play think learn

Well it all went so quickly, but another excellent European Conference on Game-Based Learning, organised by my friends Jordi Sánchez-Navarro and Dani Aranda. For me, this is one of the best conferences of the year - lots of relevant and high-quality papers, interesting and fun people, and good food and too much wine. What’s not to like?

Although there were loads of excellent papers, here are some of the highlights for me:

Boyle and Connolly (2008) provide a theoretical overview on theories of enjoyment, looking at the following theories:

• Ryan and Deci’s self determination theory - behaviour is governed by three innate psychological needs: competence, autonomy and relatedness; behaviours that satisfy all three are intrinsically motivating.
• Malone and Lepper’s motivations to play computer games - challenge, curiosity, fantasy, control.
• Lucas and Sherry’s research based on uses gratifications theory - this identified six reasons why people play computer games: competition, challenge, social interaction, diversion, fantasy and arousal.
• Arousal theory - there is an optimal level of arousal linked to best performance and greatest pleasure.
• Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory - the optimal experience when a person is fully engaged in an activity.
• Apter’s Reversal theory - there are two different ways of experiencing arousal: excitement seeking and anxiety avoidance

Boyle, E. & Connolly, T. (2008) A Review of Theories of Player Enjoyment in Playing Computer Games. In Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Games-Based Learning. Barcelona, Spain, 16-17 October 2008.

Connolly, Stansfield and Hainey (2008) present a framework for evaluating games-based learning based on an extensive literature review that was undertaken as part of Thomas Hainey’s doctoral research. First the paper provides some examples of existing frameworks and then presents a framework based on the following components:

• improvement in learner performance
• motivation and interest in participation
• perceptions such as realism, complexity, support and proficiency
• attitudes towards the subject and games for learning
• regularity and effectiveness of collaboration (optional)
• preferences, such as learning styles or modes of interaction
• GBL environment (environment, scaffolding, usability, level of social presence, deployment)

Connolly, T., Stansfield, M. & Hainey, T. (2008). Development of a General Framework for Evaluating Games-Based Learning. In Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Games-Based Learning. Barcelona, Spain, 16-17 October 2008.

I’m at the second European Conference on Game-Based Learning in Barcelona. I haven’t had time to see much of the city so far, but even the hotel is full of quirky interior design features, so that will keep me going for now.

The conference kicked off this morning with an enjoyable keynote from Simon Egenfeldt-Nielson.  I really liked how he started off by pointing out the problems with ‘edutainment’; that it is often reward-based and lacking in intrinsic motivation, there is no integrated learning experience, and that it is based on drill-and-practice learning. I couldn’t agree more.

He then went on to talk about what makes a good educational game design, saying “a good learning game is also a good game. A good game is also a good learning game.” True, but perhaps missing the issue of what is being learned and whether it is appropriate. He gave the game ‘Bully’ as an example of a game where there is learning inbuilt (learning what it’s like to be in an English boarding school, apparently). Now I could rant for a long time on the ethics of this game, but aside from that, I’m still not sure I see the relevance of this learning.

Simon also presented an interesting framework for evaluating the learning from a game, looking at substantive elements that generate interest (audiovisual and story) and what he calls ‘verbs’ that generate engagement and challenge (a defined problem-space, choices and decisions, consequences, feedback, balance and rewards). He argued that a good learning game needs the right substantives and verbs, but also the following three elements:

• integration (how does the actual action in the game relate to the learning?);
• motivation (is the game activity motivational?);
• focus (does the game teach what you want it to teach?).

Finally, he talked about some of his own research and development work and how the games developed can be embedded within a curriculum. Interestingly, he found that despite extensive teacher support tools (manuals, worksheets, etc) on embedding the game and associated activities, there was still an expectation among teachers that they could simply let their students play the game.

A lot of my current thinking is around the importance of high-end production values for education games, and I asked Simon a question about how important he felt this was at the end. He responded saying that “games will always be more expensive than traditional learning” and that it is important that learners need recognise that something is a game before they engage with it, and that a higher-end environment leads to greater immersion. I’m not sure how much I agree with any of these points (particularly in HE) but it is certainly interesting to get a different perspective.

There’s a one day conference, organised by Alex Mosely, running at Channel 4 in London on December 5, on the use of ARGs in charity and education.

I’m getting excited already.

This seems like a very apt title given that I’ve been unable to post for the past couple of weeks because of problems with my ISP - but that suddenly seems to be miraculuously fixed. Hurrah.

I got an email recently from Alex Hazel, one of the creators of a new charity alternate reality game. He says:

“Traces of Hope” is being launched as the first ever charity online ARG and is being built by the British Red Cross to coincide with its Civilians and Conflict month. The game features Joseph a sixteen-years-old caught up in the Ugandan civil war, separated from his family, hungry and alone in a camp overflowing with thousands forced to flee, Joseph is desperately seeking his mother. But he needs your help…

Sadly a week too late to be the first charity ARG, but looks interesting. You can see what the BBC has to say about it here.