play think learn

One project that I’ve been watching with interest over the past year is the ARGuing project, which used an alternate reality game for language learning in secondary schools across Europe.

A key feature of this project was that it made use of a network of teachers to support the delivery of the game, and the involvement of this resource is key to the methodology developed by the project. I had an interesting chat with Joel Josephson, one of the project partners, recently (who incidentally runs a children’s educational gaming site that is well worth a look) about the appropriateness of this model in Higher Education and the difficulties of getting staff engaged and able to devote time and energy to the extent seen in the ARGuing project.

One of the key issues of ARGs in education is engaging players, and the time required to provide the ongoing interaction that supports this (particularly in the early stages of the game) was one of the difficulties encountered in the ARGOSI project, and I think that looking at solutions employed in other education sectors could provide some valuable ideas here.

Becta has just published the final report of a research project that myself and Cathy Lewin managed last year, which looks at the different ways in which online learning was being implemented in schools and FE colleges in the UK and their impact.

The project used a literature review and key informant interviews to identify eight case study institutions where different models of online learning were successfully being implemented. In-depth case studies in each institution (including interviews with learners, staff and parents as well as observations of the learning environments) allowed us to examine the different ways in which online learning was being used, develop a framework for analysing different implementations, and consider the benefits and limitations of different models.

Four ‘typical’ models of online learning were identified:

• Fully online – structured online resources, activities and communication.
• Independent study – extensive online resources and limited tutor support.
• Added value – predominantly face to face, with supporting online activities and resources.
• Flexible integration – timetabling to allow a mix of chunks of online learning time coupled with chunks of traditional classroom teaching and learning.

Unfortunately I was double-booked for Dave White’s talk at ALT-C, but I did manage to grab him for 15 minutes to get up to speed with the cool games stuff he’s been doing.The OpenHabitat project has carried out two pilot studies in Second Life, in the areas of Art & Design and philosophy, and Dave’s talk centred around what we can learn from game design (specifically MMORPGs) when designing learning activities in multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs).

His premise is that the two key ways in which we can learn from MMORPGs is the way in which people learn how to use the environments implicitly (without recourse to a manual) and the sophisticated collaboration that takes place. I was particularly taken with Dave’s analogy that “a MMORPG is a novel whereas a MUVE is a notebook”.

He described three elements of MMORPGs that he says should be considered when designing learning activities in MUVEs:

• Questing - relevant situated tasks that support learning how to use the environment (e.g. collaboratively building a bridge or playing hide-and-seek in Second Life).
• Role-playing and identity - being able to take on a role in MOORPGs with a fictional backstory as part of a larger narrative structure. In Second Life the rules of engagement are not so clear, there is no ’stepping into a role’ so it is higher risk and the cultural norms are not so clear.
• Emotional state - in MUVEs it is more important that people understand the emotional state of the person behind the avatar, and that using avatars as a representation of emotional state is dangerous. He says “emoticons are more effective at communicating emotional state than your avatar in Second Life - unless your emotional state is ‘I wanna dance’”.

Early days yet, but we have just spent a fun couple of hours analysing the interview data from the first trial of the ARGOSI project. Lots of interesting stuff coming out but, in particular, it looks like there are four reasons emerging why people engage with ARGs.

1. Completion - focus on finishing all the challenges and ‘getting the set’.
2. Competition - beating other people and being the first to complete challenges.
3. Chronicling - following the narrative and uncovering the storyline.
4. Community - talking to and collaborating with other people.

These motivations don’t seem to be mutually exclusive but we’re hypothesising that different people will have different priorities and different motivation profiles. Useful for us too in designing an ARG that appeals to all different types of motivations. So far this is held up by the data, but this was only a small study. Really looking forward to the large scale data collection in Autumn!

I have just got back from a hectic start-up meeting for the ARGOSI project. I’ve really enjoyed two days out of the office working with such a creative and enthusiastic group of people.

In the team photo (from left to right) are Dave White (digital narrative guru), Scott Wilson (code guru), Katie Piatt (who has developed and used ARGs at the University of Brighton for the last two years - on her own - scary and very impressive), me, Rosie Jones (library induction guru), and Peter Whitton (graphic designer extraordinaire).

Thanks also to Lawrie Phipps, from the JISC, who joined us on the second day and helped to ensure that the project has at least some tentative grounding in reality.

I wish all of my work was this much fun.

I was down in London last week, with my colleague Cathy Lewin, to present the interim findings of another project I’m involved in. The Models of Innovation in Learning Online (MILO) project is looking at the different ways in which online learning is being used in schools and colleges (Key Stage 3 and 14-19). Grainne Conole wrote a nice blog post about the event.

I’m back in York for another two-day project meeting (different project this time). Yesterday we had to sit through a presentation from each project at the meeting. All 28 of them. Fair enough, each had only 5 minutes and one PowerPoint slide, but three-and-a-half hours later I was dreaming of having hot knives shoved under my fingernails to end the tedium.

Why is it that in a profession that espouses active, experiental and engaging learning, we still have conferences and meetings full of exposition with text-laden PowerPoint? There’s got to be another way, I’m just not sure what it is…

Terry Mayes blogged in a similar vein about the ASCILITE conference (see that final paragraph of the post).

I’m currently in York at a two-day JISC meeting for the projects that have recently received funding under the Users and Innovation programme. Myself, Scot Wilson and Rosie Jones are here representing the ARGOSI project, which stands for Alternate Reality Games for Orientation, Socialisation and Induction. This is our poster.

There are nineteen new projects that have been funded under this call.

My head hurts.