Game-Like+Learning

//presented by// ** The Group Formerly Known as Prince **
 * Game-Like Learning: An Example of Situated Learning and Implications for Opportunity to Learn ** by James Paul Gee

**Members:** Ana Dinh, Nick Vu, Daniel Salvador, Amanda D'Avila, EJ Delfin toc =1. Introduction=


 * Knowledge** involves more than knowing, it is a way of doing, seeing, talking, being, etc… So, it wouldn’t make sense to tell a newbie or novice all the details of any particular domain of knowledge; they wouldn’t know what to do with it.

//For example, if you’re teaching someone how to swim, there would be no point in going over the explicit details of the butterfly stroke when they don’t even know how to doggie paddle. On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to throw the person into the deep end of the pool and hope that they stay afloat.//

This is the idea of **Overt Instruction vs. Immersion**

There needs to be a middle ground between the two pedagogical approaches. An example of this would be “post-progressive” pedagogy that combines immersion with well-designed guidance. An area that displays much of the same kind of learning is modern video games.

This is where **“Game-like”** learning is introduced. //“Game-like” learning refers to research based on digital technologies facilitating situated understandings in the context of activity and experience.//

=2. Situated vs. General Learning=

//Knowledge is a verb// through activity and experience //before it is a noun:// treating knowledge as facts and information. There are two types of understandings associated with this theory: **situated and general.**

Situated Understanding
Situated understanding of a concept or word implies the //ability to use the word or understand the concept in ways that are customizable to different specific situation//s. For example, a person can differentiate the situation when someone says, “The coffee spilled, bring the mop/broom.”







General Understanding
General understanding implies an ability to analyze one’s //understanding in terms of other words or general principles, but not necessarily an ability to apply this knowledge to actual situations//. For example, one may know the Pythagorean theorem, but fail to apply it when looking for the correct dimensions of a TV.



=3. Classroom examples from the article=

The article shows two specific examples that show digital technology used exclusively for learning in a classroom.

Boxer
Boxer is a programming language. A science teacher used Boxer to supplement his lesson on Galileo’s principles of motion. The lesson to represent motion went like this:

1. The first command line sets the speed of a moving object at 1 meter per second. 2. The second command tells the computer to move the object. 3. The third command tells the computer to repeat the second step X amount of times.

The student will see a graphical object move in uniform motion. Furthermore, Gallpinles can extended by simply changing (modifying/adding/subtrating) the variables in the command lines. For example a student can continue to add to the script:

4. The fourth command tells the computer to add 1 second to the speed of the moving object after each movement the object has taken.

Now, after the first movement on the screen, the computer will set the speed of the object to move at two meters per second.



//So what?//

The student is seeing in an embodied way, tied to action, how a representational system much more simple than algebra or calculus executing the Galileo’s principles of motion.

Supercharged!


Supercharged! is a computer game created to explicitly help students learn electromagnetics. The game play consisted of two phases: planning and playing.


 * A player must plan the trajectory of their ship before they actually play.
 * Each level contains obstacles that affect their planned trip such as: points of charge, planes of charge, magnetic planes, solid magnets, and electric currents. All of these are obstacles are traditionally found in electromagnetism texts.


 * The goal**: Help learners build intuition and predictions on electromagnetics based on their experiences in the virtual game world.




 * Proof it works:** A student correctly identified the curve of a charge when moving to a positive to a negative charge.


 * //“I know this because this is what it looked like in the game and it was hard to move away or toward it because the two charges are close together so they sort of cancel each other out.”//**

Although the control group (the group of students that were taught in a traditional non-game-like setting) was also able to identify the correct curve.


 * //Interviewer: Why do you think it looks like that?//**
 * //Alex: I don’t know. The teacher said so and showed us a picture and that was what it looked like. //**


 * The Difference:** The **“game-like” learning group** was recalling experiences and challenges that were part of the game, whereas students in the **control group** relied more on their ability to memorize and recall information.

Teachers then structured the game so they would have to reflect and make predictions what would happen at different levels.
 * The problem:** Teachers came to realize that students were initially playing the game // without a good deal of critical reflection on their play. //



Thus, making an ** already boring ** educational game ** INCREDIBLY BORING **.

=4. “Full Spectrum Warrior”=

This article focuses on the commercial video game, //Full Spectrum Warrior.// This video game has its origins in a U.S. Army training simulation where it demands that the player thinks, values, and acts like a professional soldier to “win” the game. In order to become a professional, the player must interact and work with the virtual player to master all of the skills, tasks, and activities that the game calls for in order to "win."



The article focuses on answering the paradox found in game-like learning through //Full Spectrum Warrior.//

But, what is the paradox?

Paradox
Game-like learning **won’t work to try and tell newcomers everything** (e.g. telling students the principles of electromagnetics in a traditional lecture-based setting). But, simply **turning learners loose to engage in the domain’s activities won’t work either.** (e.g. having students play Supercharged! without reflection or predictions to their activity makes the activity meaningless)

//So how does Full Spectrum Warrior (FSW) answer this?//

Distributed Authentic Professionalism
FSW is designed in such a way that certain sorts of knowledge are built into the virtual characters (e.g. fellow soldiers and enemies). These represent virtual **“Authentic Professionals.”** Authentic professionals are committed to an identity in which their skills and their knowledge are seen as valuable and significant. // Other examples of authentic professionals are the professional skateboarders with high skill attributes in Tony Hawk Skateboarding games. //

A player progressing through FSW encounters many authentic professionals and must make a conscious decision on how to act based on the player’s past knowledge and learning.



For example, the game is designed so the player is immersed in warfare in a first hand perspective. The player takes into account the activity, values, and ways of seeing while being scaffolded by the virtual components of the game. These scaffolds include briefing the player on what to do “just in time” before moments of action.

//**This solves the paradox because the learner is not left to his/her own devices to rediscover the foundations of a professional practice that took hundreds of years to develop.**//

=5. What Game-Like Learning Means for Teachers?=

So, as teachers, what does game-like learning mean for us? How does it benefit classroom instruction and how could it hinder students’ learning?

Positives
As discussed earlier, incorporating educational games in the classroom can encourage engagement in course material by providing students with the opportunity to explore a topic or concept through a medium almost all students are familiar. Games allow students to work through course curriculum at a pace that’s appropriate for their own personal learning. Also, educational games in the classroom provide instant feedback to the student, promote learning by doing, and are constantly challenging students in a variety of ways that promote technology in the classroom.

Negatives:
Despite all the fun and games (pun intended) of incorporating game-like learning in the classroom, it’s not necessarily the most effective teaching strategy. First, it does not provide students with constant active engagement in the class material. In other words, students can essentially waste the entire class period staring at their computer screen or goofing around, and then blame the incompletion of the assignment on their “inability to understand the topic or concept”, when in reality, they weren’t working all class period. It is harder to keep students accountable for their work when the computer is the one giving the feedback on student progress and not the teacher. Secondly, as mentioned before, students tend to play the games without a good deal of reflections or predictions. Without reflections or predictions, there is no promotion of higher-level thinking or metacognition among students. Finally, although games provide “instant feedback” to the students, a lot of times they don’t provide clarification or give as in-depth of an explanation of incorrectness or misunderstanding as a teacher would. Students need timely feedback, but not at the expense of the quality of feedback.

=6. Implications=

Advantages for Students

 * Students exposed to game-like learning have an advantage because they have experiential knowledge that is situated in a specific context; there’s meaning.
 * Students have the ability to generalize what they learned into other situations without losing the grounding of their knowledge.
 * The learning of facts and information “comes free” with a game-like approach. #winwin

Disadvantages for Students

 * The problem right now is that kids who come from privileged backgrounds have been more exposed to game-like learning at this point.

Implications for Instructional Designers:
**//“If you want to take all of the fun out of it, get a bunch of educators involved.”//** Let’s face it, educational games aren’t as fun, graphically compelling, or immersive. Why would someone want to create something that is ugly and boring? #realtalk #thetruthhurts

Textual Understanding
Games provide situated, embodied understandings; students can //feel// concepts learned in game-like environments. However, there is a disconnect with textual knowledge, which is typically generated with textbooks, workbooks, and lectures. Textualism refers to the belief that knowledge is “true” when represented through textual definitions. Textual definitions do not hold meaning without contextual or embodied understandings, which games can provide. Is it feasible for instructional designers to represent all understandings in the form of digital models?

E-Learning
Gaming communities are at the cutting edge of consumer grade simulation, artificial intelligence, and community design. However, most E-learning environments follow the old paradigm of instruction instead of representing the experimentation, problem-solving, and collaboration that characterizes the new gaming age. Instructional designers need to start looking at why and how games work and use this understanding to design educational media. Games do not have to be a medium to be used for learning right away; they can be used as a place for ideas and design inspiration. #betterthanmakingboringgames

=7. Citations=

Anonymous. "Supercharged!" The Education Arcade. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 20 Dec. 2005. Web. 9 July 2013. .

Gamespot. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Story Recap." Online Video clip. YouTube. 3 Nov, 20133. Web. 9 Jul. 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SydVOfAQbhw

Gee, James Paul. //"Game-Like Learning"//, Assessment, Equity, and Opportunity to Learn. Cambridge University Press, 2008. Cambridge Books Online. Web. 10 July 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511802157.010.

Full Spectrum Warrior. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved July 9, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Spectrum_Warrior

Squire, Kurt. “Game-Based Learning: Present and Future State of the Field.” E-Learning Consortium. 2005. Web. 10 July 2013. .