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China ed and games forum
1. Open Learning Games
Marshall S. Smith and Phoenix Wang
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
January 8, 2008
Shanghai, China
2. • Overview
• 1. Some thoughts about learning
• 2. Salient properties of games as a place for learning.
• 3. Popular learning games
• 4. Possible design characteristics for Learning Games
• 5. Open as a Competitive strategy for learning games.
• 6 Goals for the future.
4. Elements of How People Learn
• Problem solving and reasoning.
• Organizing information, making inferences, and discovering strategies for
problem solving.
• Meaning making embedded in cultural experience and social relationships.
• Receiving positive reinforcement and sense of accomplishment
• Seeing different perspectives.
• Making sense of complex phenomenon. Simplifying, applying heuristics,
system thinking, understanding interactions between the parts.
5. Salient Properties of Games as Learning Environments
:Motivating:
• Positive reinforcement for success and progress
• Player Control over learning
Problem Oriented:
Allows for experimentation, failures and practice
Allows players to test different hypotheses
• Can simulate past, present, future, and fantasies
Engages in simulated real or fantasy life beyond current experiences
• Driven by compelling narratives – mystery, journey, quest
• Allow players to try on different identities and change perspectives
Allows for personalization through feedback
• Capable of tracking individual’s performance and personalizing experience
6. Learning Games We Love(d)
• In the 90’s – popular subject-specific games
– Oregon Trail (history)
– Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (geography)
– Zoombinis (math)
• Last decade—more complex system oriented games emerged:
– Civilization
– Whyville
– Quest Atlantis
7. Design Criteria for Smart Learning Games
1. Modular: Player(s) can accomplish something valued with limited time. Easily
modified/personalized. Localizable and extensible.
2. Easy to use by novices (teachers, students, parents) – wide audiences.
Transparent to grandparents.
3. Robust and reliable
4. Challenging but attainable goals that build on one another.
5. Support learning through formative assessment – continuous improvement
loops.
6. Relatable to 21st
Century skills or curriculum standards for school based use
7. Communication tools to connect with other players
8. Cross-platform – computers, consoles, mobile, etc.
8. Areas Ripe for Investment
UN World Food Program: Food Force
Social problem solving
Language Learning
Other Areas: Real science problems requiring
simulated experiments: Understanding by
determining fundamental laws of nature
(physics, chemistry etc.) Solving mysteries in
real life.
Music
Play Station: AmplitudeCoastline College: OLLI
9. Why can’t we make this happen? Some of
the Barriers to Learning Games
• Field dominated by a few, large commercial interests
• Field dominated by a few, large, killer apps.
• High barriers to entry: development tools, distribution
channels, talent
• Relatively low capital investment in learning games
• Balance between entertainment and learning value
• Few exemplars of smart, modular, manageable
learning games.
10. Changing the Strategy “Open” As Competitive
Strategy
• Open dramatically increases opportunities for dissemination and
access
• Spurs innovation through cycles of use, reuse, and adaptation.
Feedback loops from user to creator, creator to creator, user to
user.
• Lowers cost when allowing others to expand or localize the
product: modularity critical.
• Alternative business models to traditional one by one sales: Red
Hat, Long Tail, demand creating government, NGO, industry
support.
Open Educational Resources
Free for use, reuse, modify, and adapt
11. Support Open Environments to
Stimulate Growth
Strenghten
Infrastructure –
bandwidth,
open tools,
networks,
dispersed
capacity
Open protocols
and modular
designs
Enables more
experimentation
Allows for global
audience to
customize and
localize
Lowers barrier to
entry
Open games
R&D models to
study
effectiveness
Create Demand
12. Vision for Future Learning Games
“Seed the environment” with smart manageable games that follow usability
and modifiability criteria. Create demand for smart games and inspire
interest in generating an army of mix and mashers who can turn into
developers. Perhaps use competition to jump start.
“Learning Game World” Open immersive worlds where open games are
accessible, usable, reusable, and where communities of users and
developers can develop and flourish
“Game School”: Entire curricula for grades 6-12 curriculum developed as
games. As core curriculum or supplemental materials.
13. Develop, validate and use generalizable
measures of outcomes that are assumed
as outcomes of games like “World of
Warcraft” -- problem solving,
communication skills, cooperation skills,
creativity etc.
Editor's Notes
Accessibilities
Get kids from around the world to be game builders
According to Professor John B. Carroll, the equation Learning is a function of Content, Motivation and Time is a useful oversimplification of the factors that go into learning.
L=f(Content, Motivation, Time)
Content includes teachers (knowledge, energy), curriculum (content and skills), pedagogy
Motivation has a variety of components including student readiness (health, self-confidence, level of attention, sense of control over learning), cultural and social incentives and disincentives.
Time refers to the length of time it takes a particular student to learn particular content. Time varies depending primarily on prior knowledge, the knowledge and skills in the area that the student brings to the learning situation.
We have emphasized that we need to change the Content dramatically to include the new basics. And, we have suggested that the Time need not be a fixed dimension in schools anymore – in the future the student can carry the school along with her.
Motivation is a critical issue in the United States, though we pay little attention to it. I don’t know how much of an issue there is about the need for greater student motivation in the Asian nations. But, I suspect that the increase in interesting out of school activities such as computer games and chat rooms poses a threat to student motivation even in Asia. There is a lot of research evidence that student motivation is absolutely critical -- that positive reinforcement, a sense of control over environment and social support are critical. The technology approaches we suggest for learning some of the new basics have student motivation front and center -- they are designed to capture and engage students that have other choices.
Our bottom line is that we need to substantially alter all three components, content, motivation and time.
Modular – from kids perspective they learn something – for the learning part – people need closure in limited time, people will engage in it – better pedagogically.
Modular – building blocks – better as a development process so you can get continuous improvement – also supports re-use. Create learning games that have those characteristics – cross-platform
Create 20-30 min modules, fundamental aspects of laws of nature
Don’t need slick interface – ideas, learning value, or incentives (beating your friend) that drive the motivation – some games we love to play are clunky – engage more people by having simple games
"Open" to equalize access to knowledge: the Internet possibly may be the best equalizer to overcome disparities between rich and poor, urban and rural areas. Use MIT OCW as an example and anecdotes from recent media coverage.
"open" as a key element for spurring innovation: It enables like-minded people to find each other, share, and co-create. Wikiepedia is an example of people co-creating a body of knowledge that would have taken enormous amount of money and longer time for a single company to manage. Innocentive.com is an example that shows that great technical solutions can come from anywhere, and sometimes at faster speed and lower cost than solutions from a research laboratory.
"open" as a competitive edge: The Internet has enabled the widest possible dissemination of information from a multiplicity of sources. Since the value of any network increases as more content is transmitted to more people, open access is good economics - stimulating consumer demand for more content and products, while reducing costs in areas such as marketing and distribution.
Build an infrastructure for open games: bandwidth, free/open platforms, modularity, networks, tools, dispersed capacity, rapid development, continuous learning
Novices at game building (students, teachers, public) worldwide using open protocols to create useful games for their students and schools.
Personalization, customization, localization are key to reaching a global audience
“Learning Game World” Open world (like Second Life) where open games are parked and accessible, usable and reusable, ratable and where networks can develop and flourish.
Library of open games
