Episode 5 Remote Adventure with Board Gaming with Education
Remote Adventure with Board Gaming with Education
I connected with my friend and colleague Dustin Staats from Board Gaming with Education on his program Remote Adventure. In this episode we cover Games-Based Learning versus Gamification. There are some similarities and some differences. We also covered some tools that we like to use for integrating games into our teaching, training, learning, and education.
Transcript:
Dustin Staats:
Welcome to another live chat for remote adventure. I'm super, super excited to be here with Dave. He is someone I have had a chance to meet in person. We went to PAX Unplugged together. He showed me the ropes about, or showed me the ropes on attending a US-based board game convention. So it was really cool to meet in Philadelphia and he is the... I guess he runs University XP and today we're going to talk about game-based learning Gamification. So I'm going to check to make sure the stream is working. Dave, would you mind introducing yourself a little bit?
Dr. Dave Eng:
Sure. Thanks Dustin, glad to be on the show today. So my name is Dave Eng. Currently I serve as a clinical professor and also educational technologist at New York University School of Professional Studies. In addition, I also run the website and blog universityxp.com where I write about games-based learning and what we can do to use games for teaching, learning, training, and education.
Dustin Staats:
Awesome. So we are going to talk about games-based learning Gamification and we're going to look at maybe how we can use some of that online as well. And you were just mentioning to me you are a hot commodity right now because everyone's shifting online and you've done some online instruction. So, let's define the terms games-based learning Gamification in a simple sense. So first, starting with games-based learning or maybe Gamification.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Sure. So I'm going to start with Gamification because that seems to be the term that gets brought up most often. So when we talk about Gamification, I'm going to use the definition coined by Yu-Kai Chou, who was the first person to actually define it. And Gamification, Dustin, is using game-like elements in non-game context. So I realize that's big. So I'm going to break it down for a moment.
Dr. Dave Eng:
When we think about that, let's think for a moment about programs and activities like Fitbit. Fitbit is a great use of Gamification because it takes some game elements, like that active feedback from steps, the badges you earn from doing different things and activities, and also the leader board that you get from competing against other people. Those are all different elements that have been taken from games and used and applied to Fitbit.
Dr. Dave Eng:
However, Fitbit alone is not a game because it just provides these different elements that provides users feedback on their activity overall, ideally for an end purpose which is to make people more active. So that's different from games-based learning. In games-based learning, we as educators, we're using games not only to help promote teaching and learning, but we're using them as the basis for learning. So some applications of games-based learning that we've seen in the past are games that have been created from the ground up for learning and education. And the most popular example I always turn to is Oregon Trail because it's been around for so long and most people know about that game. However, it's not the only application out there. Using games-based learning does not mean you have to create a game from the game up. It's just using the game as the way to teach people rather than using the game as something that you just add to a curriculum, or course, or class.
Dustin Staats:
Right. Yeah. I love the very good definition you gave. And one thing I want to go back to is Gamification and games-based learning. And I remember looking at this somewhere, and I can't remember the blog, but it was defining them and put it into two different categories, where Gamification is how you teach and games-based learning is what you teach. So if you're looking at adding experience points to completing assignments, that's the how, right? You're adding something onto the instruction where what, maybe you're using a game based about... I think I have Cytosis around here somewhere or Evolution. You're teaching through the game and what you're teaching is evolution. The theory of evolution.
Dr. Dave Eng:
That's correct.
Dustin Staats:
Awesome. So what would be an example of... or maybe another example you can give of games-based learning?
Dr. Dave Eng:
Sure. So you brought up some really great examples there from our other friend John from Genius Games. So the way that he's used games in the past, they're actually for that teaching and instruction. So you brought up Cytosis before, and that's really used to teach students about how cellular mitosis and an individual cell operates. Some of his other offerings are Subatomic, about the molecular structure. There's also Periodic, about the different elements on the periodic table. And these are all games that are talking about STEM subjects, science, technology, engineering, and math. But one thing that I tell a lot of educators is that serious games and simulations are actually another form of games-based learning. So if you've ever participated in something like the Model UN, or the Model United Nations, those are simulations that replicate a complex connection in a web and network of different individuals, and nations, and motivations, and other things. And those simulations are actually really great examples of using games-based learning because we are putting students in those scenarios and giving them the tools to succeed, but not telling them how to succeed.
Dustin Staats:
Right. Yeah, those are some perfect examples. I know Genius Games comes up a lot in the board game space. I like to use a lot of games for games-based learning, for language learning. And I think I'm lucky because when it comes to language learning, yes there are more efficient ways to teaching. But any game you play can be games-based learning because there's an interaction in the language, or interaction with the language playing the game. And I'm wondering... maybe you can help me answer this question because I struggle with it, because I think that it's both. I think that the course that I developed I gamified it, in a traditional sense, by adding experience points... or yeah, we'll go with experience points. But students need to interact with me or with the system in English. So I wonder if, can something ever be both?
Dr. Dave Eng:
Sure. I mean, what I've done in the past is I've also gamified my class. I've used Gamification like you have. One of the biggest examples in something that I've recommended to faculty members in the past is that flipped grading scheme, where I taught a class on public speaking one time and instead of pursuing a traditional grading scheme, which is you do an assignment and then based on how few mistakes you made, you earn a grade that's equivalent of that. But I flipped it. I said that in this class, in order to earn an A, you're going to need to earn 2,000 experience points. And everyone starts at experience points, but you get points for everything you do. And I told my students if they did everything absolutely perfectly, there's 5,000 points out there to earn, but you only need 2,000 to earn an A.
Dr. Dave Eng:
And that way I gave my students a lot of agency and flexibility in order to finish the course. So that's an example of Gamification. But what you could also to do is start playing and using different games in that class, which would qualify as games-based learning. So one of the games that I actually played in a class is Werewolf. So if you've ever played Werewolf, or Mafia, or those social hidden role games in the past. I used it in my public speaking class when we were addressing persuasive speech because if you're not familiar with that game, ultimately what you want to do is convince others not to vote you out of the game basically. It takes a lot of persuasion. So, that's what we did. I gamify that class. I use Gamification principles in it's construction, but I also use games-based learning by using actual games to teach my students.
Dustin Staats:
Awesome. Yeah, I loved using Werewolf when I taught in Taiwan. It was a lot of fun to play that game and I would use them because statements like, "I think he's in Werewolf because..." So that was cool. I wonder if you can think of... because a lot of us now are inside, or I guess we're inside but we're being asked to maybe quarantine ourselves. And a lot of schools are closed so a lot of teachers are asking to... or being asked to maybe redesign their whole curriculum and put it online. Or they're being asked to get from this week to the next week and do some sort of online distance learning. Are you... or do you know of any good examples of ways we can either apply games-based learning or Gamification through remote, remotely?
Dr. Dave Eng:
Well I know that for a lot of my colleagues and I, right now we're busy trying to adjust a course that was supposed to be delivered in person, but now it needs to be delivered remotely and online. So it's difficult. A lot of the things I would recommend Dustin, might not be applicable because it would address redeveloping a course from the ground up rather than changing it midterm.
Dustin Staats:
Right.
Dr. Dave Eng:
But one of the things I wrote about in my blog before was the difference between Orthogames and Idiogames. And if your viewers and listeners haven't heard of those terms before, I'll break it down quickly. An Orthogame is one of those games that we usually think about when we think about games. So it's like chess or checkers... or like Settlers of Catan, or Monopoly, or anything else. It's a game you play that has a clear winner at the ends.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Idiogames, on the other hand, are games you've played that don't have a clear winner, or aren't meant to even have a clear winner. Some games that fall in those categories are role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, or maybe party games like Just One. Of course Just One has a mode where you can win, but I usually just play it as an activity. Well why I bring that up is because I have a website I began using, and something that I've been recommending to a lot of other students and faculty, is there's a way to take notes. And you can do this completely digitally online and I think this is a great tool. Dustin, have you heard of the Memory Palace way to remember things?
Dustin Staats:
Yeah. Yeah I have.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Okay.
Dustin Staats:
But if you don't... If you want to explain it for some that haven't.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Okay. So the Memory Palace is a way to remember things. And usually what educators would talk about was when you're remembering things you're... it's declarative knowledge. It's just factual knowledge and you're just trying to remember different things on the list. Think about a shopping list, eggs, milk, bread, and everything else. You would just normally write that down on a list.
Dustin Staats:
Right.
Dr. Dave Eng:
But when you use the Memory Palace technique to remember things, instead of thinking about a list, you imagine an imaginary space in your head, your "Memory Palace". So it'd be a house, and in that room. In that room, there's a shelf. And on that shelf, there's a chicken reminding you to get eggs. There is a baker. There's a chef's hat telling you to get bread. And there's also a cow... a little, let's say a cow skull that says that you need to get some milk. So what's cool about that is-
Dustin Staats:
How many times have you made up the story?
Dr. Dave Eng:
I just made it up right now.
Dustin Staats:
Okay.
Dr. Dave Eng:
But let's picture that those are the items you have in your Memory Palace to pick up some groceries at the store. This website I found called Nototo, nototo.app. It provides you a method to create this Memory Palace but digitally online. And what's cool about it is when you log in, it's a note taking app but you don't actually have notes. You don't have a notebook. What Nototo is, it's a 3D space.
Dr. Dave Eng:
The thing I can closely recommend it being close to is like a Minecraft because instead of creating a notebook, you actually build an island. Your island is the notebook and then when you want to remember things as part of that notebook, you start building structures on that island like houses, and roads, and park benches, and trees, and sometimes animals. And you can annotate. You can add typewritten notes to that. But through your process of assigning a visual reminder to this declarative knowledge, you are building a digital Memory Palace.
Dustin Staats:
That's awesome.
Dr. Dave Eng:
So it's not games-based learning per se, but I highly recommend it and it's free to use. The website is Nototo, nototo.app. A-P-P.
Dustin Staats:
That's really cool. I mean, I almost see that as a way to expand on that idea because I'm thinking about the game I've been playing recently with some friends, Elder Scrolls Online. And the map is just ginormous. There's so many things to do. The game is just thousands of hours of content. And I'm at the age where I'm just having fun with my friends. I don't know. I don't really care about learning the ins and outs of the game system, but I know when I was younger I really enjoyed doing that stuff. I really enjoyed going through my cell phone and going through every single option and setting that I could change and see what they do.
Dustin Staats:
And I see, maybe what you're talking about, as a way to explore a space and really learn the space. And if you develop a system of notes within that space, through the interactions and the play of that space, you might be able to help with that memorization of those facts. Yeah. That's awesome.
Dustin Staats:
So we have an example of an online one. Do you have any other tips, or advice maybe, you might give to someone in their situation now that is... if a teacher is now at their home and they're trying to connect with their students, that you might say or suggest with the use of Gamification or games-based learning?
Dr. Dave Eng:
Sure. So one of the most popular applications of Gamification is, like I said before, with teachers that are teaching that declarative knowledge or factual knowledge. So it's available. I've used it extensively. Probably people in your audience have used it too. But there's Kahoot! as an online remote platform that allows you to create gamified quizzes. I believe that's a great platform. I know that when I've used it in the past, it's been free whenever you use an educator account. I believe that they're offering a deal right now because of the crisis in order to let other educators use it. But what I really like about that platform is that it takes a model that a lot of educators are already familiar with. Like trivia systems, kind of like jeopardy or something else.
Dustin Staats:
Right.
Dr. Dave Eng:
But it makes it digital and in this environment it also makes it so that individual students can connect and compete remotely. So that's one, in addition to Nototo that I'd been talking about, some of my other faculty members using.
Dustin Staats:
Awesome. Yeah. There's also Quizizz I think. Well there is Quizizz, so quizizz.com. And I've explored and used Kahoot! a little bit, but I got used to using Quizizz so that's the one that I'm familiar with. I think there's one more too. But a similar style where it's like a quiz game where you're competing against other classmates.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Yeah. Oh, I thought of another one Dustin. So there's one called... a platform I've used in the past, you called the Edpuzzle. It's E-D-P-U-Z-Z-L-E. And what Edpuzzle is, it allows educators to take an existing video. So that could be a video on YouTube or Vimeo or anything else. And you can use that video, but you can edit it so that when students are watching that video through Edpuzzle, it'll pause and ask that student some questions. And you can make it a multiple choice question. You can turn it into a quiz. And I think that's a really great way to not only re purpose video content that's already online, but to turn it into an assessment. Whether you want to use that as a summative or an iterative assessment is going to be up to you. But it allows you to re purpose video content that's already online. And one of my favorite places to use that for are TED Talks, just because I think they're really great, well-produced, and have a lot of knowledge to share.
Dustin Staats:
Yeah, that's perfect. Jonathan, Cassie, and I were just talking yesterday about Edpuzzle. I wonder if there's an opportunity to develop it into some sort of... almost like an escape room where you have to answer questions and multiple videos to get different answers to a puzzle. Actually using the video as a puzzle instead of an assessment as students go along the video and answer questions but there's some sort of intertwined puzzle, be it between multiple videos. I don't know.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Yeah.
Dustin Staats:
That would be cool. All right, Dave, thank you so much for chatting with us. If anyone does have any questions for you, they can leave them in the comments and I'll be sure to forward the questions to you. If someone wanted to reach out to you, how can they find you?
Dr. Dave Eng:
So the best way to reach out to me is actually via email. My email address is dave@universityxp.com or you can just check out the website universityxp.com.
Dustin Staats:
Awesome. Well, thank you again and if you're around in a little bit, I'm going to be playing a board game live. If you're watching or if... Dave, feel free to join too. So Dave, thank you very much again for sharing some awesome insights and some resources teachers can use.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Cool. I'm glad. Thanks for having me, Dustin.
Dustin Staats:
Thank you.