This document discusses how play and games can support learning. It covers several topics: - Play allows for flexibility and reconsidering contexts, according to several theorists. - Games can unite people and help achieve goals, while also representing cultural issues. - Toys and games can be examined as tools that structure imagination and play. - Simulations and virtual worlds can replicate real-world scenarios to support learning. - Games can assess learning through in-built scoring criteria, though the quality depends on the criteria used. - Research shows interactive, sensorimotor experiences like those in games can improve comprehension.

1. G-ScalE
Brock R. Dubbels PhD.
G-ScalE Game Development and Testing Lab
McMaster University
Dubbels@McMaster.ca

2. Is play is the problem with games?

3. Play and Function
• "Biologically, its function is to reinforce the
organism’s variability in the face of
rigidifications of successful adaptation”
– (Sutton-Smith, 1997, 231).
• Play allows for a reframing of reality, and
reconsideration of context and the realm of
the possibilities.
– (Dubbels, 2010)

4. Play and Cultural Role
• Play strengthens societies by uniting
individuals through ritual activity and helping
them achieve common goals.
– Huizinga (1950)
• Toys, jokes, and games are often as symbols of play to
face collective fears about cultural issues that quickly
overwhelm the individual: bigotry, racism, rejection,
terrorism, addiction, and poverty.
• Toys, jokes, and games are things we can study as
distributed cognition by examining them as tools, rules,
roles, and context.

5. Toys structure play
• play as imagination in
action,
• imagination as play
without action.
– Vygotsky (1977)

6. By design

7. Distributed Cognition

8. Simulation

9. Virtual Worlds

10. Edutainment?
From Squire – Games to Teach

11. Serious Games
Replicate
You: The Virus
Your Goal: Replication The Enemy: The Body

12. Environmental Detectives
Computer simulation on handheld computer
triggered by real world location
• Combines physical world and
virtual world contexts
• Embeds learners in authentic
situations
• Engages users in a socially
facilitated context
From Klopfer

13. Training

14. Productivity

15. Ethos of Activity
Play Work
Risk Emphasis on learning outcomes from
assessment, evaluation as consequence

16. Work & play

17. Assessment Criteria & Mechanics
• Games assess, measure, and evaluate by their very nature.
• Outcomes from scoring criteria can provide evidence for
assessment and diagnosis.
• Evidence is only as good as the scoring criteria.
• Evidence should constitute measures that support transfer of
learning.

18. Games & Informative Assessment
• Research findings from over 4,000 studies
indicate that informative assessment has the
most significant impact on achievement.
• (Wiliam, 2007).

19. The brain is for action
Research on instruction that
emphasizes congruent
sensorimotor experience and
visualization has been found to
improve the ability to
comprehend, read fluently, and
solve problems.
(Glenberg, Brown & Levin, 2007;
Glenberg, Gutierrez, Levin, & Japuntich,
2004).

20. Functional Equivalence
Modality-specific states are partially Simulations – Reenactments
captured in online experience underlie imagery

21. Walkthrough
Word Problem
Multiple Choice
Texts and Multimodal Narratives
INSTRUCTION AND PURPOSE

22. Research Design
• This was an experimental study with students
randomized into six different media orders,
consisting of:

23. Walkthrough
Across Media–Dimensions
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
Game
0.4
Video
0.3
0.2 Text
0.1
0
*A large, or clinical effect is .8 (Cohen, 1997).

24. Across Media—Word Problem
3.5
3
2.5
2 Game
1.5 Video
1 Text
0.5
0 (GLM (F (2, 129)=102.93) p= .000)
Word Problem
*A large, or clinical effect is .8.

25. Across Media—NAEP CogTargets
4 https:/ / sewardsurvey.m pls.k12.m n.us/ TakeSurvey.aspx ?PageNum ber= 1&SurveyID= 122&Preview= true 2/ 21/ 11 8:26 PM
NAEP Cognitive Targets
3.5 Note: You are currently in preview mode and your responses are being saved. You should
be sure to delete your entries before collecting real responses and analyzing your data.
Page 1 of 1
1. The first handrail*
leads up
3
is at the beginning of the map.
is next the picnic table.
blocks the way.
2. Moving into the green spaces on the map *
makes you go faster
makes you wipe out
2.5 3.
makes you ollie -- jump in the air
makes you go slower
If you go over the ramp at the beginning of the map in the center, you have to hit it just right or *
you will fall into the bottomless pit.
you will run into pedestrians in the crosswalk.
2
you will run into the garbage cans.
you will ride on the chain-link and grass which slows you down.
4. You will find pedestrians in the business park if you *
Game go the left.
go to the center
go the right.
1.5 5.
go the second level on the left.
The fastest way to go through the business park is to *
Video
turn as little as possible and jump over obstacles.
go to the left and jump over obstacles.
go to the right and avoid obstacles.
1
go through the center and jump over obstacles.
6. The purpose of this activity is to: *
See what you know about skateboarding
Text
Learn new vocabulary, science talk, and math
Estimate the fastest path through the park using vectors and feet per second.
0.5
Try different kinds of media.
Page 1 of 3
0
Recall &
Integrate
Locate
&
Interpret
*A large, or clinical effect is .8.

26. Analysis Setting 3
• Walkthrough
• Word Problem
• NAEP

27. Media Specific Influence Across Order
Reading Dimensions

28. 3.2 Word Problem
Reading Condition - Across Order

29. Affect of Specific Media on
Multiple Choice Across Reading
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2 Game to Text
1.5 Video to text
1
0.5
0
Locate & Integrate
Recall &
Interpret

30. Role of Causation
• How does the identification causation predict
building a mental representation and problem
solving?
– (GLM (F (4, 127)= 299.25) p= .000) PE= .91, and OP= 1.0
– Game and Text (Mdiff= .47, p= .000);
– No significance from Video to Text (Mdiff= .06, p= .34);
– Game to Video (Mdiff= .41, p= .000).

31. Landmarks, Concepts, Causation,
and Memory
• Game required mental rehearsal
• The game scaffolded learning & rehearsal through distribution of cognitive load and grounding memory
• Context and landmarks –discourse markers -- are important in memory.
• These were associated with actions / causation prior to memorable landmarks
• The more associations a particular memory can trigger, the more easily it tends to be recalled.
• Seemingly irrelevant factors like remembering where, when, why, how, and with whom you learned a thing help
solidify information and flexible memory.
• Consider the Method of Loci.

32. Assessment Criteria & Mechanics
• Games assess, measure, and evaluate by their very nature.
• Outcomes from scoring criteria can provide evidence for
assessment and diagnosis.
• Evidence is only as good as the scoring criteria.
• Evidence should constitute measures that support transfer of
learning.