Thoughts on Gamification and Higher Education

We've talked about games before on this blog from the perspectives of using them as learning experiences, and learning environments. What we've perhaps explored less is games' role in motivation.

I think that a fair number of teachers see the potential for using technology and games as a novelty to get students' attention. While this might work, it seems to me that there is a high cost of development when novelty only lasts a short time.

With the resources available we might gain more from using techniques from games to increase motivation. I've watched some talks over the last year or so which bring different perspectives, but look at how games and game techniques can change our culture.

• Jane McGonigal talks at TED about what we learn, and the skills we develop, playing games.
• Seth Priebatsch talks at TEDxBoston about the game layer built on top of the world, both now and it's potential in the future to influence and motivate.
• Jesse Schell's 'Visions of the Gamepocalypse' talk looks at ways in which these techniques might affect our lives in the future.

Game mechanics is a very interesting area to look at. As Seth says, we see those used by business in many ways. But how can HE use them? And how do these claims fit in with the work of people like Alfie Kohn who see issues with extrinsic rewards?

Jessie Schell's talk includes a lot about reward systems. We’ve long had reward systems (Nectar points, Airmiles, etc) but the possibilities are expanding with services like foursquare and SCVNGR making it easier for smaller organisations to offer similar and potentially more interesting reward systems.

SCVNGR is especially interesting as you can easily set tasks for people to do, and even offer them a reward when they have. In the HE context this could be used as a potentially interesting, alternative way of giving new students a list of tasks to do for induction. It would have to be voluntary and done on trust, but we could create more complex location aware tours of campus with QR codes to scan, or tasks to do such as check out a book on your reading list from the library or access an ebook on a topic you are interested in.

I've created an example task to show how this works. You'll need the SCVNGR app on your phone, and you'll use it to search for the SOLSTICE Centre (there are two so find the one with the 'Pay us a visit!' quest on it). Scan the QR code on our door and you'll get 2 points. Woo hoo!

I couldn't resist thinking up a list of Xbox style achievements relating to an induction and library activity:

• 10 - Borrower: Check out and return a book from the library
• 20 - Book Worm: Check out 15 books from the library
• 10 - Are 'Books' Electric?: Log into the library catalogue and access an eBook
• 10 - What Shelf are the eJournals on?: Access an eJournal article
• 20 - Virtual Learner: Access Blackboard
• 10 - Big Spender: Spend some money from your UniCard
• 30 - Egghead: Complete the quiz at the end of InfoZone with 100% correct answers.

However they wouldn't work in reality as they would require a big, complex system to track student activity.

Regarding concerns that motivational techniques might harm intrinsic motivation, I'm not really aware of the discussions around this. I think it might be less of an issue here as we are talking about games, which are by nature voluntarily participated in. Before you join in with the game you make a decision to do so, meaning that these techniques could be presented as a tool for the students to motivate themselves to do things that they know will help themselves learn.

This post is a quick overview of my initial thoughts on an area which is being talked about a lot, and I'd be really interested to hear other people's too.

[image by Bodum]

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Virtual Gaming Worlds and Learning

One of the interesting thing about looking at using games in education is learning from the game designers. They know how to keep a player motivated to play the game, and to keep learning the complex rules and possibilities. This is especially noticable in a MMORPG like World of Warcraft where players talk about playing the game for 2-3000 hours.

I have a couple of questions that I'd like to explore. Firstly is there anything that educators can learn from game designers relating to motivation and learning, to feed into designing learning experiences? And secondly how can games (either out of the box, specifically created or altered for purpose) be used as a valuable part of a course or module?

To begin thinking about the first question, have a look at Jane McGonigal's talk at the Web 2.0 Summit from 2007. She talks about how, compared to games, reality is 'broken' and she asks how we can make reality work more like games. Games come with a clear goal and clear pathways to achieving that goal, and they give you good feedback on your actions. Most importantly though, games are designed to make you happy. Some attempts to capture these ideas for non-traditional gaming uses are Chore Wars (join my party!), Seriosity (to help an organisation deal with too much email), The Nethernet, and Cruel 2 B Kind.

To help start answering the second question we could listen to David Gibson at the recent Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference in which he talked about putting together a synthesis of ideas to help plan, implement and assess serious games. He tries to combine ideas from Prenky (2001) [EHU Library E-book Link - see page 52 for the list that is mentioned in the talk] about how the new 'Games Generation' thinks differently, with appropriate learning theory, an activity theory framework and Mislevy's assessment model.

If you want to explore these things further you might also want to look at:

• "Collaborative Virtual Gaming Worlds in Higher Education" article in September 2008's ALT-J (16.3) by Whitton and Hollins.
  
• 10 day free trial of World of Warcraft as an introduction to the genre.
• James Paul Gee's work, for example "Games, Learning, and 21st Century Survival Skills" in April 2009's Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (2.1).

[Image by mi2starsfan]


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iKnow!: Learning Languages Online

In the spirit of diversity week, I thought I'd write about a language learning site that I like.

iKnow makes it easy for you to set up word lists in any language, including adding audio, and provides the learner with tools to help them learn the words,to understand context, and to test their learning. These tools include basic social networking tools, so that you aren't learning alone, and the BrainSpeed game that tests your learning. Watch their screencast video to find out more, and have a look at the courses for a language that you want to learn like Mandarin or my Romanian lists which took about 10 minutes each to set up with text and audio.

For developers there is an API, and people have linked it up for use in Second Life.

Don't know if it's pedagogically sound, but it keeps me interested, especially the BrainSpeed game :)

Moving Back off the Web: From Virtual Reality to Alternate Reality

A lot has been said over the years regarding using games/Online Games to aid the learning of complex topics and skills. For example using Civilization III to help children develop an understanding of historial development of civilisations, or using Lord of the Rings online to aid understanding of narrative and it's development in different media.

Jane McGonigal spoke at the New Yorker conference about alternate reality/pervasive games, which can use the connecting power of the web to create Massively Multiplayer (Offline) Games. These are in some ways similar to role playing simulations that I've seen used in the past, but the emphasis is taken off role play - you play yourself in an imagined alternate reality. Looking at the example she spoke of, the game World Without Oil, it is difficult not to be impressed by the potential educational value.

In World Without Oil, instead of players playing an online game set in a virtual environment, they changed their own lives for 32 days, as they would have to if there was an oil shortage. This could be done without being based online but the fact it was, brought together 1800 people who were interested in doing this, created synergy. For example there are the videos that people made to develop this alternate reality, blogs where they shared experiences and ideas, and even personal interaction where people worked together to modify cars to run on biofuel.

Where would it be appropriate to get our students involved in things like this? Is there scholarly value in them? Do they have a place in Higher Education?


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The Ecology of Games

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation have released their series of books about Digital Media and Learning. Not only that but they've made them available to download free for those of us with little disposable income :)

The one I was interested in was "The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning", which contains a variety of articles which together are "pointing toward a more sophisticated understanding of the myriad ways in which gaming could and should matter to those considering the future of learning."

If you are seriously interested in using games, especially digital games in teaching and learning, this is a very valuable collection of writings by experts in their field.

I'd also recommend James Paul Gee's book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" as an introduction to get you thinking about the topic. There are some copies in Edge Hill's Library and a revised edition out in April.

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