Learning & Teaching with Animations and Games
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The document discusses the use of animations and games in learning, emphasizing experiential learning principles and the evolution of multimedia in education since the 1990s. It highlights the potential of games-based learning and alternate reality games (ARGs) in creating immersive and engaging educational experiences, while also noting the challenges and limitations, such as the need for robust empirical research. Finally, it touches on gamification's role in motivating behavior and its complexities within educational contexts.
Learning & Teaching with Animations and Games
- 1. Learning and Teaching with Animations and Games Daniel Livingstone @dlivingstone d.Livingstone@gsa.ac.uk
- 2. Play
- 4. Beware: Some popular theories/concepts may be subject to strong criticism in literature Be careful esp. with: • Learning Styles • Digital Natives
- 5. From: Using Games-Based Learning to Teach Requirements: Collection and Analysis at Tertiary Education Level, Thomas Hainey, PhD Thesis, University of the West of Scotland, 2010
- 7. Learning with Multimedia In 1990’s multimedia learning developed with ability of PCs to combine text, audio and video resources. Much work went into developing principles for designing effective multimedia for learning, e.g.: • Mayer et al. (1999): Cognitive Load theory • Laurillard et al. (2000): Affordances for learning • Dror et al. (2008): Exaggerating distinctiveness
- 9. Game Based Learning • Deliberate use of games to support learning of some curricula / topic – Knowledge or skills – Or support engagement with topic – School or home based • Study of the learning that occurs when players play games – What & how they learn playing the game – What & how they learn from meta-game activities: wikis, forums, etc.
- 10. GOOD
- 11. Consolarium
- 15. Observations on GBL • Limited base of strong empirical research • Continued conflict between educational and entertainment goals in bespoke GBL – How to better design games to support specific learning objectives – Need to better understand the unintentional learning
- 16. ARG An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions. (Wikipedia, emphasis mine)
- 17. Features • Compelling Narrative • Collaborative Gameplay • Multiple communication channels: – Web pages, email, phone calls, print media, ... • Game players create own channels – Discussion boards, email, meetings, ... • Developers can respond to players actions – Performance not product
- 18. I Love Bees • First major successful ARG was The Beast – a game tied to the Spielberg film AI, and seeded through clues in movie posters • Second was I Love Bees – a game tied to the release of Halo 2 – Seeded initially with jars of promotional honey sent to journalists – ilovebees.com URL shown at end of Halo 2 cinema trailer
- 20. Collective Intelligence (CI) • Challenge: “To create puzzles and challenges that no single person could solve on their own” (Elan Lee, director) • Solved by approx 100,000 active players over 4 months (3 million players in total) – One million message board posts – 33,000 chat messages/day
- 23. ‘Pointsification’ “Points and badges have no closer a relationship to games than they do to websites and fitness apps and loyalty cards. They’re great tools for communicating progress and acknowledging effort, but neither points nor badges in any way constitute a game.” - Margaret Robertson http://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play/
- 27. Motivation • Intrinsic – The thing is its own reward • Extrinsic – External reward for doing the thing – Implication is that the thing itself is perhaps not worth doing?
- 28. Gamification is Dangerous because… • There is no agreed definition – and some vocal disagreement – We don’t control the term: it is used more in marketing than education • Inappropriate rewards might reduce desired motivation • Making good games is hard: at least as hard as making good learning experiences – Games that appeal to everyone are even more difficult • The research is mostly ‘to be completed’ – lots of preliminary results, little hard empirical data
- 29. But… Rewards systems really can work Games and simulations can provide effective and authentic learning environments for skills acquisition E.g. recent work at UWS on teaching research methods to nursing students: making an subject that is typically abstract and obscure into something concrete and directly applicable
- 30. A little mention… • MSc Serious Games & Virtual Reality @ The Glasgow School of Art • Always on the look out for project ideas for students!
Editor's Notes
- #3: Jungle gym, public domain http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jungle-gym.jpg Play is important for children in learning social interaction, physical and natural systems, language, numeracy and skills development. Building dams, playing with blocks, manipulating objects, negotiating roles, counting, … Large number of books, websites, articles…
- #4: Kolb: experiential learning cycle: concrete experience -> observation and reflection -> abstract conceptualisation -> active experimentation ->
- #5: See: http://psi.sagepub.com/content/9/3/105.short http://qz.com/585143/the-concept-of-different-learning-styles-is-one-of-the-greatest-neuroscience-myths/ http://jolt.richmond.edu/wp-content/uploads/Selwyn-The-Digital-Native-Myth-and-Reality.pdf Image: CC-BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fry1989 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:South_Africa_-_General_Warning_sign_(temporary).svg
- #6: Can you name examples of each category?
- #7: Interactive simulation from the University of Colorado at Boulder. http://phet.colorado.edu/ These tend to be very tightly scoped, but cover a wide range of systems in STEM subjects. Note that these free and reusable simulations have been funded by the Hewlett Foundation, the NSF and others. You can download the complete website or individual sims for local installation. License terms are either Creative Commons Attribution or GPL – and source code is available. Commercial reuse is allowed. http://phet.colorado.edu/about/licensing.php
- #9: Good: Focus on learning/safety - Non-photo realistic presentation minimises distractors - Clear visual style and reinforced with text Bad?: - Too fast? - Written text versus voiceover? (Mayer, 2009, 2011) – But most effect when material is complex, presentation is fast and learners familiar with the words. Minimise text! Mayer 2011 applies principles to games and highlights positive role of: pre-training added prior to game Polite rather than direct speech Opportunity for reflection/self-explanation
- #10: Overview, and come back to these later
- #11: A lot of video games are actually very bad at teaching players. Many games are simply bad. When highlighting positive power of games for learning, examples tend to focus greatly on games that scaffold player learning effectively, even where the processes that enable this are not necessarily well understood by the designers who may be working intuitively
- #13: Using commercial games – answer is easy: can you afford to buy the software and hardware you require. I’ll be focussing on bespoke and custom made games with specific educational goals and intent.
- #23: http://www.g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/ Marketing, social programming/influence, health insurance bonus points for walking… points points points Tax relief points for taking the bus or being a good parent… Systems could all be crass and commercial, but could inspire us to be better people Wired’s take: “*The part about the college professor awarding “experience points” instead of grades, and seeing class participation skyrocket. That one’s worth the bandwidth in and of itself.”
- #24: “So, in summary: Gamification, as it stands, should actually be called poinstification, and is a bad thing because it’s a misleading title for a misunderstood process, although pointsification, in and of itself, is a perfectly valid and valuable concept which nonetheless needs to be implemented carefully with due concern for appropriateness and for unintended consequences, just as actual gamification, namely the conversion of existing systems into functioning games, is also a valid and valuable process which carries its own concerns, but which now cannot with any clarity be referred to as gamification since that term is already widely associated with the process of what should more properly be called poinstification, and which we therefore propose be instead termed ‘luding’, mostly because it sounds a bit like ‘lewding’. Or, in other words: Games are good, points are good, but games ≠ points.”
- #25: Hogwarts House Points Hourglasses CC-BY Anna Fox (Harshlight) - http://www.flickr.com/photos/harshlight/5308501629/in/photolist-966sAa/#
- #26: Diy.org Badges for circuit bending, geologist, …
- #27: http://chrishecker.com/Achievements_Considered_Harmful%3F