Designing GBL for LearningDavid Farrelldavid.farrell@gcu.ac.uk

What is the point of GBL?

You will have heard a *lot* about motivation and serious games.

Is that all SG / GBL have to offer?

If so, what is special about games?

Chen & Wang 2009

“Engaging learners in the learning process is the pre-requisite for effective e-learning.”

“However, making learning more engaging relies on considerate design of learning activities”

C&W argue for the value of interactivity in quality learning

Thus - games - but what is “considerate” design?

Learning Theories

Two main schools:

Objectivism

Learning == transfer of knowledge

Constructivism

Learning == individual’s creating their own version of knowledge

ObjectivismSkinner

Behaviourism / Operant Conditioning

Farmville?

Also Atkinson / Gagne

Procedural / DeclarativeWe have evidence to support games for simple declarative / procedural knowledge improvement.

Skill and Drill / Edutainment

factual & procedural knowledge depend on strength of memory and ease of recall

so “all” you have to do is repeat until it’s muscle memory. Memory, not thought.

Skill & Drill Pedagogy

Motivation of games is the main benefit.

Goal is repeated practice of a skill until automatic

Math Blaster, Brain Training, “training games”

Gamification type approaches to incentivise

Constructivism

Knowledge is created through contact between thoughts and the world.

The model is IN YOUR HEAD and is modified by how you interpret input you get.

Dewey / Piaget / Vygotski / Bruner / Gardiner / Papert

Daniel Willingham

Motor learning is the change in capacity to perform skilled movements that achieve behavioural goals in the environment. A fundamental and unresolved question in neuroscience is whether there are specific neural systems for representing sequential motor responses. Defining such systems with brain imaging and other methods requires a careful delineation of what specifically is being learned for a given sequencing task.

Daniel Willingham

A chiffon cake replaces butter— the traditional fat in cakes— with oil. A fundamental and unresolved question in baking is when to make a butter cake and when to make a chiffon cake. Answering this question with expert tasting panels and other methods requires a careful description of what characteristics are required for a cake.

Schema

We don’t easily store “facts”, we have networks of related concepts.

When we encounter something new, we understand it in context of what we already know.

So knowledge creating is a subtle modifying over time of these networks of concepts.

Games as Microworlds

The Shaffer & Svarovski paper I spoke about last week (SodaConstructing) introduces two concepts:

Exploratoids (extension of Explanatoid)

Microworlds (robust simulation of some domain)

Problem Based LearningStep 1: Topic Introduction - why it’s important

Step 2: problem statement

Step 3: generate hypotheses

Step 4: acquire data

Step 5: test hypothesis

So why didn’t this game teach?

Kristian Kiili: PBL

Constructive Alignment

Biggs 1996:

Learners construct meaning from what they do

Teacher makes deliberate alignment between planned learning activities and desired learning outcomes.

So here’s my idea

Cognitive Walkthrough for Learning Through Game Mechanics

CWLTGM!

Cognitive WalkthroughOne or more experts will “walk” through a set of steps required to accomplish a task.

Before beginning, you detail as much as you can about:

What the user knows

What steps are required to accomplish the task

Then you walk through each step questioning:

CW Questions

1: Will the user try to achieve the right effect?2: Will the user notice that the correct action is available?3: Will the user associate the correct action with the effect to be achieved?4: If the correct action is performed, will the user see that progress is being made toward solution of the task?

Success or failure storyFor each step you try to come up with a (believable) success or failure story.

the user knows to click the print icon because she recognises the shape of the printer as representing the print function

the user fails to find the left-align icon because she does not know to expand the “hidden icons” area

Cognitive Walkthrough all the things!

CW for GBL

I did two things:

Contextualise

Extend

Contextualise: InputsWho are players and what do they know?

What are the desired learning outcomes of the task?

How are game and domain entities represented?

What are the interactions required for player to learn the content

Contextualise: walkthroughStep 1: will player attempt the desired task?

Step 2: Will player understand what game actions would achieve the task?

Step 3: Will player associate their correct action as making progress towards task completion?

Assuming player executes correct actions, is it reasonable to expect learning to take place?

Step 4/1List every logical connection that must be made by the player in order to learn through playing this part of the game.

Must the player recognise domain-entity mappings?

Must player understand semantic meaning of an animation or in-game action to subject domain?

How many game elements must the player consider at once to understand the subject domain system?

Generally - you want to avoid making LEAPS of logic, you want to detail each small logical link.

Step 4/2

For each of the logical links identify - reconsider it and ask if it is actually two or more steps of logic - if so, split it

by just FORMALLY going over each item, you find mistakes

Rinse and repeat

Step 4/3When you are satisfied that each link is explicit, consider each logical link and ask whether it is reasonable to expect the player to make this connection / logical inference.

Will the imagined player understand the visual metaphors?

Will the player read and understand required text?

Will the player’s attention be drawn to the elements mentioned in the logical link?

Will the players understand the relationship between the in-game entities, but fail to recognise how that applies to the subject domain?

At the end of step 4

This is where you write your “success” or “failure” story for each item of your logical chain.

I categorise into low, medium, or high risk.

What’s the point?

Firstly, we can understand WHY things worked or did not work in a given design.

But more powerfully (in theory) by applying the technique to designs PRIOR to implementation, we can identify flaws that would not be spotted.

What next

I have handouts:

The e-Bug evaluation paper (has the table explaining results)

An overview of Cog Walk

My (in progress) Cog Walk paper

I want you to read these before the lab if you can.

Labs

Between now and the labs, I’m going to move to the next turn of CareerQuest.

So we’ll do that in the labs for 5 mins.

The rest of the lab will be you applying CWLTGM to evaluate the “white blood cell” bit of the game.

I want to see if you end up with the same answers as me!

ReferencesChen, M., & Wang, L. (2009). The Effects of Type of Interactivity in Experiential Game-Based Learning, 273–282.

Svarovsky, G., & Shaffer, D. (2006). Sodaconstructing an Understanding of Physics: Technology-Based Engineering Activities for Middle School Students. Proceedings. Frontiers in Education. 36th Annual Conference, 17–23. doi:10.1109/FIE.2006.322594

Farrell, David (City University, L., Kostkova, P (City University, L., Lecky, D. (Health P. A., & McNulty, C. (Health P. A. (2009). Teaching Children Hygiene Using Problem Based Learning: The Story Telling Approach to Games Based Learning. International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL), Second Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (Vol. 37).

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don’t students like school: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. Jossey-Bass.

Queens University, Problem Based Learning. http://meds.queensu.ca/pbl/pbl_in_practice/pbl_process

Biggs, J. (1996). Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher education. Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/index/l2q3820h2436l607.pdf

Wharton, C., & Rieman, J. (1994). The cognitive walkthrough method: A practitioner’s guide. In J. Nielsen & R. Mack (Eds.), Usability Inspection Methods. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from http://psych-www.colorado.edu/ics/techpubs/pdf/93-07.pdf