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Liquid Interactive EduTECH 2013 Presentation
- 11. PROJECT 1
- 23. Why a game? Why 3D? Does it work?
- 26. PROJECT 2
- 44. Results so far?
- 45. ?
- 49. Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- I’m Andrew Duval from Liquid Interactive…
- We’re a creative digital agency in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane…
- We work in elearning, marketing and entertainment… lots of interesting projects we could talk about.
- Some of the most interesting have been for Triple P International…
- …in conjunction with University of Queensland.
- We’ll talk about two in particular: Secret Agent Society, a game-based intervention for teenagers with Aspergers, and Triple P Community, a platform for teaching parenting skills.
- Why are these projects interesting to a general audience? They both attempt to change complex behaviours, particularly interpersonal behaviour. This is not a straightforward problem: you’re dealing with emotions, long term habits and unpredictable situations involving multiple people.
- These two projects are also interesting because between them they cover a few popular topics in educational technology: use of game elements, social features and mobile delivery.
- I was hoping to talk about some of the ideas that explain why games/social/mobile are interesting or effective, but we probably won’t have time to dwell on them… but we’ll see!
- So the first project!
- Secret Agent Society
- Targets teenagers with Aspergers. These kids have trouble recognising emotional cues, regulating their own emotional responses, and distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate social behaviour. So the brief is to come up with a system that can help make an impact in these three dimensions.
- SAS is the brain child of Dr Renae Beaumont, who was a PhD student at UQ. Her PhD was based on a trial of this game-based approach to social skills intervention…
- And it was so successful she got support to ramp it up to a bigger project, which is the commercially available SAS package. Which if you buy the full kit includes all these in-game props and paraphernalia. As an aside, it’s always useful to think about ways to externalise or make physical a digital learning experience. Part of the whole experience here is taking the scenarios from the game and using these props to extend that role-play into the real world.
- This is where in the presentation I would go demo the game.
- 3D environments, multiple levels, multiple sub levels.
- Variety of games. Some are mini-games like this, about interpreting visual…
- …audio…
- …or other cues to infer emotional state.
- And these ramp up at the higher levels to some quite elaborate story-based scenarios that pull together the player’s ability to recognise emotions and intent, regulate their thoughts, make appropriate choices and so on.
- So three big questions. Why a game? To increase engagement. BUT games are not a guarantee of engagement. Plenty of games that nobody wants to play. What works in this instance is that the game is a representation of the thing that is to be learned; it’s all about observing people, making inferences, making decisions. Perfect match between content and process. But it’s been made FUN by giving it this whole “you’re a spy” framing. Why 3D? Let’s you create this fantasy world, and have complete control over the elements. Couldn’t afford that with video. 2D animation could work, but at this scale it’s probably more cost effective to do it with 3D models. And does it work?
- SAS has been undergoing a range of clinical trials for the last couple of years. The results are slowly being made ready for publication, but you can get an indication from the work that was done on the original trial…
- In the dimensions of social skills and emotion management, the treatment group dramatically outperformed the control group.
- Let’s look at the other project!
- Triple P Online Community
- Brainchild of Dr Matt Sanders, from UQ. One of the world’s most successful parenting skills programs. Typically conducted via workshops. We helped develop an online version of the workshop a couple of years ago which has been undergoing trials, but it is quite long and it can be tough for parents to complete the entire thing.
- Robert Wood Johnson foundation gave a big grant to UNC and UQ to develop a new version of the online program that incorporated additional engagement features, specifically game and social elements, as well as made the platform mobile-friendly so that users without desktop computers could access the program.
- In the live presentation, this is where we went to the internet…
- Program is eight modules
- Each broken into topics
- Lots of video. Lifestyle approach: documentary, wide variety of subjects, get to see actual parents with actual kids, filmed in AUS/UK/US.
- Lots of custom activities, but mostly they’re around reflecting on behaviour, setting goals and so on. All aggregated into downloadable, personalised workbooks.
- Variety of resources available on a module by module basis.
- Game elements: fun avatars—identity while also maintaining privacy—and an achievement system. Parents set goals and get particular badges when they meet them. Large number of badges, and not straightforward to get them all.
- Social elements: commenting, following, favourites. Community feed moderated by professional. But social features sit in-line with content, to prompt users to participate in relation to particular videos, activities etc. Numerous cues given to share with others.
- Mobile aspect: responsive design using Bootstrap. So the same site will display elements differently based on user screen size. This is a tablet view…
- Mobile…
- Tablet
- Mobile
- Tablet
- Mobile
- Triple P Online Community is currently undergoing clinical trial in Los Angeles, so it’s too early to give clear results. But some early indicators are that the achievement system is effective in encouraging users to go back and revisit earlier material in order to get additional achievements. On the social front, users are not engaging in anything like extended discussion but they are sharing content with each other. Mobile access is undetermined as most of the trial group have wound up completing the program on desktop computers provided by the research program, something that has very little to do with the platform, and more to do with the nature of the trial group. The first trial round has wrapped up and a second is about to commence. Should have more detailed data next year.
- This graph shows the additional effectiveness associated with completing a higher percentage of the program. Data is from the old online program; Online Community is an attempt to help more people complete more modules.
- Questions?
- If you want to come and chat, we’re in a pretty wacky booth…
- Some Liquid details…
- Some Triple P details…
- Hope you found it interesting!