Episode 70 What is Constructivism?

What is Constructivism?

Hi and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. Find out more at www.universityxp.com

On today’s episode we’ll answer the question: “What is Constructivism?”

Learning is the transformation of experience into knowledge. That means that learning is the construction of knowledge through the learner. We are learning when we are playing games. When we play games we are actively constructing the framework for how we play, understand, and interact within the game world.

This process of knowledge construction - especially game knowledge - is called constructivism. This episode will examine and define what constructivism is. Constructivism as applied to education will be outlined as well as how constructivism is applied in other aspects.

Constructivism as it is applied in educational practice will be examined and how the roles and expectations of both instructors and students are identified. Learning as the transformation of experience into knowledge will be described - especially how experience relates to interaction; choice; feedback; and socialization in games-based learning.

Finally, this episode will examine constructivism as a metacognitive experience for learning and how educators can use commercially available games for applied games-based learning.

A traditional approach and application of teaching and learning interprets students as “vessels” to be filled with knowledge.  This framework makes it so that players and students are simply “given” information for them to possess. Whereas, constructivism is about how learners “create” knowledge through their active engagement.

Both learning and games are similar in this way because players create meaning based on their individual experiences.  Those experiences are created and defined from the perspective of the learner. In games, that perspective is defined by the player experience or interactions through the player’s avatar.

Players create new knowledge and new understanding based on conclusions from their previous learning as a result of these experiences.  We see this clearly in feedback loops in games where players’ actions are provided with feedback for how they can improve and progress in the game. Players then take that feedback and apply it in an experiential learning cycle.

This approach is the same no matter how you apply constructivism in teaching, training, learning, instruction, or games-based learning. That approach includes providing learners agency in order to create and co-construct their own meaning making through their experience with the game, content, other students, and the instructor.

The knowledge and meaning created is often biased and interpreted based on the learner’s background. Often this is greatly influenced by their knowledge and understanding prior to entering the class, school, or game.

This episode examines constructivism in education, teaching, and games-based learning. However, there are other examples and applications of constructivism that are often referenced but won’t be the focus of this episode.

Social constructive learning is about how students learn through a collaborative process with other individuals; their culture; and society.  Comparatively, social constructivism is a view that human knowledge and development is deeply dependent and biased based on interactions with each other.

Constructivism in both philosophy and mathematics involves the steps necessary for constructing mathematical objectives in order to prove that it exists. Whereas constructivism in science indicates that the knowledge we construct is a result of our measurements of the natural world.

Finally, moral constructivism or ethical constructivism is the view that morality and moral facts are constructed by our own experiences and biases rather than discovered.

Constructivism in learning is based on students creating their own knowledge. Therefore, instructors need to base activities on students’ own construction. This is often completely different from lectures or other forms of “didactic” instruction where learners are passively engaged in the activity. Rather, constructivism is a process in which learners need to create this knowledge on their own.

Learning, like games, can be structured as a social process. Games can be designed so that players work with other players to build their knowledge of the game, mechanics, and larger world. Instructors can play an active part in the process by identifying the relationships between disparate concepts, activities, and relationships while students are constructing their own framework for understanding.

Because of this, experience becomes the basis of constructivism and how knowledge is created through experiential learning.  Players create new knowledge through experiential learning based on their pre-existing knowledge about how a game works. This could come from our past play of first person shooters; abstract games; or platformers. We internalize our past experiences and apply what we’ve learned in our construction of new knowledge.

This is why simulations are popular applications of experiential learning. Simulations provide learners with realistic contexts from which they can explore and experiment. Simulations therefore provide the most realistic world for learners to construct their own knowledge in this vein.

Instructors can apply constructivism in their classrooms by building on what learners already know. By focusing on interactive learning and student centered instruction; instructors can use games-based learning as a format for engaging students in creating their own meaning. Games-based learning uses games as the medium for teaching and learning. As such, students can apply concepts they’ve developed based on their experimentation within the game in order to achieve their own learning outcomes.

Instructors play an important - but often very different - role when applying constructivism for education. This includes their responsibility to acknowledge and incorporate students’ preconceptions and how they affect their own learning.

This is why it’s often important that terms and concepts be defined and determined before they applied in a more advanced format. Both students and gamers cannot apply that information experientially without first discovering fundamental knowledge of what is being discussed and how it is applied.

Those experiential formats are often collaborative environments where students work with others to apply what they’ve learned in different circumstances. Games provide this framework by creating structures for engagement with both the game and other players though the core loop and fundamental feedback loops.

Using constructivist philosophy, instructors become more facilitators than teachers. They acknowledge and build upon students’ past and pre-conceived notions.  This is an important aspect to applied constructivism. Instructors must constantly ask students how any given activity or experience helps them gain understanding.

When instructors use constructivism - particularly in a games-based learning environment - they must also challenge students to test their ideas; draw concussions; and create assumptions from their own activities. Games already perform some of these functions. However, instructors can contribute further by helping students acknowledge their own learning through metacognition.  This can be done by de-briefing students and  requiring them to reflect on their own activities.

Likewise, students must also take active roles in their own knowledge creation process when following a constructivist philosophy. This process actively requires both players and students to play, experiment, and manipulate their own environment in creation of their own personalized understanding.

Constructivist teaching is student centered in that students are given agency and responsibility for their own knowledge creation rather than just knowledge reception. These activities can be incredibly challenging. That’s because students must constantly evaluate new information followed by their own resolution and modification of what they already know.

Video games provide excellent examples of this. Player earned knowledge in basic areas – such as tutorials - of video games provides them with the knowledge to play the game and form their own competencies. By continually playing the game; exploring the system; and applying what they’ve learned in new and novel circumstances; they take active roles in creating their own knowledge.

The creation of this new knowledge comes through play, testing, and experimentation. The results of which provide experience for players to interpret and apply to further their own understanding.

Games-based learning often calls on students to capitalize on their experience of playing the game for learning. Applied constructivism makes use of that experience in order to create meaning for the leaner. However, this experience doesn’t have to be limited to just the game. Players’ interactions with other players - including peers and learners - also influences and affects their meaning making.

This interaction with other players is part of the experience of play. Likewise, players must also enable motor skills – especially for physical dexterity focused games - in order to engage. However, this can be a shortcoming for players who have accessibility or special needs. Especially when playing video games or other platforms that require some sort of physical dexterity.

Despite this, players benefit from constructivism in games-based learning through implementation of agency and meaningful choices in the game. The resulting accomplishment of different tasks within the game further add to the learning experience.

This is particularly important for serious games as the learning outcomes achieved by students is dependent on how students engage and manipulate the game world. This is most evident in simulations where students first determine different concepts within it - such as equities in a stock market trading game - and then make decisions in order to achieve a specific goal - such as increase the value of a portfolio.  However, that outcome cannot be achieved without the student first understanding the concept of stocks and how trading them affects the value of their total holdings.

A focus on serious games and games-based learning also prioritizes a student centered educational experience where challenges are structured as goals to be achieved. This positively influences students’ overall learning as well as provides the means for students to apply content in a constructive manner.

All games must include a structure for engagement and interaction. As such, learners can play with and manipulate the game environment in order to better understand its inner workings as well as how concepts relate to one another. The best applications of games-based learning is when players are able to engage with the system and achieve learning objectives from subsequent game play. In these scenarios, there is less distinction between the lesson and play.

However, a challenge with implementing games-based learning is that players approach the game with different backgrounds and experiences which biases their interaction. Open world games provide players with almost unlimited agency: agency that would be considered paralyzing to more casual gamers.

Likewise, more popular games like platformers, abstract games, or word games could be considered more accessible. That’s because players bring their past experiences and understandings to bear on the game in order to help them play it.

Because of this, digital games often provide the most accessible platform for curated serious games and games-based learning. Digital games can be applied for educational purposes by providing students with the ability to augment and interact with a virtual world: something that many players are already familiar with.

Games-based experience and interaction is all based on players’ agency and meaningful choice. Players must first be given the voluntary invitation to play the game. Afterwards they must be provided with some autonomy for how they can interact and engage within the game.

Again, digital games provide students with the ability to engage and play with a game in a scalable and accessible environment. This provides them with the ability to create and form their own knowledge through repeated attempts in the core loop and other feedback loops.

The actions that players take within these loops provide an opportunity for them to create their own level of systems fluency, agency, and competency within the game.  This results in players applying their learning to tackle new and novel challenges that they may not have previously encountered. Ultimately this can result in players designing, creating, and implementing their own games.

One of the most fruitful examples of learning through experience with games is through their feedback loop. Games require that players develop their skills through continuous practice and improvement. This allows players to complete certain tasks and overcome difficult challenges in games.

However, this wouldn’t be possible without feedback loops. Feedback loops provide players and students with actionable insights and results based on their actions. They can then take those insights and conclusions in order to apply what they’ve learned to new areas of the game.

Serious game designers can take these feedback loops to employ game mechanics that help students achieve specific learning outcomes. Players who connect learning activities within the game with learning outcomes can improve their performance through experience and applied constructivism.

Video games excel at this format as they are often designed where feedback is provided to players as guidance for WHAT they can do.  However, it is ultimately up to players to decide HOW they want to use those actions.

We can see this in games like first person shooters where players are provided a slew of weapons to use. However, their decision of when and where to use those weapons to effect – for example to eliminate an opponent - will ultimately be up to them.

The experience that players gain from game play doesn’t always have to come from the game itself. Rather, social interaction with other players, students and even the instructor informs the learning and meaning making process. 

This is especially relevant in MMORPG - Massive Multiplayer Online Games - where player interaction is central and important element to a socialized learning process. There are designed quests and other activities that are present based on the structure of the game. However, the way that players engage, attempt, and complete those activities are ultimately up to them as well as those they choose to partner with.

The social element of experience while learning is perhaps the most critical when applying constructivism for education. Games are mediums like narratives, movies, and music.  As such, they don’t exist within a vacuum. Rather, how games are played and shared with and amongst others is central to how individual players derive meaning from them.

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of applying constructivism for games-based learning is utilizing players’ experiences as a metacognitive process. Metacognition is a reflective process to assess how someone “thinks about thinking.” This is often difficult to accomplish because students’ need to become self-aware about what they thinking and what actions they are taking.

In this way, good games are about good learning. That’s because good games stimulate this active part of constructivism as a metacognitive process. Good games want us to think about them. Likewise, we want our students to think about games in games-based learning. Instructors can apply this by having students reflect, revisit, and reinterpret their own meaning making process when playing a game.  This can be done though active reflections before, during, and after game play. Such active reflections should also continuously and regularly identify and connect player activities to stated learning outcomes.

These reflections should also specifically focus on how players identify and accomplish goals within the game as well as how social interaction and their own player agency affect their interactions. These reflective practices enable students to more accurately connect the feedback loops and core loop of the game with stated learning outcomes.

Applied constructivism is about using learners’ experiences as way for them to create and form their own knowledge. Learning based on experience is an application of experiential learning. Games-based learning is experiential learning through student engagement; interaction; and social connection with other students.

Because games-based learning is using games as the medium for learning; much focus has to be placed on the quality of the medium and the role that the instructor plays in interacting with students. As such, it’s important that instructors carefully select what games are used with their students and how those games are applied in order to help them achieve their learning outcomes.

This selection and input by instructors is important because constructivism, experiential learning, and games-based learning all focus on the students taking charge of their own learning and their pursuit of it. While this approach has gained acceptance in primary, secondary, and higher education; it is still an emergent practice in professional development and corporate training. However, training and learning managers would do best to create environments where employees can take charge of their own learning through an application of constructivism.

This can take place in multiple different formats. Games-based learning is one of them. However, trainers and learning and development professionals can also use simulations, serious games, and role-playing as experiential applications of constructivism.  All of which provide learners with agency; meaningful choice; and game structures for creating their own knowledge.

Likewise, trainers and instructors can adopt a different role in training and development by serving as a guide and moderator for student learning. This is best done by moderating student lead reflections of their learning experiences. This can often be challenging for experienced learning and development professionals; however commercially available off- the-shelf games provide ready to deploy examples of how games designed for entertainment can be repurposed for educational outcomes.

One of the easiest ways of adapting games-based learning for training and development is the use of readymade commercial games. Such commercial games are readily available and provide deployable applications to be used for learning. Cooperative table top games like Hanabi can provide students outlets for cooperation and teamwork whereas digital games like Minecraft provide students with an open world: replete for opportunities to create and structure their own learning experience.

However, no matter what game instructors choose to use in their application of games-based learning, they must always consider the specific learning outcomes targeted for their students. This includes asking the question: “What should my student learn after playing this game?”

Oftentimes what we want our students to learn and what they actually learn can be very far apart. However, that gap can be mitigated through constant discussion, dialogue, and debriefing with students about their experiences and takeaways. Such constant and continual engagement with students provides a structure and framework for how they eventually create their own knowledge and meaning.

Games-based learning is about using games as the medium for learning. Most of the time these include commercially available games; whereas other times it could include customized serious games or simulations. No matter what the application, instructors must always take an active part by helping students create their own knowledge through play. That knowledge creation process is constructivism.

This episode addressed constructivism and its use in education. Other aspects and applications of constructivism were outlined and described. Steps for applying constructivism in education were discussed in addition to the different roles of instructors and students throughout this process. 

Applied constructivism is about students’ creation of knowledge and meaning making through experience. Those experiences in games-based learning include interaction, choice, feedback loops, social processes, and metacognitive processes.  The relationship between games-based learning and constructivism was more robustly defined through the use and application of commercially available games for educational purposes.

I hope you found this episode useful. If you’d like to learn more, then a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification You can also get a full transcript of this episode including links to references in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining me!

Again, I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you liked this episode please consider commenting, sharing, and subscribing.

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