Games+Learning+Society 10 Conference

Discussant:  Kemi Jona

Build-a-Tree: Parent-Child Gaming in Museum Settings
Krystal Villanosa, Florian Block, Michael Horn, Chia Shen
Build-a-Tree (BAT) is a puzzle game designed to facilitate learning about evolution in museums. BAT asks players to construct phylogenetic trees (known as cladograms) using tokens depicting organisms and traits. Cladograms are a fundamental representation used by scientists to communicate hypotheses about common ancestry and shared trait inheritance. BAT challenges players with seven increasingly difficult levels. To win BAT, players build on what they learn in early levels to complete more complex trees. Visitors play BAT on a multi-touch display with visual tokens that can be independently and simultaneously manipulated. Players arrange tokens to build trees that accurately depict relationships of plants and animals. BAT is the result of an iterative design process in which numerous prototypes were developed and tested over three years. We have begun testing BAT at a natural history museum with parents and children to better understand how gameplay might influence visitor interpretation of museum objects.

Breeding Dragons for Learning Genetics: Redesigning a Classroom Game for an Informal Virtual World
Yasmin Kafai, Cynthia McIntyre, Trudi Lord, Paul Horwitz, Jennifer Sun, Mark Dinan, Daniel Kunka
Connecting learning and playing in virtual worlds inside and outside of schools has been an ongoing challenge. In this paper, we focus on the challenge by combining and leveraging the best of both worlds: the structured and guided activities found in many school-based virtual worlds with the voluntary and social participation of informal virtual worlds. For that purpose, we examine the redesign of an instructional classroom simulation called Geniverse into a virtual world game called Dragons in which players breed dragons in lairs and labs. We report on our design efforts and a five-month long implementation of Dragons in the massive virtual world of Whyville. Our findings focus on the nature of participation and play of over 1,200 online players and their interest in and understanding of genetics. In the discussion, we review what we have learned about redesigning classroom applications for serious gaming and outline further research steps.

Cellvival! The design and evaluation of a game to teach biology
Andrew Jefferson
Cellvival! is a game that attempts to meaningfully translate high school biology content, particularly evolutionary concepts, into engaging game mechanics. It was created for a research project that piloted the game (in the context of specifically developed accompanying lessons) with high school students at 3 schools and tested students before and after the lessons. These pre-post tests assessed the impact on content knowledge as well as deeper understanding and the ability to apply evolutionary reasoning to novel situations. This pre-post data was also collected from students doing a lab on microeveolution and students receiving teachers’ typical classroom instruction on the subject. The game’s design, learning objectives, and production as well as the research design, findings comparing the outcomes of students across the three types of lessons, and implications of these findings are discussed.

Discussant: Sasha Barab

Making people fail: Failing to learn through games and making
Breanne Litts, Dennis Ramirez
In traditional formal learning environments, students typically have two options: succeed or fail. Though there may be real-world merit to this type high-stakes system, we suggest that there is more to learning than a simple dichotomous outcome. In this paper, we leverage two areas of educational reform, games and making, to demonstrate a need to broaden our definition of failure and reconceptualize it as an integral part of the learning process. Rather than stigmatizing failure as a detrimental endpoint to learning, we discuss how these domains (games and making) expect and design for failure as part of the mastery process. We offer implications for learning and assessment with the hope of sparking a conversation among policymakers, educators, and designers of learning environments. 

The Effects of Avatar-based Customization on Player Identification in Extended MMO Gameplay
Selen Turkay, Charles Kinzer
Games allow players to perceive themselves in alternate ways in imagined worlds. Player identification is one of the outcomes of gameplay experiences in these worlds and has been shown to affect enjoyment and reduce self-discrepancy. Avatar-based customization has potential to impact player identification by shaping the relationship between the player and the character. This mixed method study aims to fill the gap in the identification literature by examining the effects of avatar-based customization on players’ identification with their characters in a massively multiplayer online game, Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). Participants (N = 66) played LotRO either in customization or in no-customization groups for about ten hours in four sessions over two weeks in a controlled lab setting. Data were collected through interviews and surveys. Results showed both time and customization positively impacted players’ identification with their avatars. Self-Determination Theory is used to interpret results.

Project TECHNOLOGIA: A Game-Based Approach to Understanding Situated Intentionality
Stephen Slota, Michael Young
By better understanding the way game mechanics influence student learning and interaction, the educational community may begin to isolate the useful elements of game-based coursework that move beyond so-called ‘content gamification’. However, approaching that goal requires greater attention paid to the deeply situated question: “What is the interaction between player intentionality, an instructionally-relevant game, and student outcomes?” To illuminate future directions for game-based learning theory and practice, the authors utilized mixed methods data collection to analyze the role of individual intentions in a dual text-based alternate reality/roleplaying game, Project TECHNOLOGIA. Preliminary findings suggest that well-guided player action may be the biggest contributor to emergent student intentions for learning in an ARG/RPG environment, and game narrative may be at least as important to the long-term fidelity of a game-based learning program as the game’s other mechanics.

Discussant:  Jodi Asbell-Clarke

Learning Analytics for Educational Game Design: Mapping Methods to Development
V. Elizabeth Owen
Big data in education (c.f. U.S.DoE, 2012) has fostered emergent fields like educational data mining (Baker & Yacef, 2009; Romero & Ventura, 2010) and learning analytics (Siemens & Long, 2011). Simulations and educational videogames are obvious candidates for the application of these analytic methods (Gee, 2003; Steinkuehler, Barab, & Squire, 2012), affording big data situated in meaningful learning contexts (Mislevy, 2011; Shute, 2011; Clark et al., 2012). In design of these educational games, telemetry-based analytics for core design, alpha usertesting, and final-stage adaptive play design plays a key role in optimizing learner experience. This paper maps a framework of learning analytics methods to learning game development phases – from core data structures, to bug killing, to customized, automatic scaffolding design. Leveraging these powerful analytic tools of visualization, association mining, and predictive modeling throughout the design process is key to supporting players in a user-adaptive, engaging play experience optimized for learning.

The Common Core State Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards, and the Potential of Digital Game-Based Learning and Assessment
Eric Tucker
Game-based learning and assessment have emerged as promising areas of innovation that could inform and enhance the provision of personalized learning at scale. This paper presents promising practices in the emerging field of technology-enhanced, game-based educational assessment. We examine recent developments in the field and present interviews and case studies to illuminate potential paths along which game-based assessment might evolve. We aim to increase understanding of how game-based assessment could become an integral component of assessment practices and systems, and we encourage the game and assessment industries and advocates to develop game-based assessment products with the potential to enhance meaningful accountability and to inform teaching and learning. We seek to advance games, learning, and assessment as an emerging field and to suggest that game-based assessment may hold relevance for broader conversations about next generation assessments, particularly those aligned with the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards.

Game Design and Player Metrics for Player Modeling in Adaptive Educational Games
Justin Patterson, Aroutis Foster, Jichen Zhu
As data-driven information technology develops, the potential of adaptive educational games becomes increasingly evident. However, much about how to design and develop adaptive learning games is largely not well-understood. In this paper, we present our approach for designing game mechanics and player metrics toward player modeling, necessary steps toward adaptive educational games. Through our on-going Avian project, we demonstrate how we design gameplay activities to support learners of different player types and design player metrics to capture their behavior patterns for player modeling. We believe that the approach behind our game design can be applied in other adaptive educational games that uses player modeling. We also discuss our future plans to player modeling and the evaluation of our approach.

Discussant:  James Paul Gee

Political Agenda: A cognitive game for political perspective taking
Matthew Easterday, Selwa Barhumi, Yanna Krupnikov
How might we use games to teach citizens political perspective taking? The first phase of this design-based research project surveyed 187 undergraduate students and found relatively poor political perspective taking abilities. The second phase of the project designed an educational game for political perspective taking and used a single-group pre/post design to test the game with 14 social policy students and found that the game was engaging but did not promote learning. The third phase of the project describes the design of a game with an embedded intelligent tutor that provides the sort of step-level feedback needed for teaching reasoning on complex skills. This work argues that we can design effective and engaging civics games by: (a) teaching political perspective taking through moral foundations theory, (b) using fantasy environments that ask players to predict policy positions, and (c) using embedded intelligent tutors.

Project NEO: The effect of a science game to promote STEM learning by changing attitudes and skillsets of preservice teachers
Richard Van Eck, Mark Guy, Robert Brown, Scott Brewster, Austin Winger
The number of STEM majors needed to meet the expected needs of our future workforce is expected to grow, yet fewer students are choosing to major in STEM areas, and those who are may be underprepared by current school curriculum. While innovative solutions like video games in middle school STEM areas are critical, solutions may also need to involve elementary school preservice teachers (PSTs). Research shows that PSTs are underprepared, however, and that their students do not master fundamental skills needed for middle school. This NSF-supported project developed and tested the first of several planned modules of a video game based on the Next Generation Science Standards. Results suggest that PSTs who play the video game demonstrate improved science content knowledge. The study also found that PSTs had positive attitudes toward video games as instructional tools. Implications for PST education relating to games and science education are discussed.

Designing Beyond the Game: Leveraging Games to Teach Designers about Interaction, Immersion, and Ethical Perspective
David Simkins
This paper discusses a course developed to explore contextual ethics and critical ethical reasoning through study of the design of a popular, open world, sandbox role playing game. This work is based on a course centered on Elders Scrolls 5: Skyrim, offered spring 2012. Throughout the course, students played about 10 hours per week and kept a journal of their play, class time was spent discussing readings about the social context represented in the game, as well as ethical theory, and the practice of game and role play design.This paper offers a framework for other instructors in how one might use an integrated approach to exploring game design and humanities in a way that enhances student learning of both.

Discussant:  Sean Duncan

It’s better to talk with honey than vinegar: Insights into collaborative learning within mobile AR games
Denise Bressler
According to the National Research Council, the ability to collaboratively solve problems is of the utmost importance in scientific careers, yet students are not exposed to learning experiences that promote such expertise. Researchers have found that interdependent roles used within mobile AR games are an effective way to scaffold collaborative problem solving. Using a multiple case study approach, this study assessed communication responses, scientific practices, and language style used both by student teams playing a mobile AR science game and teams participating in a control activity. Conversations amongst game teams revealed not only higher levels of scientific practices but also higher levels of engaged responses and communal language. Conversations amongst control teams revealed lower levels of scientific practice along with higher levels of rejecting responses and commands. Implications for these findings are discussed.

Citizen Science in the classroom: An analysis of teacher-student discourse
Amanda Barany, Christian Schmieder, Jilana Boston, Kurt Squire
Preliminary analyses of a classroom implementation of the game Citizen Science suggests that patterns of lexical choices in teacher-student interaction may have implications for the projected efficacy of games in classroom settings. This proposal discusses consequences of our exploratory analysis of educator-student interactions while playing Citizen Science in a classroom setting. We will explore how these findings will inform subsequent implementation of telemetric game data and qualitative interviews with students. Furthermore we will introduce a series of tools and techniques for field workers and educators, designed to playfully reflect on lexical choices when implementing games in institutionalized educational contexts.

Discussant:  
Ira Sockowitz

Facilitating the Discovery and Use of Learning Games
William Jordan-Cooley
Despite the growing popularity and development of educational games, poor distribution, technical challenges, and lack of teacher support impede successful implementation. As a solution, BrainPOP's GameUp provides a curated database of quality educational video games. Additionally, each game is aligned with K-12 learning objectives and accompanied by supplemental materials. This paper will present the internal evaluation process used for selecting games, including technical, logistical, legal and quality considerations. The evaluation criteria for quality combine a standardized set of heuristics with open-ended qualitative analysis. The purpose of presenting our process is to invite feedback and inform interested game developers about GameUp as a support for successful discovery and use of educational games.

A theoretical framework for the research and design of serious games to promote problem solving
Richard Van Eck, Woei Hung
While problem solving is lauded as a benefit of video games, little empirical evidence exists to support this assertion. Current definitions and taxonomies are often contradictory and do not capture the complexity and diversity of modern games. Many video game researchers are also unfamiliar with the 75+ years of problem solving research in Europe and the United States. We propose a classification of gameplay that accounts for the cognitive skills during gameplay, relying in part on Mark Wolf's concept of grids of interactivity. We then describe eleven problem types and the dimensions along which they vary. Finally, we use the shared dimensions of gameplay and problem types to align gameplay types and problems. We believe that this framework for thinking about games and problem solving can guide future design and research on problem solving and games.

Discussant:  James Paul Gee

Learning, Play, and Identity in Gendered Lego Franchises
Rebecca Black, Bill Tomlinson, Ksenia Korobkova, Sierra Ivy
In this paper, we use a mixed methods approach to compare the multimodal “building blocks” of play provided by the Lego Friends franchise, which is primarily aimed at female audiences, and several other Lego series that are marketed to similar-age male audiences. Using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we examine if and how certain configurations of play and gendered-discourses may be privileged through preferred set constructions (i.e., those provided by Lego via instructions and marketing materials) and associated media narratives (i.e., videogames and videos). Initial quantitative analyses suggest that Lego sets for girls may be at a slightly more developmentally advanced level than those for boys. Qualitative analysis suggests that the sets, games, and materials both challenge and affirm traditional gender stereotypes.

Boys and their Toys: Video Game Learning & the Common Core
Jason Engerman, Monique MacAllan, Alison Carr-Chellman
Traditional K-12 public school culture seems to be alienating and distancing for many boys today (Martin 2002). Author proposes that this crisis is due to the rejection of boy culture (2011). Gaining acceptance of games in traditional classrooms has the powerful potential to change the culture of schools to one that is more welcoming to boys’ ways of being, but most teachers find games without sufficient curricular merit to spend the necessary time learning and utilizing games effectively. This study sought to understand the potential interaction between commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) video games and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) as reported by boy gamers. Data was gathered through phenomenologically based semi-structured interviews with boys, aged 10-17. Our results indicate specific connections between COTS and the CCSS, further supporting such theoretical works from Prensky (2006) and Gee (2003).

Tech Trajec-Stories: Values That Shape the Lives of Women in Technology
Meagan Rothschild, Amanda Ochsner
Education and industry would benefit from more women in computer science. Still vastly underrepresented, there is a need for more research on women’s experiences with technology. Better understanding how those experiences shape—and are shaped by—women’s ongoing relationships with play and learning may reveal new approaches for engaging women in computer science education and the technology industry. This paper reports on first steps in this direction of inquiry, describing the outcomes of interviews with women in computer science. Interviews focused on each woman’s long-term trajectory, querying how each participant remembers and ranks her values as she thinks back on key phases of her life. Guiding research questions included, 1) How do successful women in computer science fields describe their life story in terms of play and learning experiences? 2) Given a list of values, how do women in computer science rank values across selected seasons from youth to adulthood?

Discussant:  Elisabeth Gee

“About as Educational as Minecraft Can Get”: Youth Framings of Games and Learning in an Affinity Space
Sean Duncan, Joey Huang
As part of a larger study investigating teacher, parent, and youth interactions regarding game-based learning, we focused on exchanges between teachers and students around the game Minecraft. Drawing text from a popular online affinity space for Minecraft, Reddit's /r/minecraft subreddit, we performed a detailed big-D Discourse analysis (Gee, 2010) on one self-professed youth's instructional model for implementing Minecraft in a classroom. The analysis reveals biases toward freeform play and using games as platforms rather than as directed instructional tools in schooling environments, further illustrating a potential gap between teacher goals and expectations of digitally-engaged youth regarding games for learning. 

Construction and community: Investigating interaction in a Minecraft affinity space
Anthony Pellicone, June Ahn
Traditionally situated learning has been understood in terms of communities of practice, where membership in a community helps individuals develop knowledge in a specific domain. However, the framework of affinity spaces has been developed to account for the anonymous nature of learning which occurs in online environments. This paper examines the conflicts and intersections of these two different theoretical frameworks for considering the learning environments which form in knowledge sharing around digital games. This paper combines both discourse analysis and social network analysis to understand and describe an online environment dedicated to Minecraft. We find that this particular environment is an example of an affinity space. However, by examining the unstated assumptions found within the discourse of the space we find that participants in this space often bring with them the contours of an assumed culture which exists outside of the structural bounds of the space.

On the Fields of Justice: The Emergence of Teamwork in League of Legends
Christian de Luna
In today’s working world, no one person can accomplish everything by him or herself. Collaborative skills are in high demand by employers, and educators in recent years have been researching ways to foster such collaborative skills in students. Some researchers have turned to online game environments as potential training grounds for leadership and training skills development. This study investigates the emergence of teamwork, expert-novice interaction, and cross-cultural communication in Riot Games’ League of Legends, a multi-player online battle arena, and suggests how those observations may help inform the development of online game environments intended to promote teamwork skills.

Discussant:  Kurt Squire

Compassion as a Learnable Skill
Richie Davidson
Compassion meditation produces changes in brain function that promote well-being, foster certain forms of positive affect and virtuous dispositions and impact physical health and illness.  Through research with both long-term practitioners and novices studied longitudinally, this talk will illustrate some of key findings and challenges in the nascent field of contemplative neuroscience and will also showcase a major research project on the impact of games developed to cultivate mindfulness and compassion on the brain and behavior. 

Social Emotional Learning: Scaling Impact
Jessica Berlinski
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is comprised of two key facets: skill building and creating safe, supportive climates where these skills can thrive.   Whether in school or at home, effective SEL teaching requires that teachers and parents role model their own management of emotions, empathy, attentive listening and respectful communication to create these safe climates.  Berlinski will share how can we leverage technology – particularly games – to build both key facets of SEL.  She will also discuss the broader socio-culture ecosystem and how we must engage all sectors and stakeholders to create the needed cultural shift to make 21st skills like perseverance, collaboration and empathy educational priorities. 

Discussant: James Gambrell

Crossing the Bridge: Connecting Game-Based Implicit Science Learning to the Classroom
Elizabeth Rowe, Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Erin Bardar, Emily Kasman, Barbara MacEachern
Games offer a unique opportunity to promote and study implicit learning that could be foundational for further STEM learning. This paper reports on preliminary results from a national classroom implementation study. In this study, 42 teachers were assigned to the Bridge (classroom activities and game play), Games (game play only), or Control group. The game, Impulse, immerses players in the physical laws of Newtonian motion. Hierarchical linear modeling of data from the first 14 teachers to complete the study shows a significant positive effect of the Bridge group compared to the Control group on student’s post-assessment scores after accounting for pre-assessment scores. This Group effect, however, was significantly moderated by whether more than half of the students enrolled in the class completed the study (strong vs. weak cohort). This initial finding supports our conjecture that Impulse can help prepare some students for improved science learning in class.

No hands needed: Investigating the affordances of using a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) as a game controller and its potential effect on learning and user experience
Selen Turkay, Maria Hwang, Pantiphar Chantes, Dan Hoffman, Charles Kinzer, Ahram Choi, Shuyi Hsu
Recently, Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) have attracted attention in the educational gaming field, but research with such devices is sparse. This study used the Emotiv EPOC BCI neuroheadset to investigate the affordances of using BCI as a game controller and its potential effect on learning and positive player experiences, with a view to providing implications for designing educational games. The study showed that the Emotiv interface helped participants learn abstract symbols and their associated English meanings as well as those who did not use the headset. Additionally, the BCI shows promising potential as fun and engagement were consistently higher throughout the game. Educational game designers can consider the potential of BCIs and how they can take advantage of increased engagement towards better learning.

Effects of the systematic playing of a mindfulness game on attentional processes
Elena Patsenka