) and engagement strategy (the method used to hold the learner's attention)

really trying to design for learning experiences
design for failure
- give players multiple paths
- provide consequences, both positive and negative
- allow player to make wrong choices (show what happens if they don't do their job)

sometimes the soldiers do it wrong intentionally because they want to see something blow up

learned how important it is to work together with the production team and programmers because otherwise it won't work
---
Educational Game Design: Confidential — Meagan Rothschild & Javier Elizondo

JUMP project

most of the people that got the grant to create the game were gone by the time they started work on it

basic rules:
- a mobile technology device
- that supports content area vocabulary learning
- targets 4th grade struggling readers (they can read but don't understand what they're reading)
- and can be used in a SES setting

started out with PDAs as deployment target but realized they were too expensive and didn't have any life in the backpack of a 4th grader
PDA manufacturers didn't care either, because moving into phones
so did first version in Flash

the quest: make a game v2, also titled "get a partner"
got a foundation with game designers, writers, etc. but it took 8 months to write a contract

the quest: design the game
clash of cultures
Prel - no games, no shorts, no beer, no staying past midnight
Aloha Island - games, shorts, beer, staying past midnight
design as a moving target
educators - love it, cause "we're reflective" and it's "a process" (a cycle)
designers - accept it cause "it can always be better"
producers - HATE IT because they are responsible for the timeline, deadlines, and the end date

documentation:
the old way - writing to multiple role groups (educators, designers, artists, programmers, etc.)
- scope and sequence, etc. but nobody read it
the new way - "concise and practical plan for building the game"
- gdd, tdd, and some other letters (game design document, technical design document)
when you merge the old way with the new way, though, they ended up with the really big "book of stupid" - 150 pages for the core game design book, and that's just one piece
everything started collapsing and became sma syndrome (save my ass)

the level boss: evaluation
need to ask "why do you need that?" a lot
lots of redundancy in the game
make them work for you

the game boss: education
the real boss: the department of education
---
Games & Schools — A Marriage Made in Heaven or Hell? — Angela McFarlane

FutureLab is a loose partnership of universities
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/

teaching with games: games in formal education
Electronic Arts-funded
few systematic studies of COTS games in the classroom
EA interested in the "path in the snow" (new market in education?)

MORI poll of teachers asking about use of games
- 31% of teachers have used COTS games in their teaching (probed this and found it was accurate, not mistaking other things for COTS)
- 59% would consider using them in the future
- players learn "higher-order thinking skills" (63%) and specific content knowledge (62%)
- similar proportion think games teach stereotypical views (62%) and anti-social behaviour (71%) (can use these as a jumping off point to challenge students; teachers found The Sims particularly good for discussing bullying and social behaviours)
- nearly half (49%) lack access to appropriate equipment
- *lack of evidence and examples* cited as barriers

used The Sims 2, Knights of Honor, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3
standard secondary schools in the U.K.
the sheer practicality of getting kids in front of PC games is a huge challenge (hardware, resources, etc.)

practical findings
- schools aren't homes or offices
- implications for licensing and distribution; doing it legally is difficult
cultural findings
- (perceived) curricular limitations; have to invest hours and hours of time in a game to discover if you can use it, as opposed to flipping through a book
- gaming literacy
- teachers
- setting work around a game requires in-depth knowledge of the game
- teachers found this part the hardest
- students
- not everyone under 25 plays games
- those that do don't play every game
- huge variation in useful game literacy; they don't all play well, and they think they're better than they are; can sit for hours playing a game and not learn anything
- teachers recognized students' skill
- students used to build resources, design levels, tutor peers... (need good social learning skills for that to work, though)
- problem is, teachers might be wrong
curricular limitations
- national curriculum
- perceived limitation (actually, not such a problem)
- competency curriculum

what does a teacher have to know?
- not enough just to know the game
- not enough just to give students credit for knowing the game (or take their word for it)
the teachers who were good teachers did best; it wasn't just "being a gamer"
they had to trust the kids

learning socially through mobile gaming?
partnership with soda
Newtoon
experiment in social gaming
- web-based Java application where you can build puzzles that behave according to the rules of mechanics
you can then pin them to your friends' mobile phones and they can try to solve them

research themes
- games authoring
- collaborative practice
- using mobile phones for learning
- changes in KS3 Science curriculum: how science works

will kids learn physics?
will it be the kids who wouldn't already have been prone to learning physics?
are we really going to see more kids learning Newtonian physics after this?
will they be able to use any of that understanding when they go into a different context?
don't know yet

a "play-create-edit experience"
learning is a process of creation, not consumption
as educators, should be giving people good tools to learn how to think and to create

gls2007