play think learn

I’ve been a bit lax about posting for the last couple of months, but just wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone all the best for the festive season and the year ahead, and to talk briefly about two EU games projects that I’m involved in and have just launched or are just about to launch.

• Game-based learning for older adults (gambaloa) is a two-year lifelong learning partnership, aiming to build a network to share practice and research in the field. The kick-off meeting took place in Manchester at the start of the week and I’m still recovering. An embryonic web site is available at https://gambaloa.wordpress.com/.
• Making games in collaboration for learning (MAGICAL) is a 28-month multilateral project, which is due to launch in January, and aims to develop a curriculum for teachers using games in their own practice. As well as the UK, there are partners in Belgium, Italy, Finland and Greece. The web site and further details about the project will be available in the new year, so watch this space.

Recently I’ve been working with a few different people designing games and game-based activities, and it struck me that one of the big mistakes that people make when trying to design a game for the first time is to over-complicate things. A lot of what I do with people when designing games is try and strip back to the elements to the bare essentials: what is absolutely essential to meet the learning outcomes while still maintaining a robust game dynamic? I think that once that’s in place, other elements (or ‘colour’) can be added in if necessary.

This approach may well be specific to educational games, as the primary purpose of this type of game has to be to meet the desired learning outcomes, and a game with a sound mechanic shouldn’t need much padding. I don’t want players getting bogged down with rules and distractions; I want them to focus on the core of the game (although I will admit that I am always keen to add in an element of sabotage). This is why, when recently saw some of Paul Ladley’s work developing and using games for education, it was like a breath of fresh air. Paul’s approach is to use simulations in workshop settings, employing the computer for what it is good for (fast calculations, displaying dynamic data) and keeping everything else simple. If you want to make a decision, you record it on paper; if you want to talk with another team, you walk over and talk with them. I particularly like this approach because it doesn’t depend on expensive software with unnecessarily high production values, but really focuses on the learning outcomes, and how they can be achieved as simply as possible.

I’m starting to get more interested in the potential of traditional games, as well as digital, as they seem to overcome some of the problems of development and design of computer games. Accreditation! Is a board game developed with a colleague, Rachel Forsyth (she did most of the work and I did some playing around with game mechanics) as part of a JISC project on developing responsiveness in the curriculum. The aim of the game is that players learn about the processes involved in course design and accreditation, and have the opportunity to discuss the issues that arise when trading off quality and timeliness.

Rachel has posted on the project blog about the game design process and her reflections on its use, and the game board and cards are available on a creative commons licence. A detailed description of the game mechanics and playing pieces can be found on the JISC Design Studio.

We presented a workshop on the game at the recent HEA conference, and it was great to see people playing the game in earnest - and arguing about it. I would be very keen to receive feedback from anyone who would like to try the game on the design and its potential uses.

Myself and fellow games enthusiast Young Baek at Boise State University are editing a case book called Cases on Digital Game-Based Learning: Methods, Models and Strategies.

We are looking for cases from all aspects of digital game-based learning, in all educational and informal settings, and the deadline for initial abstracts is mid September. Please get in touch if you’re interested or want to talk through any ideas.

Here is the call for papers.

An interesting article on the Guardian games blog a couple of days ago. I won’t go into too much of a rant here because basically the article itself says it all. But suffice to say that I also find Gove’s notion that “when children need to solve equations in order to get more ammo to shoot the aliens, it is amazing how quickly they can learn”, and his underpinning assumptions about learning, extrinsic motivation and ’students as game consumers’, somewhat troubling.

The cynic in me also wonders what Gove’s political motivations might be for jumping (albeit with both legs tied together) on the game-based learning bandwagon.

For anyone really keen, you can see the full speech here.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent an excellent couple of days at the first face-to-face meeting of the ALT Games and Learning Special Interest Group. The aim of this group is to provide an active community for people interested in all types of games and their relationship to learning, focusing particularly on their use with adults, in formal and informal contexts.

For me, the first meeting was a resounding success and it was great to spend 24 hours in the company of like-minded people and have my views challenged. Oh, and playing with lego was great too. I left the meeting full of enthusiasm and brimming with ideas.

The SIG is open to anyone who is a member of the Association for Learning Technology (this is £10 for associate membership but is free for anyone who works for an Organisational or Sponsoring member).  You can find out more about what we do and how to get involved at the group web site. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

The newly-formed Association for Learning Technology Special Interest Group on Games and Learning (more on this in a post coming soon) has just started a reading group. I thought I would use this group as an opportunity to write about the books we’re reading - a combination of new releases and old favourites.

The first book chosen was Game Frame by Aaron Dignan, and I have mixed feelings about this book. The premise behind it is that any activity can be made fun and engaging by transforming the activity into what he calls ‘behavioural games’ by utilising certain gaming elements. I fundamentally disagree with this. While I believe that gamification techniques can possibly make boring activities less boring, they are still essentially boring. I am also troubled by the fact that this book doesn’t seem to recognise that not everyone plays games, not everyone finds games engaging, or that different people prefer to play different types of games. Games are not universally motivating.

Having said that, I do think that the book presents some interesting ideas, albeit ones that need to be applied with caution. Dignan is a self-confessed ‘non-academic’ and this is clear in the writing style with simplifications, generalisations and lack of evidence or rigour. However, the book is very accessible to a wide audience, and extremely readable. The idea of the behavioral game is central, described as “a real world activity modified by a system of skills-based play”, and a model is presented containing ten building blocks for creating behavioural games, which is clear and systematic.

An area I don’t agree with, however, is his analysis of motivation. Dignan suggests that there are four psychological drivers that motivate people, and each is presented as a continua:

Achievement of goals - enjoyment of experience
Structure of guidance - freedom to explore
Control of others - acceptance of others
Self-interest in actions - social interest in actions

I would argue that these aren’t continua and aren’t mutually exclusive, for example, it’s quite possible to be motivated by goals and by experience at the same time, one doesn’t preclude the other. I also don’t think these factors are particularly inclusive - how does it cater for people who don’t like to play with others at all?

A highlight of the book of me is the penultimate chapter, which suggests a series of design elements that can be considered when designing behavioural games, which I do feel offers some fresh perspectives. While some - such as targets, competition, chance, time pressure, puzzles, novelty, levels, teamwork, data (or results), progress, points, recognition, status  - are fairly standard fare in terms of game design, others - such as scarcity, social pressure, currency, renewal, forced decisions, sensation - provide new insights. The use of examples for each is also excellent for making the points made absolutely clear.

Overall, I found this book an easy and enjoyable read, and not without merit. I think it makes a useful starting point for considering the value and uses of gamification, but much of the assertions need to be taken with several pinches of salt.

The EU LUDUS project aims to create a “European Network for the transfer of knowledge and dissemination of best practices in the innovative field of serious games”.

The knowledge node web site for the project looks like it will become a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in the field, providing links to research reports, journals, case studies original articles, and games.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the first Irish Symposium on Game-Based Learning, hosted by Patrick Felicia at the Waterford Institute of Technology. I felt that this was a well-designed event, offering perspectives from schools, universities and commercial training organisations.

The keynote presentation is available on Patrick’s blog, an, as always, Alex Moseley offers an excellent write-up of the event.

Interesting article in the guardian yesterday (via @mikedicks) discussing research that computer gamers are less likely to go to university.

This research tracked 17,000 born in 1970 and looked at their likelihood of going on to get a degree, finding that while reading significantly increased chances, playing computer games - as a sole recreational activity - decreased them. The article does discuss some of the limitations of the research, that the nature of computer games (and - I might add - universities) has changed fundamentally since the 1980s, and that it doesn’t prove any causal link between reading/gaming and likelihood to go to university (albeit as an aside in the very last sentence of the article).

However, I think a key point is glossed over. The study looked at people who were “playing computer games regularly and doing no other activities”. Surely this is an issue of single-focus rather than one of computer games per sae? I would argue that doing any activity to the exclusion of others is likely to have detrimental affects. Somehow it’s computer games get singled out as the problem.