This slideshow was presented for Richfield Public Schools district staff development and presents the next step in integration of embodiment research and Learning Acceleration through learning by design for classrooms, training, and professional development.

1. Play, Games, and Learning by
Design
Video Games as Learning Tools
Brock Dubbels
vgAlt.com
and the Center for Cognitive Sciences,
The University of Minnesota

2. Major Outcomes and Objectives
1. Exploration and awareness of the role play in teaching and learning.
2. Awareness of titles, genre, and platforms for game play and become
familiar with uses of gaming technology and design for delivery of
content, communication, production, and cultural artifacts.
3. Make connections between research‐based views of comprehension,
composition, numeracy and new media literacy.
4. Examination of grade and content specific standards from a district and
state level to connect benchmarks and outcomes in using games.
5. Development of curriculum based upon elements of game design and
research‐based assessment practice.
6. Resources for getting games to use.
7. Construction and implementation of a standards-based unit for use in
the classroom.
8. Action research and coaching observations

3. Guiding Question:
How can video games and play be used in the classroom for learning and
literacy development?

4. When is an activity not
play?
Play is an activity where there are NO
significant consequences.
No is significant here.
When you here the words
Don’t play with that . . . No
honey, no. ..
My coffee .. …
Computer . . . .
No!
Ohhhh noooo!
Then you know it is not play
Mostly, it is not play when an activity has consequences –
but that is relative to who is cleaning it up!

5. Was this play?
It is relative right? Tell payroll!

6. Ethos of Activity
Play Work

7. 16-year-old drops out of school to
play Guitar Hero
young Mr. Peebles is dropping out of high school... in
order to focus on Guitar Hero full time. Peebles hopes to
join the small but growing crew of players looking to
make gaming a job. Citing his victories in Guitar Hero
tournaments, which include "gift certificates, gaming
equipment, and chicken sandwiches," Peebles thinks he
has the chops to play competitively and earn actual
money in the process. As the story notes, top gamers on
the competitive circuit can earn up to $80,000 a year
(though $25,000 is more common). Peebles, of course,
can count his 52 Chick-fil-A combo meals toward that
total.

8. And rather than fight it, we need to us
it to accelerate learning and sustain
engagement.

9. Play is a portal to Self-Determination and Work
Working hard at play?

12. What this means for schools
Maybe we need to motivate and engage through recruiting play for
developing work-like competencies. You can go to:
http//:5th-teacher.blogspot.com
www.vgalt.com/blog
www.vgalt.com/moodle
www.videogamesaslearningtools.com

13. Sustained Engagement
• When looking to measure growth or change, or even to understand
whether a learner has truly engaged, an educator should also look for
evidence of commitment and positive attitudes related to the activity and
subject matter.
• Engagement is not just doing the work, it is a connection and an affinity to
an activity supported from the affective domains (Chapman, 2003).
• Skinner & Belmont (1993, p.572) report that engaged learners show
sustained behavioral involvement in learning activities accompanied by a
positive emotional tone and select tasks at the border of their
competencies, initiate action when given the opportunity, and exert
intense effort and concentration.
• Pintrich and & De Groot (1990, in Chapman) see engagement as having
observable cognitive components that can be seen or elicited through
exploring the learner’s use of strategy, metacognition, and self-regulatory
behavior to monitor and guide the learning processes.

14. Work Play
POSTURE VOLUME EMPHASIS COMPLEX POSTURE VOLUME EMPHASIS COMPLEX
SYM/ ANIM / RELAXED TONE VARIED / LESS / VERBOSE / SYM/ ANIM / RELAXED / TONE VARIED / LESS / VERBOSE /
ASSYM NONANIM / STIFF VARIED/MONO CONSISTENT MORE TERSE ASSYM NONANIM STIFF VARIED/MONO CONSISTENT MORE TERSE
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 12
Dubbels (Accepted) Learning engagement, student 2.0, and the role of play in convergence culture in the digital age. JISE

15. A Life Without Play
Whitman had been raised in a
tyrannical, abusive household. From birth
through age 18, Whitman’s natural playfulness
had been systematically and dramatically
suppressed by an overbearing father.
A lifelong lack of play deprived him of
opportunities to view life with optimism, test
alternatives, or learn the social skills that, as part
of spontaneous play, prepare individuals to cope
with life stress. The committee concluded that
lack of play was a key factor in Whitman's
homicidal actions – if he had experienced regular
moments of spontaneous play during his
life, they believed he would have developed the
skill, flexibility, and strength to cope with the
stressful situations without violence.
Dr. Brown’s subsequent research of other violent
individuals concludes that play can act as a
powerful deterrent, even an antidote to prevent
violence. Play is a powerful catalyst for positive
socialization.

16. What is the opposite of play?
Depression

17. This is your brain on depression

18. What can we do?
• Alignment of the assignment
• Interaction
• Grouping
• Autonomy supporting spaces
• Thresholds /liminality
• Play as the subjunctive mood

19. Invoking play
Probability
Branching
Rules
Roles &
Identity
Imagery &
visualization
By design
Dubbels (2008) Reading, games, and transmedial comprehension. Handbook of Games in Education.

20. Extrinsic Motivation
Identity informs Continuum
motivation and
engagement External regulation Introjected regulation Identified regulation
•External regulation: doing something
for the sake of achieving a reward or
avoiding a punishment.
•Introjected regulation: partial
internalization of extrinsic motives.
•Identified regulation: doing an activity
because the individual identifies with
the values and accepts it as his own.
Dubbels (2009) Dance Dance Education and Rites of Passage ---Lessons learned about the importance of play
in sustaining engagement from a high school “girl gamer” based upon socio- and cultural-cognitive analysis for
designing instructional environments to elicit and sustain engagement through identity construction. IJGCMS.

21. Thresholds
Formerly, communities created rites of passage – where community
status and identity were earned and bestowed.

22. Four Principles for
Engagement by Design
Play as a Subjunctive Mood Desirable Activities
Desirable Groups
Spaces
Dubbels (2009) Dance Dance Education and Rites of Passage. IJGCMS.

23. Games are structured forms of play
Do we need to have definition for play?
Can we only know it when we see it?

28. Games
Artifacts Design Production Modeling 3rSTEM
Data
collection
What is really important is how we use them.
Lets not forget about play and engagement.

29. 9 ways that games and play can be used in an
instructional context:
• As cultural artifacts for study and evaluation
• Games as new fiction and non-fiction narratives
• As models and simulations for developing scientific habits of mind
• As tools for multimedia production such as Machinima
• The role and construction of virtual worlds for student learning and the
modern diorama
• Video games as tools for delivering content -- serious games
• Video games as a model for structuring classroom learning
• Games and play as research methodology for portals to gaining insight and
understanding for organizational change
• Connecting to secondary competency development and supporting
mediums and technologies for learning acceleration

30. Better Living Production

31. Artifacts
Gigaheart
• Problem:
– Many doctors are not
effective in detecting
heart sounds
• Built to deliver and quiz
• Heart sounds play
• Learner is guided to
identify heart sounds
and what they might
indicate

32. 3rSTEM Modeling
How about Math and
Science?
Scientific Habits of mind
Applied curriculum
Modeling
Simulation
STEM

33. Clapping Design
Academy

34. Artifacts
Games Unit
Inquiry
Reading comprehension
Composition
Sustained engagement
Behavioral management
Planning
Cooperative learning
Classroom as game
Outcomes
Dubbels, B.R. (in press) Video games, reading, and
transmedial comprehension. In R. E. Ferdig
(Ed.), Handbook of research on effective electronic
gaming in education. Information Science Reference.

35. Rhythm & Design
Flow
• High interest
• Role Playing
• Performance
• Technology
• RFOL
• Writing
• Video
• Music

36. Data
Artifacts
collection
Educate me
• Participants design
a board game to
identify outcomes
and the context,
route, and
obstacles to getting
there.

37. Data
Design
collection
Dance Dance Education
Because kids won’t let an education get in the way of their learning
Dubbels (2009) Dance Dance Education and Rites of Passage ---Lessons learned about the importance of play
in sustaining engagement from a high school “girl gamer” based upon socio- and cultural-cognitive analysis for
designing instructional environments to elicit and sustain engagement through identity construction. IJGCMS.

39. I don’t want to be the teacher no
It’s okay for little kids and one respects. I am a professional
Montessori, but this is a and know my content area.
public school.
Where are we now?
Play, what about rigor and standards!
These kids have tests to take!
We have taken away play in school?

40. There is a battle of perception
Child convenience design
Adult convenience design

41. Genre chain of quality & mandate

42. Perceived Importance of Play
Play is for young kids Middle school means work
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
So as we grow older, we are 1.5
1 PIP
expected to be ready to work.
0.5
0
This may be how words like
“rigor”
and statements like
"it's your job” , and
“you don’t have to like it”
come in to play.

43. Lets think about what games do

44. Non-traditional Narrative for
Assessment

45. How about Chutes and ladders?
Describe the game play mechanics

46. What are the elements of this game?
What makes the play emergent?
Is it non-linear?
Games as a metaphor for instructional design

47. Just think about reading
• Pattern recognition
• Expression
• Decoding
• Mental representation
• Mental Simulation
• Motor resonance
• Affective catalyst
• Embodied

48. Characteristics of readers
+1
Le Low comp
High High comp
ve
fluency High fluency
l
of
fl
ue
nc
Y
Low comp High comp
Low fluency Low fluency
ability to comprehend in dialogic method /create a model

49. Elements of comprehension
• Attention
• Prior Knowledge
• Content, Structure, Genre, Categories, Concepts
• Situation Model
– spatial locations, time
frames, people, objects, ideas, color, emotions, goals, shape
, spatial, temporal, causal, ownership, kinship, social, etc.
• Composition of Comprehension
• Perceptual, action, and affective areas contribute
Glenberg, Gutierrez, Levin, Japun
itch, Kaschak (2004)

50. What brains are for: Action, Meaning, and
Reading Comprehension
• Brains evolved to control action, and, as suggested
by M. Montessori (1967), a successful theory of
cognition and its application will require recognition
of that fact.
• The Indexical Hypothesis – embodied account of
language comprehension that posits that language is
understood by simulating actions that underlie the
sentence meaning.
• Reading comprehension can be improved by
ensuring that this simulation occurs.
Glenberg, Jaworski, & Levin (2007).

51. Recall and fluency

52. Building comprehension process
Age/ time
Learning
to Read Basic reading skills Comprehension Skills
Decoding
Reading Comprehension
Grade 4
Reading to Learn
Figure 1. Kintsch & Kintsch in Paris
& Stahl (2006)

53. How do we build a comprehension model?
Comprehension Model Literary Elements
• A spatial-temporal framework • Character/ Characterization
– spatial locations, time frames • diction
• Entities • Plot
– people, objects, ideas, • Setting
• Properties of entities • Point of View
– color, emotions, goals, shape, et • Theme
c.
• Tone
• Relational information
• Voice
– spatial, temporal, causal, owners
hip, kinship, social, etc. • Word choice

54. Play is the factory of learning and Comprehension
The Event Indexing Model
Zwann, Langston, & Graesser, 1995; Zwann & Radavansky, 1998

55. Situation model
• When a reader has well-
developed comprehension
skills, they can recruit prior
knowledge to bootstrap
lower level processes
(Stanovich, 2000) and this is
an important idea for
making a case for using
more accessible texts that
are relevant and interesting
to the learner. Once
again, the reader can use
higher-level process in order
to support lower level
process (Stanovich, 2000).

56. Towards top sight

57. Decision Trees
• For a decision tree to work, it must have the
following qualities:
– Time in the game takes place in turns or other discrete
units.
– Players make certain number of finite decisions that
have knowable outcomes
– The game is finite, it cannot go on forever.
– Different, but just as good

58. Why are they important?
• Because a decision tree is also a diagram of
the formal space of possibility in a game.
• Games represent the same design elements as
research and curriculum design.

59. Discussion
• Based upon these concepts in game design
and the literacies and habits of mind
supported by them, how can we use these
design elements to construct curriculum for
our classroom?
• Do we need computers to do this?

61. Natal