On Using Games for Learning at PAX East 2020
On Using Games for Learning at PAX East 2020
On Using Games for Learning at PAX East 2020
Friday February 28, 2020 11am-12pm @ Cuttlefish Theatre
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 415 Summer St, Boston, MA 02210
PAX East - Boston, MA - Feb 27 - Mar 1, 2020
Games-based learning, gamification, gameful learning, simulations, scenarios, and playful design. What are these and where do they all fall? Are they games? Are they for entertainment? Should we take them seriously? The gap between instruction and learning and games-based learning is rapidly closing. What will happen in the future with games for learning and how can you prepare to put your own games to work? Join four gamers, designers, educators, and academics as they discuss the whole field of using games for learning and what the future holds for us.
Presenters:
-Dave Eng, Clinical Professor, Educational Technologist, Game Designer, @davengdesign
-Naomi Pariseault, Brown University Instructional Designer, @elearngeekette
-Jim Egan, Brown University Professor of English
-Brian Eng, Game Designer, eng.team
Transcript
Dave Eng:
All right, good morning everyone.
Jim Egan:
Good morning!
Dave Eng:
All right, welcome. So, welcome to coming to this panel. This panel's called Using Games for Learning. Me and my colleagues over here, we work in different areas of higher education and education in general. So what we hope to do is share with you some of the things we're doing. We're using games specifically for learning but before we begin, I just wanted to take this quick survey for everyone here. Who here, by a show of hands, just works in any type of field of education? So that's higher... Okay, cool. Show of hands, who works in higher ed? Colleges and universities. All right, cool. How about secondary, high school? And what about primary, K-12? Okay. Anyone work in like corporate training and development? All right. Is anyone here a baby? Oh, we have one. Okay, cool.
Dave Eng:
So, welcome. So again, this game... Game. This panel is called Using Games for Learning. My name's Dave Eng. I'm a clinical professor and also educational technologist and game designer at New York University. I'll let my other panelists introduce themselves.
Naomi Pariseault:
Naomi Pariseault, I'm an instructional designer at Brown University.
Jim Egan:
And I'm Jim Egan, I'm a professor in the English Department at Brown University.
Dave Eng:
All right, so we are going to be your panelists today, and here are the things we're going to run down. So, we had done some other panels before we realized that at PAX, we want to give you as much an opportunity as possible in order to ask us questions, so we're going to try to streamline this presentation, really show you how games can be used for learning, what we're doing right now, and then leave a lot of adequate time afterwards for you to ask us questions. So, here are the areas, we're just going to provide a really brief overview today.
Dave Eng:
Spectrum of games, because that's not something a lot of people think about. Games for learning? Question mark, because that's still a concept that a lot of people are thinking about right now. Addressing motivation in games, using "serious games," because that's another term that some people hear about but may not know what that involves, structure and scaffolding, experiential learning, which is a thing that I studied specifically with games. Gamification design, making sure everything aligns, the benefits of gamification, and then the really cool part, the use cases, so what we are doing right now where we use games for learning. So first up, we're going to cover spectrum for games, of games. So I'm going to toss it over to Naomi.
Naomi Pariseault:
It's really, really interesting when thinking about games and then games for learning at how broad and diverse games are, and I put that in quotes. So we wanted to just put a really high level overview of things that are games or game-like including simulations, either that or games that are as close to the actual training flight simulator game or the actual training that pilots have to go through, right? The closer it is to reality, the less game-like it's probably going to be. Also, role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, game space learning and serious games. So those are actually using games to teach something or using a game to teach a different skill that it probably wasn't intended for originally, and Dave has a lot of experience with that.
Naomi Pariseault:
Gamification design, so Fitbit for example. Lots of game-like elements, but it's not a game. Toys are game-like, right? Because using imagination, playing with games, we're all playing with toys, puzzles, right? Really, really interesting with puzzles. And narratives, right? So narratives can be like choose-your-own-adventure stories, right? Those are game-like as well, but they're not exactly quite games. There's probably lots of things on the spectrum that we haven't even addressed on here. There's a lot of stuff with AR and VR, that's game-like or can be used in games, and tons of other things. So, we like to think of games in a really, really broad sense. All right, I'll turn that back over to Dave.
Dave Eng:
All right, so now I want to cover, so before Naomi went over that spectrum of different games, so there's a lot of different terms that we use when we talk about games-based learning, gamification, games for learning. Now I want to specifically talk about games for learning and what does that involve? And like Naomi brought up before, this is what I did my dissertation research work on which is what is games for learning? So what I did was I taught playing a real game. So all of my researchers focused on using tabletop games in order to educate students. So I use a whole host of different ones, including everything from King of Tokyo to Pandemic, to the Resistance, Avalon. So I was teaching my students using actual games for teaching and learning.
Dave Eng:
But these are also known as educational games or teaching games. Who here has played Oregon Trail? Okay, cool. So that is the quintessential games for learning, educational game, teaching game. It's not the only one, and it doesn't exactly hit... We like to call them learning outcomes for all of our students, but it is a pretty good example and many, many people have played it, so that's one of the examples we like to use pretty often, but when it comes to games for learning, the one thing I want to hit on and the one thing we always focus on and I work with my faculty members to do this, is that a game is an interactive experience. So, I want you to think about that. When you think about a story, a story, a narrative is not necessarily interactive. Of course, there are some exceptions. Like I'm thinking about Bandersnatch or choose-your-own-adventure or something else, where there are decisions to be made. But generally, a narrative or a story or a toy or anything else, well, I'm not going to say a toy. A narrative is not interactive because it's linear. You start at the beginning and you end.
Dave Eng:
But games, especially games for learning, you have to really focus on interactivity. So that means that you're teaching specifically about the rules for your game, what you can, what you can't do, your problem solving, and you want to really base your interaction with your students on that, on the goals that they have to accomplish. But all of this can be presented like a story. So some of the most prolific video games are story-driven, but they do still involve interaction. The player can still do something, and I think that's one of the most important things to remember. So now that we've covered the spectrum of those games, remember, we had serious games, games-based learning, gamification, toys, puzzles, narratives, and then I just talked about the interactive part about games-based learning. I'm going to turn it over to both Jim and Naomi to talk about motivation.
Naomi Pariseault:
Awesome, thank you. It's really interesting to think about motivation, this is coming here in the presentation why? But it's so important, and why do we do the things we do and why do we enjoy the games that we enjoy? And it's very, very complicated. But we're all unique and different, and we all have different core desires and things that we enjoy and like and motivate us to do different things. So before we talk a little bit about extrinsic intrinsic motivation, which I think is another important layer and piece. I want to talk about core desires and things that we all enjoy, and I want to have Jim talk a little bit about the various core desires that people might have.
Jim Egan:
Well, one of the things we were thinking about when we were designing, when Naomi and I were designing together were what are some of the things that people were, as she calls them, core desires? So working together, teamwork, getting certain kinds of collecting stuff. There are people who like to win, so we were trying to assemble a number of different things that would be core desires that our students, where it might be taking the particular class that we were taking, that we were gamifiying, what kinds of core desires they might have so we could design mechanics to engage with those core desires.
Naomi Pariseault:
And it's really an alignment thing, where you're designing for your intended audience, right? And you would hope that you would know your intended audience, but it's just, it's really, really important to think about what makes different people unique and someone's who's going to be really interested in collecting and saving may be interested in high achievements and scores and then someone else might not be interested in that at all, and might be totally interesting in exploring the map. So it's just really, really interesting to think about the broad things that drive us and motivate us. And another layer here that's really important is the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation piece. So the extrinsic... Ah, there we go. Extrinsic rewards are tangible things, and often in game design and gamification design, they can be gimmicky. And they're also very expected, so you want to think about using those to help motivate folks and move them along, but the behavior that you're going to get is not going to be as heavy.
Naomi Pariseault:
So if you want to really move someone, you're also going to want to pair that with intrinsic rewards, so the deep desire to do well. So if I'm going through a level and playing a game, for example let's just say for any video game, and I do really, really well and I've struggled with that sort of level before, I might have an intrinsic motivation to just be like, "Wow, you know what? I did really, really well." And that is something, that can be really, really powerful to keep me playing the game. Whereas I'm also receiving extrinsic rewards on top of that, where I might have gotten a high score. I might have also gotten extra trophies or things, so I'm obviously excited about those extrinsic rewards, but I'm really interested in the fact that I did really, really well and performed in something that I maybe was, have struggled with or maybe I'm playing with somebody else and I help them along and that feels really, really good.
Naomi Pariseault:
So with game design, you want to think about the balance between those different types of rewards and how to motivate people both in the short term to keep playing the game with the extrinsic pieces and the long term intrinsic pieces. And with the learning design that we've done at Brown, the intrinsic piece is so incredibly helpful. For our students, if we just gave trophies and points and rewards, that's not going to cut it, and that also doesn't really align well with the learning piece. So, we have tried to very, very carefully select both different types of rewards.
Dave Eng:
All right, so since we covered series of games, or spectrum of games before and then games for learning and Jim and Naomi talked about motivation, now I want to talk about serious games. Which again, by a show of hands, who has heard of the term serious games before? Okay, so it looks like the majority of you, but I want to dig deeper into this. So what is a serious game? So, a serious game overall is one that is developed from the ground up to be used for learning. Now, sometimes that could mean that a serious game is also a simulation. Sometimes that means that a serious game could be like a tabletop game or a choose-your-own-adventure trademark kind of game or something else. But whatever you choose to do, a serious game is made from the ground up to be used for learning and that involves certain things. So overall, some of the most prolific and effective serious games still have elements of narrative in it. So they involve players, the environment, conflict, and solution.
Dave Eng:
If you've ever read like Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell, it's completely filled with that. So that is often one of the cornerstones of really effective serious games. And again like I brought up before, games are an interactive activity. If you ever put someone in a situation where they have no choice or they really only have like one real choice, then that doesn't really define interactivity. Your players need to have agency in their decision making. Even if you can make the decisions pretty hard, that's great. Particularly when it comes to simulations, because you want that interactive element and you want to develop that engagement through the mechanics. Specifically, how are players going to make those decisions? Do they go to a specific page? Do they choose just a different dialog option? Is it like a sandbox world where they can literally go in any direction? But you really want to think about that interactivity, how different players are going to make choices throughout.
Dave Eng:
And another thing with serious games is that the rules are very well-defined. And people like to think about rules in different ways. I guess, me as a designer, I like to think about it as what players can't do. You're really setting the boundaries in there, but when you think about serious games, particularly from the player perspective, it's really beneficial to think about what players can do. So one of the things that I talk about and I work with faculty members often is like, I tell them, "In this class, what do you want your students to be able to accomplish? Do you want them to be able to write a term paper? Do you want them to be able to pass the NCLEX nursing exam or anything else?" And if that's the outcome, how can you set up a serious game that helps the student do that rather than be like, "Well, I want you to pass this test, but you can't do A, B, or C, or D or anything else." And it just starts looking like a terms of service agreement.
Dave Eng:
You really want to make your rules look like, these are the things... I'm going to empower you to accomplish this objective, and these are the things you can do in order to get there. And then, we always follow it up with what is the challenge? And then also, what is the social element? So again, what is the objective? Often that is with professors, what are you trying to teach? What do you want your students to learn? What is that specific goal? It doesn't necessarily have to be a learning outcome. It could just be like, if the end of this class, you should be able to write a term paper, well you're probably going to need to know how to write a solid paragraph, how to write a coherent thesis statement, and those are all many objectives along the way.
Dave Eng:
Call them objectives, call them quests, call them whatever you want, but these are the building blocks that help your students reach that specific end goal. And then specifically, who we are to each other and that's something very thematic and I want Jim and Naomi to talk about later when they talk about what they're specifically doing at Brown. But if the player knows who they are in this game world, not necessarily the dude that's just trying to collect a bunch of coins or your killing chickens or what not, so long as you know who you are, that gives people a lot of agency in that world.
Dave Eng:
And the last thing with serious games is that this is not something we often think about in games, but I challenge you all to think about this the next time you play, is that games exist in this concept called the Magic Circle. And the Magic Circle, what it is is that in this game, in this game world, only what we do here matters. Hopefully, in an un-dystopian like world, what you do in the game should not matter what happens to you in real life. You know? Before you choose the iffy dialog option in Skyrim, you can save, right? But in the Magic Circle, you can do that, right? In the real world, you can't. So in the game, we want our players to feel comfortable that you can make mistakes. You are in this Magic Circle, this little bubble of existing in this world where it's okay to make mistakes, and that's totally fine. All right, so that was serious games.
Dave Eng:
We talked about the spectrum, games for learning, motivation, serious games. Now, I want to talk about structure and scaffolding. And this is something that I brought up before when I was talking about working with individual faculty members. And the first thing is that whole concept of making a mistake, and I brought that up with the Magic Circle where really, really great serious games and really, really great games for learning not only encourage players to make mistakes, but they actually make it so that when you make mistakes, you'll learn through those individual mistakes. In the Magic Circle, mistakes actually are this really powerful, positive feedback loop where when you do things and they don't work out, it's fine. I mean, maybe you reload or you go back or you do something else but making mistakes is fine. Mistakes can actually feed into a progression system. So, like some of the designs I work on is you could make it... So I work primarily in tabletop games. You can make it so that when you make a choice, your player gets penalized like they get negative points, or you can have it so that if a player makes a great choice, they get three points, or if they make a not so great choice, they get one point.
Dave Eng:
So they may not have gotten as far, but they still made some progress, and that is a really good part about serious games, of structuring scaffolding so that a player's still making progression at one point or another. Another thing is also finding a path. So again, like I said before, you want your players to be able to have agency in this entire process. So that means that they need to be able to make decisions. And sometimes, that means that they could go down a different path, if you've ever taken an online scenario or simulation or anything else, usually there's a branching narrative. You can go down different paths. That's totally fine and that's one of those things that I really encourage a lot of faculty members to do, because when individual players and students can take those different paths, they actually have a lot of agency in the things that they can do.
Dave Eng:
And the last part that I think is really important is putting it all into practice. So while it may be great to have your students play pandemic or something and that will teach them about anything from diversity, the variable player powers, or anything else, it really won't do a lot unless they can connect this game experience to something that you want them to actually do, and that could be a learning outcome, it could be something else. And this is where a lot of people often get mixed up with simulations. Because simulations are supposed to be as true to the actual thing as possible. Like when new pilots are being trained, they're being put in simulators that are trying to accurately recreate an actual cockpit scenario, and that is the really great part about simulations, because you can put a novice pilot into a plane and not have them crash and kill everyone because it's a simulation. They're in that Magic Circle.
Dave Eng:
But being able to put all of that into practice is going to be one of those most critical steps in there. Oh, it's me again. All right, so-
Naomi Pariseault:
Yeah, I know.
Dave Eng:
So, let's talk-
Naomi Pariseault:
But it made sense, that order made sense.
Dave Eng:
All right, so let's talk about experiential learning. This is the thing that I studied, and I am very close with. So, I said before that Magic Circle, in experiential learning, I'll break it down in as simple of terms as possible. Experiential learning is learning by doing. All right? So, experiential learning is learning by doing. When I first set up this study, I was thinking about it because games are the perfect environment to learn by doing, because you're actually learning experientially through this practice and the experiential learning cycle, I can't be credited with it because I didn't come up with this theory but it comes up with four different stages. So first one is, they call it abstract conceptualization. But in games, what I like to call it is the who are we, what are we, what are we doing in this world? So, just typical platformer, original Mario. You're Mario, you're a plumber, you got to get to the end of the stage to save the princess, et cetera.
Dave Eng:
In abstract conceptualization, you find out exactly who you are in this world. One the active experimentation, that is okay, now that I know I'm this plumber who has to save the princess for some reason, I'm going to actively experiment. Can I run into this gumba at full speed? Yeah, but I will die. Start over. Right? Okay, now that I know I can't do that, what can I do? Can I jump over him? Yeah, I can. Can I jump on top of him? Yes, I can and eliminate him at the same time. Okay, so I'm actively experimenting through this process. Remember, experiential learning is learning by doing. So, now that I know who I am, I know what I can do, I had this concrete experience, okay?
Dave Eng:
So I have like, "Oh, there's this gigantic floating block with a question mark. Who in their right mind is going to hit it with their head unless you have really great insurance, right?" No one, unless you're Mario, because you're going to be running through the stage, you hit this block. You get rewarded for it in some way. You get a coin, you get a flower, you get a mushroom or something else. That is part of that concrete experience. I never in my right mind would want to hit a floating block. Who knows what's in there? I don't know who's touched that block in the past, but if I'm Mario and I hit it and I get a thing, that's great because now I have this concrete experience. And then, that's when we proceed towards active reflection. So, we know who we are in this world, we've actively experimented. We have this concrete experience.
Dave Eng:
Now, let's think about it. Okay. So, now I know at the end of the stage, don't run into gummas full speed, jump on top of gummas, hit every weird block with a question mark on it, and try to do it as fast as possible to get into the end, without hitting anything else. And then, I would go back to abstraction. So now we're in level one too. I kind of know who I am but we're in this kind of different stage and I'm going to start this whole process over again. So when you think about it as that loop, that is what experiential learning is, and that is what experiential learning is in games overall. But we're going to transition into how we are going to apply that for learning, so we're going to get into gamification design with Naomi.
Naomi Pariseault:
Awesome. So, what's really interesting with gamification is how it fits in underneath the bigger umbrella of games, and also what it is and what it is not in relation to games. So I think that there's a lot of different ways that different people use the term gamification, but I like to define it as using game elements and game mechanics in a non-game context. So that could be an app. You could gamify a webinar, you could gamify a course at a university. So it's not a game, like so when... Games are finite, right? There's rules. It's fairly contained. It's maybe a couple hour playtime or maybe 100 hour playtime. A video game is very, very self-contained. When I like to think about gamification, you have those integrated game-like elements, but it's diffused over a larger span and it's not like you have all these concrete rules and then you've got an end win state or lose state.
Naomi Pariseault:
So I like to think about gamification in that way, because I think that sometimes it gets confused with games. And I think that all, everything on the spectrum of games for learning is really, really great and really important, but I think sometimes it can be confused. Like, "Am I creating gamification? Am I creating a game?" What's going on with these terms? And I still think they're being debated even in the field, but I just wanted to set the ground work for how I'm talking about gamification. So, broadly speaking, the goals of gamification is asking what do you want your players to do? What do you want your students to learn? And what you want your users to accomplish, so it's obviously depending on the context. And for our courses at Brown, I'm asking all of those things.
Naomi Pariseault:
Our students are students, they're players, and they're users, right? Because I'm thinking about them in a very holistic sense. But with a Fitbit, I'm maybe not going to say, "What should my students learn?" I'm probably going to be thinking about what I want my users to accomplish. So those questions can be sometimes different depending upon your context. And so how do we know that they can do, learn, and accomplish those things? With these three measurements that I think are really, really important. So the do is the core loop. So the core loop of games is that continuous loop of experience, so Pacman for example, right? Eat the dots. Avoid the ghosts, complete the maze. Right? And you do that over and over again, and then there's other variables like eat the pizza or the cherries, right? And then there's power ups and it gets harder and harder, Frogger, same thing. So video games, kill monsters, win gold and buy stuff. Right? So those are those core loops, and those reinforce what the players are able to do. And with learning, the learning outcomes are reinforcing what the students are able to do as well.
Naomi Pariseault:
On the next slide, I'm going to talk a little bit about how you actually integrate learning design and gamification design together. And with accomplish, what are... with Fitbit, like getting on a streak, right? Awesome, you're keeping up your steps multiple days in a row. And so that's that accomplishment piece, and I think that that's really important for students and really ties back to the experiential learning piece as well.
Naomi Pariseault:
And with feedback, it's really important for consistent acknowledgement and consistent acknowledgement is really important with the... to have that defined extrinsically and intrinsically. Right? So we're looping back again to the motivation piece that we talked about earlier, that it's really, really important that with that core loop, that the learner, user, or player is knowing that what they're doing is working or how they can adjust their strategy. So I think that it's really, really important that they're getting points for things that they're doing or maybe more points when they do it really well, and they're like, "Oh, okay, great." And then they're feeling good intrinsically about being able to do really, really well and so it's really, really important to keep that feedback loop consistent and Tim can share a little bit later when we talk about our course, and how we've provided students with the feedback.
Jim Egan:
Remind me of that, I'll probably forget if you don't. Yeah.
Naomi Pariseault:
All right. I'll remember. All right, so, gamification design specifically for learning. So, this is the process that I've followed at Brown to design courses with gamification. So this is a real unity between learning design and integrating gamification in. So obviously, it starts with what do I want our students to be able to do? Those learning outcomes, thinking about that end state. Just like, what do you want a player to be able to do? And then the next most important thing is story. And story can either be implicit or explicit, so one of the ways that I like to talk about implicit story is as a guiding metaphor. So Monopoly, right? It mirrors capitalism, right? People are buying things, there's a bank. So I'm taking all the tenets of purchasing real estate and money and kind of diffusing those out. So there's definitely a story there, it's just I'm not being fed a narrative and walking through and deciding on prompts and making decisions.
Naomi Pariseault:
I'm taking this guiding metaphor there. Also, narrative can be explicit. So actually having those narrative prompts and we've found that the longer you want to sustain the learner, the more important story becomes. So the courses that we end up designing, end up being very halfway between a video game and a course. It's really, really interesting how important story has been as part of an intrinsic motivator for students, too. They deeply care about the characters and who they are in the course and what they've been charged to do. And it's not just completing their term papers, it's something more because we've crafted this world for them that's completely immersive and we're not breaking the fourth wall.
Naomi Pariseault:
We don't even call our courses courses. Right? The student is called to action and they're called travelers. Right? And so it's all about how you're choosing to label it, and Dave, you mentioned before about call it a quest, call it whatever. Right? That's so important like, "Oh, well, you know you've got to hand in your paper now," that's really bizarre for students that are immersed in this really great world and then, "Got to hand in your paper." So we've thought really, really carefully about story and I'm amazed at how important story can be.
Naomi Pariseault:
The next piece with the design is you really think about the dynamics that you're trying to create and who are your players? Who are your students? What makes them tick? Are they really, really competitive? Do they like to work together? Are they interested in saving things? Are they high achievers? Do they want to be called out publicly to their classmates for the achievements or do they want to be called out but just they're happy knowing that it was them but they don't want everyone else to necessarily know that it was their work? And so we've really tried to hone in on that, and it's really, really amazing. Jim knows the students that take your classes so well that they really came to life when we were designing. And also, I think it's ironic that so many disciplines and areas like marketing uses personas all the time and probably game designers do as well, but in learning, we don't always think about the personas in that way.
Naomi Pariseault:
We think of like, these are our students, but it's very, very broad stroke and it's so important with gamification design to really think thoughtfully and carefully about who your learners are. And the next piece is obviously designing the learning activities and having them be experiential, having the students have choice and agency. All of that factors in, all of that great learning design that everyone is doing, that's here where you let that piece shine, and then you're constantly tying it back to the story and the learner is never doing something just for the sake of doing it. There has to be a reason and a call to action. So one of my favorite examples from the course that we worked on is students were reading Tarzan, right? And so, one of the things that we were asking students to do was sketch noting. Is anyone familiar with sketch noting? Sketch noting? Yep.
Naomi Pariseault:
Sketch noting is taking visual notes. Right? Rather than kind of writing everything down, there's lots of arrows and flow charts and images. And so we were asking students to sketch note, and Jim and I were like, "Okay, well, we want students to know this is a really great way for them to articulate the really important themes and controversies and stuff going on in Tarzan and doing great analysis work, and representing it visually, but how is this going to fit in?" And so we decided that you're in the jungle and your notebook is completely soaked through. You've got one page left and you need to convey this information to someone. And so it fits into the story narrative and it's not just doing that assignment so they could do the assignment, it's doing the assignment for the larger goal of the story and the experience.
Naomi Pariseault:
Yeah, do you want to add anything, Jim?
Jim Egan:
No, I want you to-
Naomi Pariseault:
All right. Telling the story.
Jim Egan:
I'll be talking in a minute.
Naomi Pariseault:
And so let's see, adding game design and mechanics. So, what's interesting about gamification design is this happened so late, so, so late in the process. But what we found is that we're constantly thinking about what great game mechanics might work and we're putting them in a parking lot. We're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I think this could work. Let's put this in this idea parking lot, and when we get to that stage in the process, let's flesh everything out." But if you don't think about these other really key things like who your audience is, you can dream up all the game mechanics you want, but you could end up creating a gamified experience that you'd love to do but your students would not. And so, right? Like that's the concept of self-hugging, like, "Oh, my gosh, I love adorable games. Right? Cute things. Totally motivated by that, and I love narrative." So I'm going to be creating all sorts of narrative-driven adorable things. That probably is not what the students at Brown are going to want to take.
Naomi Pariseault:
And Jim's helped me self-check that, that motivation. But it's just really, really important to do those other phases first. And then the last piece is tying everything all together with visual design and aesthetics and all of that great, deep theme-ing that's going on and play testing. Play testing is so important. Getting it in front of as many people as possible, as early on as you can, so when we were doing our design, these steps are not finite. They're not linear, so we were constantly throwing ideas like note cards with awful sketches that I did went in front of some of the students that we worked with at the time, and I was like, "What do you think about this? Would you know what to click next? Is this interesting to you? What could we change?"
Naomi Pariseault:
And so I knew with that minimal viable product of note cards that before we were designing the class, what Jim and I could bring back to adjust the design for, and that was so incredibly helpful, and we also tried to find people that were in our target audience, because that is also really, really important. But getting it in front of different eyes who are not so close to the product and so immersed, that was really helpful. All right, let's turn it back over to... Oh.
Jim Egan:
Jim.
Naomi Pariseault:
Jim.
Jim Egan:
Yes. I'm just wondering, I'm terrible with these clickers, so give me a... just be forewarned. So, aligning learning outcomes with mechanics. So, one of the things we were trying to do as Naomi was saying was well, first of all one of the things I wanted to do as Dave was saying earlier, the first thing that I had to do when I... and to be honest with you, I'd never... Faculty at Brown tend not to have been taught first thing you should do before you teach a class is think about the learning outcomes. Good or bad, that's not a way to teach that we were taught in graduate school. So working with Naomi, that was the first thing I learned how to do, was to figure out learning outcomes, and then to tie them with the things we were actually asking the students to do. I know that might seem surprising that you wouldn't put those two things together, but that was the way I entered this process of learning how to do that.
Jim Egan:
But one of the things about doing the gamification piece was that gamification is more, as it just says there, than points, badges, and leader boards. We wanted in part because we want... This was going to last for 12 weeks at Brown. A semester is 12 weeks at Brown. We wanted to have a lot of different mechanics that they could interact with, in part so that it would not just be wrote over time. In part, because gamification for us is more than that and in part because the more activities we give them and we were doing kind of funky things. We had them do as Naomi mentioned, Tarzan, we had them do a video of them doing one of Tarzan's yells. We had them do data visualizations, that is machine-readable text of some of the works we were reading, doing various visualizations of those.
Jim Egan:
We tried to have them do a number of different things and we also though, the other thing is, we had these... The mechanics were designed to move toward certain learning outcomes. But of course, sometimes with all these different mechanics, we had lots of... We had some concern about aligning the two, and whether they would go off as a... people would want to, if there were doubloons involved, they would focus on getting all the doubloons rather than the learning outcome that the doubloons represented. In fact, that tended not to happen, which I'll talk about in a second.
Jim Egan:
The benefits of gamification, now the first benefit I would say of gamification to be perfectly frank is that it kind of, it was a turning point in my career. It is so pedagogically fascinating and working, collaborating with Naomi was so stimulating that for me, it's been a big... meant for an enormous kind of intellectual stimulation. But of course, I'm the teacher. I'm there to teach students, so the benefits of the students are that well, let me start with the feedback. The feedback for these courses has been the best feedback I have ever gotten in any course I have taught in 25 years at Brown.
Naomi Pariseault:
And the first run, too, which is really remarkable. Yeah.
Jim Egan:
Thank you. The first run, which admittedly is a little embarrassing and like, "Oh, man, I've been doing it... and that's the thing that's better?" But people say on the one hand, "Gee, Jim, well of course. They're having fun." And that is certainly true, but what is actually happening in this feedback is that the students, the learning outcomes are succeeding and they can feel themselves learning in part because as Bryan was saying earlier, in this course, we give them lots of chances for mistakes, right? There aren't just, as most English classes, there are two or three papers. They have lots of shorter papers, and we've built up assignments so they build on certain skills and we have them do that multiple times. So if one time they just completely screw up, there are always other opportunities. We want them to take chances, and they do. And by the end of 12 weeks, if you write something three or four times a week, get consistent and quick response, you will get better. They feel themselves getting better.
Jim Egan:
So, part of the response and the feedback is yes, they're having fun. That's great. But it's that the fun has combined with a genuine sense of learning and accomplishment that really I think is the secret to success of these courses. So um, it is interactive. Oh, the other thing I would say about it is normally, when I see the word interactive, what I think of is normally in these large classes, I stand in front of a room for 50 minutes, three times a week, and tell students how to read a work of literature. I'm very good at it, I'm a thrilling lecturer, no one would leave. I was expecting a little more laughter from that. Okay, but it's one thing to hear somebody tell you how to read a work of literature. It's another thing for somebody to say, "Here's a passage. Here are some tools to analyze that. Go do it yourself." And when they do that themselves three times a week, the learning is much more deep and it is much more successful and it is much more interactive. There's no question that they retain more, and I think I've already talked about...
Jim Egan:
So I would say theory to experience, again, back to the lecture. When I am lecturing, I am also giving them all kinds of theories about interpretation. I love theories of interpretation. I love hermeneutics. I could talk for the rest of the convention about hermeneutics, but it's not as good a learning-
Dave Eng:
What are hermeneutics?
Jim Egan:
Hermeneutics is the understanding of understanding.
Dave Eng:
So it's inception, basically? Inception of theory?
Naomi Pariseault:
Oh, trippy.
Jim Egan:
Thank you, Dave, for asking what hermeneutics is because I just foolishly assume everyone does. And my older brother and sister have, since I went to graduate school have laughed whenever I've said the word hermeneutics. Good for them. So, but having them do it, having them experience actual critical analysis has bumped up their learning exponentially, and I think... Oh, it's one more V. No, that's the-
Dave Eng:
Use case.
Naomi Pariseault:
Oh, yes.
Jim Egan:
Oh, use cases.
Dave Eng:
Yeah. So, we're going to get into use cases. So Naomi and Jim have worked on this great class over at Brown, and they have this little trailer that we're going to play right now. So, we'll need sound for the video here.
Jim Egan:
Since long before recorded history, when humans first began to tell stories, we've asked ourselves a disarmingly simple yet seemingly unanswerable question. What does it mean to be human? Meet [Layla Kalami 00:39:02], an avid student of humanity who just happens to be from the distant planet Io and has traveled across the galaxy to find the answer to that very question. Join Layla and me, Professor Jim Egan, in Fantastic Places, Unhuman Humans, where we will attempt to answer the unanswerable by visiting exotic locales and encountering hybrid beings reachable only through the magic of fiction. With your weathered backpack in tow and me as your expert guide, we'll travel through three worlds and six realms, visiting universes called forth by such authors as Margaret Atwood, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.
Jim Egan:
You, Layla, and your fellow travelers from across the galaxy, will enter the imaginative spaces of these works through a series of quests which use and develop your creative powers, critical thinking skills, and analytical abilities to convey to Layla the complexities, contradictions and uncertainties that are at the heart of being human. We may never answer the question of what it means to be human, if there even is a distinctive thing that can be called human. But after fulfilling your final quest, you'll have a better understanding of the conceptual and ethical problems that arise out of any effort to represent our humanity. Layla came all this way, we should at least show her around, right? Register now for Fantastic Places, Unhuman Humans, adventure awaits!
Naomi Pariseault:
I get choked up every time, every time I watch that thing. I get really choked up.
Dave Eng:
Do you guys want to talk anymore about the course?
Naomi Pariseault:
Yeah, do you want to talk about it, Jim, give a little bit of context?
Jim Egan:
Context, context for the course. 12 weeks, every week as it says was a different... So we were diving into six worlds, each world had I think two realms. Each realm was a different set of stories or novels, and each one of the novels dealt with some issue of what it meant to be human. Of course, virtually every novel deals with that. So we went and it wasn't only novels. We had Shakespeare's The Tempest, we read that against Harry Potter. I don't remember which, I think it was the first Harry Potter. H.G. Wells, the Island of Dr. Moreau, there were Margaret Atwood stories, and as I say, each week they would enter a new realm where there would be a series of quests that they would have to achieve. The biggest, as Naomi mentioned earlier, the whole semester was held together by a story about them teaching Layla what it meant, this alien that had come from another world, what it meant to be human.
Jim Egan:
And it turned out that they... I had thought they're taking a class, what do they care about a story? But it turned out, they really did get involved in the story and that really helped motivate them to keep moving it through, and that held the whole thing together.
Naomi Pariseault:
Yeah, they really cared about Layla, which is really profound, right? And she just has this wide-eyed wonder and am I human? Are the people from my planet human? What does that even mean? And she spoke and processed in numbers, so visualizations and numerical things were really helpful, and so we tied some of the most challenging things that students push back on before, Jim, in your face-to-face courses with the story and the reasoning behind, well, yeah, duh. She can't read like we can read. She needs some help, and so we were able to transform those challenging things for students in a way that gave them more agency to want to do that and made it less uncomfortable for them, which was really fun.
Dave Eng:
Yeah. So, I have a much less sexy use case, so it used to be before you could either go to med school or buy an Oculus Rift. But no more, you can do both. Because one of the applications is specifically for simulations, is that there's three big applications. There's medical field, there's military, and there's aviation. Those are the three areas that use simulation and math in order to help their users, their doctors, their students, their aviators, their pilots learn in a simulated environment. Remember what I said before. You want that Magic Circle. You want people to make mistakes now so that they don't make mistakes in the field when lives are on the line. Oculus Rift.
Dave Eng:
So, our overview, so we covered the spectrum of games, games for learning, motivation, serious games, construction and scaffolding and experiential learning, gamification design, making sure all of this aligns, because there's a lot of different things you can do, but only a few things you should do, based on what you want to teach, overall benefits of gamification and those use cases. So we have about 14 minutes left. Here's the contact information for me, Naomi and Jim, if you'd like to get in contact with us. If you'd like to download these slides, you can either scan that code up there on the screen or just go to bit.ly/gamelearnpax2020 and you can download the slides there. We're going to open it up to Q&A right now with the amount of time we have left. There is a microphone here in the center, you can ask and we'll start taking questions as they come up.
Bill:
Hi, there.
Dave Eng:
Hey.
Bill:
I'm Bill. I'm currently getting a Master's of Teaching, and I'm focusing on secondary mathematics. My question is, what are some of the differences, I should say maybe pros and cons and things you might tweak, when trying to use games and learning for primary students versus secondary students? How do those two worlds differ and how would you change some of your techniques for one group versus the other?
Jim Egan:
You're looking at the wrong person.
Dave Eng:
So, I think I'll spearhead this. So, a lot of the other colleagues I work with are working K-12 education, you have to make the alignment between what students are doing and what you want them to learn very much closely aligned. So I think one of the good structures is actually what Naomi and Jim use, which is not necessarily putting the student as the role of the student, because that's a role that they're already playing in real life. But rather in their class, they really need to interpret literature through the eyes of this alien who has no idea what it means to be human. So I think that when you put students in that position of like, "Okay, I need to be in a position where I know this well enough to teach someone else," that's actually a very powerful place for them to be because they need to know the content well enough and understand it well enough in order to teach someone else at that point. So I don't know if that completely answers your question, because we all work in higher education, K-12 is not our forte. But hopefully that helps you get in the right direction.
Bill:
Thank you.
Dave Eng:
Yep.
Speaker 5:
Hi, I don't really work in the education field, but I do assistance running emergency exercises. A lot of the things we talked about here is kind of like long term... I don't know the terms for education, but long term learning, like a class or something like that. But with a simulation, I usually have one shot, a bunch of agencies who are shaking hands for the first time sort of thing, coming together. Is there sort of a way to burn this down, I guess, to a sort of core sort of what they should know coming into it? You kind of up there, you had goals, objectives, and that sort of thing. Is there sort of a way that if you're trying to burn this all down to a single activity, what's kind of to prep the people coming into the room? Because even with the simulations running, we can't be like, "Good job, guys!" Because there's not really right answers necessarily for these sort of things. It's just kind of like, seeing people, so a lot like prep work kind of needs to get done beforehand, so.
Jim Egan:
Wasn't there somebody...
Naomi Pariseault:
Yeah, there was someone who was doing gamification of fire drill training for the government, because in the certification class that we had taken, it was really interesting to hear her work through that. But with that learning type of design, really knowing what do they need to be able to know and do and what do they need to know coming in? What do they need to experience while there? And often times, structuring that type of thing, a debrief after for feedback, delaying that, it's helpful and a lot of times, experiences that are really powerful end up debriefing themselves. Like the people who experience the simulation are going to be like, "Oh, what about this and what about that?" But having really thoughtful questions after can be a good structure, especially if you have such limited time. But yeah, you can boil down the essentials, and we always ask, what's the best way for someone to learn and experience that so it sticks as well. Did that help?
Speaker 5:
Yeah, no, it did. Actually, I'm also curious about that contact about the fire, you said somebody was doing this directly with fire? And that sort of-
Naomi Pariseault:
Yeah, I think-
Speaker 5:
Do you have her name, or?
Jim Egan:
She hadn't gotten very far yet.
Speaker 5:
Oh, okay.
Jim Egan:
I mean, she was thinking about staging fire drills, but that was problematic for a variety of reasons. That was my recollection.
Naomi Pariseault:
Yeah, I think she was in Arizona. If you want to email me, I can contact her and see if she would happy to connect with you. Yeah, I'd be happy to put you two in touch. Yeah.
Speaker 5:
All right. Thank you, yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 6:
Hi, I teach high school physics and I've found... or as I've been thinking about gamification, I've been wanting to do it for a long time but I haven't pulled the trigger because I get a little worried about buy-in, so and so judging by... I was going to ask if they're bought in by the time they take your class. Judging by the trailer, presumably they have. But I guess how do you handle buy-in? Because I teach science, you tend to get maybe some people who are already sort of open to the idea of gamification, but you also look at the ones of just need to finish their science credit so that they can just graduate that year. So, buy-in is kind of the thing that I'm most worried about, of losing a kid because they're not about the subject, but like they don't want to have to deal with this extra added thing of like, "Oh, now I have to play a game while I'm here too." So, yeah, have you found troubles with that? Are they required to buy-in for the class? Or is there a secret side where they can complete the class without 100% buying into it?
Jim Egan:
This is it. This is the class. And where Naomi and I are, it's not a very good test case in some ways, because it's the open curriculum, you basically get to take what you want. So if they're in the class, they're already... They're buying in. But I do know, it's anecdotal knowledge, but I do for really boring reasons have all kinds of contact with AP teachers of English. And they have started using... some of them have started using it in classes where they don't have a lot of buy-in, and they've found that that's very helpful to students. They haven't done it for a whole semester, right? They're just little small assignments, so and most of the schools that these AP teachers teach in are, I think the phrase is... Well, they're not exactly high-achieving schools.
Speaker 6:
High needs, usually.
Jim Egan:
Yeah, high needs, thank you. Yeah. And that's actually for them, they've told me it's been really helpful. That they haven't had much problem with buy-in. But again, as you know probably better than I, every school is very different and those are English classes, which I would have thought would have less buy-in than the science classes, but apparently not.
Speaker 6:
I mean, I thought it was very clever that you guys have it in the frame of a story, and so because it's a literature class, presumably, that's already an interest. Presumably. So, I guess, yeah. It's just a matter of trying to frame it in a way that fits the class.
Jim Egan:
I think that's exactly it, yeah. To me, and Naomi and I have talked about this a lot, the story is the key. Right? In that kind of situation. If they can get into the story, then you've got them.
Speaker 6:
And specifically, who are you? Who are the players in the story? Are they just consuming it or are they playing a role? That's important.
Jim Egan:
Yep, thank you. Yep.
Naomi Pariseault:
Starting small is helpful too. Right? If you start small. Just gamify a single project. Right? And start there and see how did that go, and if you have a mismatch in motivators, like let's just say you got a really, really competitive class and you're doing all team-based stuff and just they think you want to collect things to make a puzzle, and that might not work for your group, so you kind of have to calibrate those pieces, right? Because that's where you're not going to get the buy-in, I think is if there's a total mismatch in your alignment pieces. So that can also be where things fall apart. But we found like, we've heard crazy stories about executives in a training on IRS tax stuff, right? Not fun. And it was a Snow White story, and you're like, "What? Why would anyone theme the training in that way?" You have executives in the back of the room bedazzling their crowns, because they are so into it, competing at who can get the most biggest gems, right? So really owning it is also really important, right? So if you're going to go in, just do it and own it, and you're going to end up getting buy in, because it's so ridiculous sometimes but it's so immersive, they just go for it.
Dave Eng:
Magic Circle. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Speaker 6:
Thank you.
Jim Egan:
Before you move away though, can I just say thank you? Everybody who teaches high school in this room, thank you. I don't know how you guys do it.
Naomi Pariseault:
It's amazing.
Dave Eng:
Hello.
Rachel:
Hi, my name is Rachel. This is my third year as an engineering professor, and when I return to the real world on Monday, I'm going to be teaching a class of 101 engineering sophomores. My question for you was, I don't know exactly what class size you teach, so I was wondering how it scales to larger class sizes. I was also wondering, this is leaps and bounds less complicated and interesting the way you display it here, but I've been researching, they have some trivia apps so you can basically have trivia while you're doing a lecture on the slide and then people with their phones will answer the trivia questions, and then they get a score at the end of the semester. I was wondering if any of you had any experience or commentary about that?
Jim Egan:
Do you have any experience with that? No?
Naomi Pariseault:
That was the one that we had looked at for the dissertation.
Jim Egan:
Was it? Yeah?
Naomi Pariseault:
Yeah. I mean, so, trying anything if you're engaging people is great, but the Cahoot or a type of trivia thing, that has very, very specific mechanics that speak to a very specific group of people. So people are either going to love it or hate it, right? And so the question is, if you're going to do that, for the people who hate that, they want to be more collaborative, because sometimes those things are timed. The person who can answer the correct the fastest gets the most points. Well, do I really, am I an EMT that needs to that tracheotomy and need to know that flat, to save someone's life? Or is having the correct answer in a reasonable amount of time the end goal? So sometimes I have a hard time with those type of apps, because it doesn't meet the learning need. So I would say, if it meets the needs in engaging the students, then please try it and use it. But just think about what that particular app is doing and how it might motivate the students.
Dave Eng:
Yeah, it's like, do your learning outcomes and do your mechanics align? Like if Cahoot is a game about speed and accuracy and being competitive, and your learning outcomes are about developing emotional intelligence and cooperation, collaboration, it's probably not well-aligned. You know? Those are antithetical to each other. So that's something you have to think about.
Jim Egan:
In terms of your question about size of class, scale, these are about 40 or 50, these classes, and there's pretty much no way to do it on your own with 40 or 50 people, because it's pretty work intensive. I've been able to sell it pretty easily at my university, which is a little surprising because there are a number of people at a place like Brown that say, "What in the hell are you doing?" But in part, I've gotten a number of teaching assistants, graduate student teaching assistants, because I can say that's a lot of the market now, is going to ask your potential teachers in the higher education to be able to do online courses. My students will have the experience doing that. So, I've gotten a lot of support for that, but it's 40 or 50. It could be scaled up, I don't think that's a problem except you would need that help, because there's just no way to do it on your own. Yeah.
Dave Eng:
So we have about three minutes left. We'll take a couple more questions, but we will also be available in the back. You can meet us back there if you want to ask us questions, yeah.
Matt:
Hi, my name's Matt and I'm a grad student working on my PhD in learning technologies with the intent to go into instructional design. So I was wondering if you had any resources that really shaped your thinking in how to approach these... making classes that are so based on gaming and gamification?
Naomi Pariseault:
There's a resources slide, right? At the end?
Dave Eng:
So if you download these slides, the last slide is the references. But I would say a good book to start with is Gamification of Learning by Karl Kapp is what I'm reading right now. He just talks about the connection between what are games, what is learning, and how can we use games for learning? So basically like a one plus one equals two. So I would start that.
Matt:
Awesome, thank you.
Dave Eng:
Hi.
Naomi Pariseault:
Hi.
Joe Carino:
Hi, Joe Carino. I'm an associate professor at Albany College of Pharmacy, I look young but I've done it. And I teach infectious diseases in the fourth year of a pharmacy curriculum. So, I do use Cahoot, and I find it's useful because in... I teach sepsis and septic shock and every minute that goes by, people die quickly. So-
Naomi Pariseault:
That's a perfect use case for that. Absolutely perfect. Like, alignment, right? Total alignment. Great.
Joe Carino:
So, we found we've been able to integrate some aspects of gamification in. I guess, how do you get buy-in from your administrators to say, "I want to completely redesign my course in a way that no one else is doing or maybe one other person is doing in the university," how do you start those conversations?
Jim Egan:
I started it with success rate, right? There is research, I don't have it off the top of my head, about the effectiveness of this kind of learning model, and they were convinced by that. Also for me again, it goes back to the kind of university that Brown is. So I also use the, "We're going to need graduate students for this, graduate students are going to need to learn how to do this. If they learn how to do this, they'll be better on the job market." And that's a big deal for a place like Brown. And I also, this is distinctive potentially, well, not as... It's distinctive, not unique about Brown, which is, "If we do this, we'll get the reputation." Right? This will get out of Brown University and people will say, "Oh, look what they're doing." And that's one of the things people at Brown want to know, but that tends to be true of pretty much any university, right? Every university wants, I think, to be known for something kind of cutting edge. So those are the three, I think it was three, those are the three things that I use. Every university is distinct, though. Right?
Joe Carino:
Yep.
Jim Egan:
Every college is distinct, every college is going to need a slightly different rhetorical position.
Dave Eng:
Are you tenured?
Joe Carino:
Yeah.
Dave Eng:
Then do it.
Jim Egan:
Yeah, you don't have to ask anyone.
Naomi Pariseault:
Right, yeah.
Jim Egan:
Absolutely, yeah. Dave, I completely agree with you.
Dave Eng:
You could teach in cosplay, and no one could stop you.
Naomi Pariseault:
And if it's successful after, then show. Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. I mean, if it's going to be really successful, than just show how successful it was afterwards, or just try one small thing in your course.
Joe Carino:
Okay, thank you.
Evan:
Hi, my name is Evan. I'm a Salesforce developer. I know a lot about gamification due to Salesforce, however, I've been in different industries that uses gamification. Military, retail, et cetera. One thing I've noticed about gamification though is that most times, I just tune out the material more so and just focus on getting the points and Jim, I know you were talking about or mentioned this earlier, I'm not sure if you touched on it. But I wanted to ask, what are some techniques or methods to keep the user or student engaged or even if it matters, just because they have access to the material?
Jim Egan:
Well, I'm interested to hear your perspective on this too, Naomi. For me, two of the things that I think was helpful for the students was one, again, that story material. And I would also add what you were saying Bryan, they knew who they were. They had a particular position in the narrative that put them in an active position. Two, the assignments were kind of funky and unusual and interesting in and of themselves. And that kind of tricked the students into not caring so much about the points. I don't know how that worked, but people were... it was connected to the story, so they were interested in the story, doing it. Relating to the story, that quest helped move you forward in the story. But also, the assignments were unusual enough that they thought, "Oh, that sounds interesting. I want to see if I can do that." Those are the things that worked I think most in my case. Naomi, do you have anything to add to that?
Naomi Pariseault:
I mean, yeah, the story's such a big piece and also allowing agency of choice. Right? So thinking about gating certain types of this, so obviously you're thinking about tuning out the content, right? But if you can allow them to choose the way that they want to engage with the content or maybe try different activities and then maybe require at a certain point that they had to have tried this, that can be really, really helpful. So giving some choice, and really, really ensuring that the mechanics really align well with the learning outcomes. So if they're focusing on the mechanics, like thinking about, "I want to get the doubloons, but I don't really care about the content," then that's a very extrinsic motivated thing, right? It's all about getting the points and all of that kind of stuff whereas if it's more intrinsically motivated, like why should they care, they may be more invested.
Evan:
All right, thank you. I also wanted to add that while in the military, I think that was the best version of gamification I've saw, just because it was a literal one-to-one interaction. Like, bad guys on the screen, shoot the bad guys, bad guys in real life, shoot the bad guys, but thank you.
Naomi Pariseault:
Thank you.
Dave Eng:
I think we're at time right now, sorry. But if you want to ask us any questions, we'll be back there. Thank you.