Archive
Games as Part of the Curriculum
May 17th On-line Panel to Discuss the Role of Games in Education
Games and the Curriculum
This coming May, Excelsior College will be hosting a webinar on games in education. I am extremely honored to have been chosen to be part of the panel that will get to discuss this topic and will hopefully be part of a team who can help determine and share what we can learn from using games in education.
While attempting to get a larger idea of who will be at this webinar, as well as the specifics of what will be discussed, I was very thankful to be able to speak with David Seelow, Director of Writing Programs & the Online Writing Lab School of Liberal Arts Excelsior College. David gave great insight on numerous aspects of not only the symposium, but eLearning, games, and higher education as well. The highlights of his interview include:
- Discussion on the importance of exploring alternative learning methods that leave the traditional lecture mode of delivering material
- Theories behind using games as motivators, methods of recognition, ways to engage social involvement and cooperative learning
- Information on the topics and bios of myself, Ben Devane, Dr. Joey Lee, Professor Lee Sheldon, Dr. Tobi Saulnier, and finally, Clark Aldrich, the panel speakers
- Seelow’s opinion on who will be attending the symposium
- The symposium framework/agenda for May 17th
Interviews of the panel members that were conducted by Excelsior College will appear online in the college’s blog forum. Mine should appear sometime this week!
For full interview read on.
1. What are the highlights of this symposium and what can be learned from attending?
The purpose of the symposium, “Games and the Curriculum: Towards a New Educational Model” is to explore alternatives to the traditional lecture mode of delivering curriculum and also propose new ways of designing curriculum that engage 21st century students. Public schools remain in a state of crisis wrapped up in the vestiges of the No Child Left Behind legislation and test taking mania engendered by those policies. Test taking thwarts teacher creativity and stifles student development. Higher education inherits the problems of secondary education and must find ways to engage and retrain students over the course of a student’s academic career. Furthermore, distance education has arrived and more and more traditional institutions are going online witnessed by the emergence of MOOCs. Online education demands more engaging curriculum sprung free for the lecture center’s professorial wisdom and what Paolo Friere called the banking model of education, i.e. the teacher deposits knowledge in a passive learner. Today’s learner must be a producer of knowledge and a critical thinker.
Games contribute to student development in learning in a number of new ways. Let’s begin with motivation. In Glued to Games, Rigby and Ryan evidence the motivating, near addictive power of games to attract and retain student attention. Students spend hours at a time engaged with video games. Wouldn’t we all like to see that motivation applied to course work and social problems? A second major principle of game based learning is the room for exploration. Games allow learners to fail in a safe environment and then learn from their attempts without the fatal consequences of failing a test. Related to this exploration, is the scaffolding built into most games. Early levels of a game tutor the learner in how to play the game. As the student moves up various levels of the game, the learner meets and exceeds progressively harder challenges giving the student progressively more achievements and recognition.
This builds learner self esteem and reinforces motivation. In a sense, this game based design operates that educational psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” whereby students are pushed to their outer limits or stretched to learn to their fullest capacity. This principle contradicts the dumbing down of curriculum we so often see today. Learners like the challenge and the accomplishment of meeting a series of challenges.
Likewise recognition, when I watch a golf tournament I am preoccupied by the Leader Board posted around the golf course. Who doesn’t want to be recognized? It makes us feel good. What about fun? Games are a blast. How many students consider their classes to be an exhilarating experience? Many games developers like Ralph Koster have argued for the centrality of fun to the game experience, and I would like to see a curriculum infused with fun. We first learn about the world through play, why should we stop having fun when trapped in a row of seats in the classroom or stuck to our couch in an online class? The need to spring out of our seats leads to another fundamental principle of game based learning- projects and problem solving. Quest to Learn (http://q2l.org/), partial brain child of gaming expert Katie Salen now at Depaul University in Chicago, is a school in New York City based entirely upon game development and project based learning that has transformed education. Games, including puzzle based games, require problem solving and few skills better prepare students for the workplace then problem solving skills and strategic thinking.
Finally, I would mention social involvement and cooperative learning. On one hand games thrive on healthy competition, and, on the other hand, they often involve large social networks and group knowledge bases. As a professor, I often see students struggle to produce a few written pages, but you look at the public forums supporting World of Warcraft (e.g. WOWWiki, http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main) and you’d be amazed about how much knowledge learners produce for each other. Ideally, this knowledge is shared in an open, global environment and Excelsior College (www.excelsior.edu) like other institutions, is committed to Open Educational Resources and the democratization or open access to learners worldwide.
These are just a few of the things participants will learn about and discuss during the webcast. Of course, the best thing about symposiums is the potential for new knowledge to emerge from the interaction of such superb panelists.
2. Can you give further insight to as why you are excited about the speakers/panelists?
Yes, Excelsior College is thrilled to have such a distinguished mixture of experts from both the corporate and academic world to talk about game based learning. I can only touch on a few areas these experts will speak about. Let me start with your own expert Jon Aleckson. Jon’s model of micro collaboration in MindMeld (http://www.mindmeldbook.com/) is a model for 21st century thinking. In online learning, collaboration is critical. The professor is no longer the be all and end all of the college learning experience. At Excelsior Colleges, our online courses require at a minimum the close collaboration of instructional designers, subject matter experts, and program directors (we are kind of like project managers). Hopefully, Jon will speak about the indispensability of collaboration in online game development.
Ben Devane, a leader at the Digital Worlds Institute (DWI) at the University of Florida (http://www.digitalworlds.ufl.edu/), is a young innovator with many creative ideas. For instance, he currently runs a special project teaching middle school students programming skills used in game development. The involvement of higher education in the public school system is a great leap forward in preparing our kids for the future. In terms of higher education, Ben has been involved in a Gaming Against Plagiarism initiative (http://blogs.uflib.ufl.edu/gap/). In this initiative, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, librarians played a critical role in content development. Plagiarism is a national epidemic and an innovative approach to plagiarism prevention is something most people want to hear about.
Speaking about public education, Dr. Joey Lee teaches at Columbia University’s Teachers College in the Games Research Lab, the country’s premier teacher training college (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltASfvmmxZs). Dr. Lee leads two fascination projects that employ games to teach real world problem solving skills. One project involves motivating students to become scientists and the other “greenify” project helps students use gamification skills to address climate change (see Gamifying Education at http://www.gamifyingeducation.org/about).
Switching back to higher education, Professor Lee Sheldon, is co-director of Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)- http://www.hass.rpi.edu/pl/gaming one of the nations leading game design programs. Lee is a true pioneer in games and higher education. At Indiana University he first developed an entire course based upon a game. In other words the course is managed like a game. He has extended this work at RPI and recently published a tremendously innovative book entitled The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game (http://www.amazon.com/The-Multiplayer-Classroom-Designing-Coursework/dp/1435458443).
All progressive educators will be keen to learn about Lee’s successful experiments in transforming the classroom experience.
Back to the corporate side of things, Dr. Tobi Saulnier, CEO of 1st Playable Productions, LLC (http://1stplayable.com/) in Troy, New York is a tremendous entrepreneur and leader of women in business. Tobi is currently working on a very low budget writing games for Excelsior College’s Online writing Lab. This game will be housed on the Owl but downloadable for mobile devices and integrated into a pilot study with five community colleges. This is a step toward the design of games to support the need for improvement in student writing across the country.
Finally, and, in some ways, most importantly, our expert moderator is Clark Aldrich (http://www.clarkaldrichdesigns.com/). Clark is a leading national force in online learning (e.g. Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds: Strategies for Online Instruction), the design of simulations, and a genuine voice of education reform (see the Unschooling Rules Project). In addition to his extraordinary work in education, Clark has been a long time leader in corporate training. I want to point out that when I say curriculum and education, I also refer to training curriculum in both the corporate and military worlds. Workforce development and military training are vital components in the country’s overall educational purpose. Clark brings a national reputation to the symposium.
3. Why should people attend this year’s Excelsior College symposium addressing the role of games in education?
I believe I have answered this in my extended response to your previous question. In summary, people will learn a variety of innovative ways to reinvigorate the curriculum at all levels of the education system. These ideas are cutting edge and point to the future of 21st century learning.
4. Who do you expect to be there this year?
Ideally, I would like to see a large cross section of people from the education and gaming world. I certainly expect all faculty and administrators interested in distance education and online learning, advocates of the Open Educational Movement, instructional designers, and progressive faculty interested in new teaching strategies and pedagogy. I also hope to see a number of creative minded students both online and in person. Finally, I hope to make some initial inroads into a corporate audience interested in cutting edge training models and maybe some military education specialists who have long been supporters of simulations as learning tools. Eventually, I really want to bridge the public education audience and professional development administrators. Perhaps, next year we can aim for a small international audience.
5. Any additional information you may want to add?
Only that Excelsior College, like all our panelists, is committed to Open Educational Resources and the global sharing of knowledge in a cooperative fashion. We all know that the great universities like Stanford, Harvard and M.I.T. are now involved in sharing resources but we want to show even small colleges can make large contributions to education.
6. Could you describe the tentative schedule/bullet points of the topics you will be discussing?
I would like to suggest we adhere to the original design of symposiums articulated by Plato thousands of years ago. A group of distinguished experts address a common topic in a limited time frame. The discussion is spontaneous and flows like an intelligent conversation. I would expect, such a vibrant conversation will touch on some of the topics I alluded to earlier:
- How to reinvigorate the higher education curriculum
- Game Based Learning Pedagogy
- Games and educational reform
- Best Practices in curriculum design
- The future of online learning
- The value of collaboration
- The classroom as a game
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson and Jillian Bichanich. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
Multiple Choice Test Questions May Be Replaced with Game-Based Assessments?
Earlier this month, I previewed a talk at the Games+Learning+Society Conference 8.0 at the University of Wisconsin. Jody Clarke-Midura and Jennifer Groff have since given their much anticipated talk titled “Formal Game-Based Assessments: The Challenge and Opportunity of Building Next Generation Assessments” and it is now available to watch online here. I think they make some important and realistic points about the future of game design in education, especially when it comes to using games in educational testing.
Clarke-Midura and Groff laid out the pitfalls facing innovations in game-based assessments as well as their promise. They also provided two examples of current game-based assessments which blend the methodology necessary for a reliable assessment as well as the engaging and creative elements of game design that are just as important.
One prominent example presented was a game-based assessment which tested middle-school age children on critical thinking, research and evidence collection. In the game-world, students used an avatar to navigate through a virtual world to solve a problem—they need to figure out through research and evidence collection why a frog was mutated to have six legs. They could be assessed based on their actions and conclusion in the virtual world.
Clarke-Midura and Groff don’t want actual games to be assessments though. Instead, they want to take aspects of game design and incorporate it into building more effective assessments. That crossroads promises better assessments, but also poses issues for both game developers and those who measure and evaluate psychometrics.
It may seem counterintuitive to draw from games—which are dynamic environments—to design assessments, which must be tightly contained environments to ensure standards are consistent. However, there are parts of game design which should be incorporated into tests, Clarke-Midura said, such as
- Clear goals
- Freedom to experiment
- Freedom of identity
- Narrative
- Agency
- Interaction
There is some tension in actually incorporating game-based assessments in schools. Clarke-Midura explained that Race to the Top, a program put forth by the Obama administration to foster learning in K-12 public schools, has provided funding to schools, which in turn means there is more interest in game-based assessments. However, there has also been some hesitation—while teachers and administrators see game-based assessment’s value, they are hesitant for it to become mainstream and widely-used even though the assessments would work on existing technology.
But why make the switch from pencil and paper tests to game-based ones? Clarke-Midura said multiple choice tests—which are widely used in Wisconsin to test fourth and eighth grade competency in many different subject areas—show proficiency in facts, but do not show proficiency in reasoning, research and critical thinking. A game-based assessment can measure actions in a virtual world to measure those cognitive cornerstones.
An Expert’s Opinion
Clark Aldrich
Clark Aldrich, author of the Complete Guide to Games and Simulations is a thought leader on how scenario based test questions could add to the validity of high stakes tests like the SAT. I was very curious as to his reaction to the GLS Session on Game based Assessments.
Click the play button below to listen to the interview.
Clark Aldrich Interview – Thoughts on Formal Game-Based Assessments
The traditional multiple-choice assessment has some flaws, and people are turning to computer game models to try to not only fill some of the gaps, Aldrich said, but also to test individuals in different professional and academic spheres on many different and complex topics that traditional tests cannot.
“As far as game-based assessments go, the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. We’re already seeing assessment models that are pushing this boundary. But it brings up a lot of questions. In this example that we saw [in the presentation], one of their big takeaways is a computer game is necessarily a teaching mechanism. Inherent in almost any computer game design is learning. With this kind of academic assessment, you don’t have the option of teaching them anything. There’s no feedback. All the cues that we’re so used to aren’t there. It’s a whole new way of designing an interactive experience and has the ability to capture a lot of information,” he said.
“[We should move] toward this kind of assessment because we can do it now. It’s the simple reality of, if we can measure more kinds of things, measure them faster, come to conclusions faster and feedback the information on what we’ve learned faster, and at less cost, then we ought to do it. It simply makes sense to do. Simply putting it online has benefits, but online testing also has the potential to tap into more advanced assessments and applications, like the example in the presentation,” Aldrich said.
Aldrich said the presentation was important simply because people need to start thinking about game-based assessments and their possibilities, especially in their nascent stages of development. The efforts at game-based assessments definitely indicate that there is a long road ahead for them to be all they can be, however, the first attempts are nonetheless impressive.
The other opportunity is moving away from putting people on a bell-curve when results are measured. Instead say, “What are you good at, and what are you bad at, and what are you good at in ways other people are not?” Future analysis wouldn’t look at a percentile, but rather what people are uniquely good at compared to others, and how can we design a customized curriculum, not how you stack up against your peers.
Don’t miss Clark at the Serious Play Conference in Redmond, WA from August 21 to August 23, where dozens of speakers will talk about the future of gaming, education and industry.
Speaker Bios
Jody Clarke-Midura is a learning scientist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, currently heading the Virtual Assessment Research Group. The group’s research focuses on designing and studying virtual assessments as a way to gauge critical thinking and inquiry in scientific disciplines.
Jennifer Groff is currently the Director of Learning and Program Development for the Learning Games Network. She has also worked and researched at the MIT Education Arcade as well as the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has multiple graduate degrees—one in educational technology, and another in neuroscience in education. Her research has a specialized focus concerning how the crossroads of education, technology and design work together and are evolving.
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson, Karissa Schuchardt and Adelaide Blanchard. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
The Importance of an Experienced Serious Game Designer
In past blog posts, I’ve written about building the right development team for creating self-paced distance educational tools. I will continue this discussion on assembling teams by addressing the team needs of serious educational game and simulation projects.
At Web Courseworks, we partner with strong independent game 
and simulation designers like Clark Aldrich and his company Clark Aldrich Designs. This partnership has provided us with the strength of having an individual who has written several renowned books on the subject of effectiveness of games and simulations in an educational environment as part of the development process. Learning by Doing and The Complete Guide to Simulations & Serious Games are both great resources that creators of educational games and simulations can use to build mutual understanding and increase collaboration between all members of the development team and sponsors. Too often, a professor or corporate client uses their powerful position to tell experienced and educated multi-media designers what elements and mechanics make a great simulation without intellectual discussion or the unpinning to support their assertions.
To be a success, lead designers need to understand game goals, mechanics, and the process of development. They need to put a team approach into practice that fosters creativity and innovation and is held together by a rigid process. In addition to the lead designer, team members include writers, programmers, and of course a project manager.
The key is having an industry leader who both wrote the book 
on the subject and enjoys participating in the applied practice. Recently, Web Courseworks and Clark Aldrich collaborated on “Play True Challenge” for the World Anti-Doping Agency and “Distraction Dodger” for the ITS Institute at the University of Minnesota. Both have been award winning efforts at using game mechanics to educate and inform game players.
Earlier today, “Distraction Dodger” was released online the world’s most popular casual game sites including Kongregate, Newgrounds, and Mochimedia. The game is expected to receive an extremely positive response. The game not only has a high profile theme of increasing awareness of the effects of distracted driving, but follows in the footsteps of Gridlock Buster, a preceding serious game also developed for the University of Minnesota’s ITS Institute that has received over 3 million plays to date.
Jon Aleckson, PhD - CEO of Web Courseworks Ltd.
Visit me on Amazon.com
Subscribe to Web Courseworks'
EDGE newsletter.
