Learning
assignment 7
Provide answers to the following core questions. Questions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 can be answered by making links to learning tasks or previous posts. Questions 1 and 7 can be answered from your own perspective.
Provide answers to the following core questions. Questions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 can be answered by making links to learning tasks or previous posts. Questions 1 and 7 can be answered from your own perspective.
- What is a game and how does it affect our lives?
- What are learning games?
- What are the possibilities of games in learning and teaching?
- How are learning games used in education?
- What are the stages and processes in the design and implementation of learning games?
- How are learning games produced?
- How can students benefit from playing educational games as part of their own studies?
One:
A game is an interactive activity with interesting challenging choices. Such a thing affects our lives by making them fun and interesting. Games allow us to socialize with others, learn about ourselves, learn about the world around us, accept our limitations, try to be better and just have fun. Many animals play games that are designed to teach them skills for the "real world" and that's what we have games for. Games teach us about the world and how to cope in it.
Two:
Learning games are games specifically designed to teach the players something, rather than just to create an interesting feeling or experience, as is the case with a lot of commercial games. The best kind of learning games also manage to create a specific interesting feeling or experience as that is part of learning, to be engaged in the process.
Three:
There are undoubtedly myriad possibilities when it comes to games in learning and teaching. The whole concept of gamification means adding game elements into non-game aspects of our lives, such as creating goals, scoring systems, thinking about interface and mechanics and competitiveness and measurements.
Many of those ideas ought to be immediately applicable to the world of education. Students should be able to navigate through their studies seamlessly, they should have attainable and suitably challenging goals, they should be nudged in the right direction, they should be active, they should keep track of what is happening in a wider context, they should have the right to try again and they should be rewarded when they get it right - just like in games.
Four:
Learning games are used in education as any other educational tool. Given the right equipment and the right attitude from the teacher and learners, games can, and I believe will, be a normal part of educational from the first classes up. Indeed, in many places of learning they already are.
Five and Six:
The processes in the design and implementation of learning games has been written about in knewton.com, which breaks it down to 7 handy steps, which I summarize below.
Step 1: Align game goals with cognitive work
Success or progress in the game should be aligned with productive mental work. In this respect, there should be a demonstration of understanding of the theories involved in the way the player solves problems or makes choices. Then the action should be coupled with relevant feedback and rewards in the game. This is what makes the game educational.
Step 2: Make your game adaptive
The game should be adaptive to each individual player at whatever level they are. This way, the game can pitch the difficulty level which avoids the problem of people quitting the game if it is too easy or difficult. This also means that there must be many options open to the player, to allow the game to gauge the player's level and move accordingly.
Step 3: Build in opportunities for suspense, conflict and complication
This element speaks to the nature of narrative in general, noting that a story without conflict isn't really any kind of story, rather just a collection of events. Not only should there be conflict and complications present, but there should be multiple levels of complications, big and small, allowing the players opportunities to engage in varying ways with different challenges in the game world.
Step 4: Make sure the game is simple in the right way
At risk of making a game too much like an open world explorable environment with many sub-plots and additional features and characters, the educational aspect of the game should always be kept in mind, meaning the game must be simple enough to keep on message with the ultimate goal of teaching. There's a balance to be struck between a game being too polluted with extra bits and there not being enough detail and complication that it's boring.
Step 5: Design your game to yield both quick wins and long-term rewards
Players become hooked on a game if there are quick satisfying wins to be had, as well as a long-term goal to aim towards. It's important to not show all your cards at once, this acts as an incentive for the player to keep on with the game. Speedy feedback and tangible rewards are key mechanics in this quick win tactic.
Step 6: Embrace the social responsibilities
Traditional schooling artificially segregates students based on factors like age or economic background. Games don't need to do this. Players who excel at games should be able to achieve "expert" status through merit alone and that should create the possibility for those players to act as mentors or advice givers within the game world or community. Not only does this add in a social element to the game, it also creates more teachers with good, solid, useful advice and feedback to give to other learners.
Step 7: Encourage critique and design
You're doing well already if players talk about your game. Even better if you can turn enthusiasm into action and open up opportunities for players to design their own elements within the game. This is a real technical challenge, but very much worthwhile if players are able to create and implement their own ideas in the game, such as badges, skins, new vistas, artwork or narrative elements.
Including this element means the game becomes a living, breathing entity in its own right.
Seven:
Students can benefit from playing learning games as part of their own studies through active engagement with a topic that allows them to learn in a way that is natural, fun, exciting and dynamic. Learning through playing removes a lot of the heavy burden of learning which can be an issue for many students, especially younger ones. No longer is the goal to learn to be good at maths, which can come with its own stigma, rather the goal is to rescue the princess, repel the alien invasion or cook the perfect dinner, which is significantly more engaging for any student.