Play with Learning

Educational games

baf 2011

Yesterday I spoke at BAF Games.  This is a summary of my ‘Play with Learning’ talk.  I have embedded links to supporting information into the post .  Sadly, I couldn’t capture the lively Q&A session afterwards.

I made my first game as a young teenager – a board game so incomprehensibly complex and tedious, it only ever had one player. Me. I programmed my first computer game at the age of 14, using the machine code printed in the back of a Sinclair User magazine. It took a week to input, twenty minutes to load and thirty seconds before it crashed. Despite those experiences, I spent innumerable hours playing games on my ZX Spectrum.

At the same time, although not entirely related to my game-playing, my school-based education collapsed.  I left school with a clutch of poor GSCE’s, a single in A level Government and Politics and a report that read straight ‘E’s.

For me there’s always been a link between games and learning, but it’s taken years of industry and professional experience including my time as a BBC Commissioner and a PhD in the educational psychology of games to fully appreciate the potential benefits.

I am a game player but I’m also a lifelong learner. I am a passionate believer in the potential of education to change lives.  I believe that learning is something that can make the world a better place.  It can transform society, culture and the economy by catapulting people out of often horrendous situations and helping them realise their potential.

Learning is not an onerous activity – we love to learn.  Everyone loves to learn.  The thrill and satisfaction of acquiring some knowledge or skill, or overcoming some challenge by developing a solution is universal.  Just because the experience of school poisons some attitudes towards education it doesn’t mean that learning ever loses it’s ability to delight.

Play and learning are intrinsically linked.  Indeed, we learn in three ways: repetition, play and dialogue.  From the moment we are born, play is a basic human desire.

Who could deny that play is enormously attractive?  Regardless of whether it is computer-based or real-world, sports and games are a universal passion.  You only have to consider the viewing figures for the Olympic Games and the World Cup to recognise that play is universally appealing.  The last World Cup had more than 3 billion viewers making it the single biggest collective event in human history.

But it’s not just passive entertainment.  In terms of activity duration it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that video gameplay is unprecedented in human history: some estimates suggest that we play three billion hours per week, 150 million people play FarmVille each month.  That’s an astonishing amount of time and reach.

Some of the most fervent game players are exactly the same people who disengage or drop out of school and play no further constructive role in society.  With their devotion to gameplay, it is easy to see the attraction of making education more game-like.

In education the appeal of games represents a form of Holy Grail.  The idea that a disaffected disinterested disempowered teenage boy (or girl) might spend hours and hours of their own time tackling a formidable problem, want to talk about it with his friends, and pursue it until he succeeds is something that any school teacher would love to be able to mimic. A gamer will willingly invest more than the 100 hours needed to complete a game like GTA 4; that’s the equivalent to half a GCSE or 10 credits towards a Masters degree.  Gaming seems like the obvious solution to reengage young people.

Sadly, we tend to deliver them ‘games’ like this:

magnet game

We deceive ourselves that these activities are going to make the same impact  as the games we play at home. In fact, if we’re honest, this sort of “educational game” is neither educational or a game because it doesn’t possess the characteristics of either.

Perhaps it is unreasonable to compare educational resources like this with commercial off-the-shelf games.  After all Grand Theft Auto 4 had a $100m budget; that works out at $1m per hour of activity.  Most educational resources have a minuscule fraction of that.   But sadly, even the easy-to-implement feedback and rewards systems don’t come close to what the entertainment-focused competitors provide.

The other problem with educational games is we’re not all gamers so for some the prospect of playing a computer game isn’t that appealing.That said, I’m not suggesting that we can’t all appreciate games and gain something from them.

Many of the perceived benefits of educational games are a consequence of the Hawthorne effect where the extra effort committed to introducing and testing the game are the reason for improved performance, not the game itself. Actually, there is very little evidence to suggest that playing games, without any further contextualisation, delivers any transferable learning at all which is why I’ve said, provocatively, games teach us nothing.

Perhaps when you take these resources apart, closer inspection reveals very few gaming characteristics.  In my post what is a game?  I identify the following core characteristics that turns an activity into a game:

I haven’t included fun in that list.  For me, fun is a bonus in gameplay but it is by no means a defining characteristic.  Indeed most games that I play are not fun.  Most games that I play, if they are worth playing, are characterised by long, grinding effort.  I rarely finish games feeling euphoric – more often I feel exhausted but satisfied.  What makes the effort worthwhile is the quality of the rewards.

Many of those game characteristics are intrinsically associated with learning.   Games meet learning in the following aspects:

• Opportunities for reflection and evaluation
• Access to feedback on performance
• Record progress
• Purposeful interactivity
• Achieving learning objectives
• Opportunities to collaborate, investigate or experience
• Chance to correct and learn from errors

Actually, I think games teach us lot.

So, in spite of my criticisms of “educational games,” I still believe passionately in their potential to inspire learning. And I think their real educational value lies in four areas:

• Cosmetics – making the unpleasant more palatable
• Confidence – offering the chance to practise and fail softly
• Catalyst – as a spring board to further investigation
• Collaboration – as a means of pooling our intellectual and social capital

I think that learning is of the utmost importance to our society and our world .While I don’t believe that games are a panacea, I do believe that they offer a unique way to reach and develop our potential and tackle many of the problems we face.

Playing games often brings out the best in us.  It inspires ingenious solutions, hard work and perseverance and global collaboration.  In games we believe that anything is possible and that we are capable of anything.  Surely those are traits that we should bring to bear on life.

Play & Games articles

There’s a lot of really interesting work going on with play and games – here are some of the articles that have caught my eye in the last couple weeks.

Play

Bring Back Play and Disorganized Sports to Our Children. From The Innovative Educator. http://j.mp/n8tCG3

ChicagoQuest promotes game-playing at school – Chicago Sun-Times http://j.mp/qU8zEk

Parents’ behavior linked to kids’ video game playing. Michigan State University http://j.mp/qLuP63

Helicopter Parents Can Impede Child’s Ability to Play. From NC State http://j.mp/nyPH8v

Gamasutra – Features – Personality And Play Styles: A Unified Model http://j.mp/qV1dvx

Game-based learning

Do Action Video Games Improve Perception and Cognition? Florida Uni research in Frontiers in Cognition journal. http://j.mp/rdxeSI

In the Brain, Winning Is Everywhere. How games affect the brain. From Yale. http://j.mp/oNS856

Five Lessons On Teaching From Angry Birds That Have Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Parabolas. From dy/dan http://j.mp/qpcZ9y

Use

Find Games For Your Players [Marketing] from What Games Are http://j.mp/ob0FIy

Gamers Succeed Where Scientists Fail, Opening Door to New AIDS drug design. http://j.mp/oKX5vk

UK ‘must act to solve games industry brain drain’ Tigra study reported by BBC. http://j.mp/ocsOft

The games people play

Although I’m sceptical with much of the ‘research’ that describes virtually everybody as a ‘gamer,’ there is no doubt that over the last few years there’s been an explosion of activity in casual games. Of course one could argue that we’ve always played casual games such as Solitaire and Minesweeper but recently the genre has become more prominent and acceptable. Casual games are now regarded as an extremely lucrative business proposition and are penetrating markets where ‘play’ has previously been a nasty word.

One More Level has created this great infographic to describe the demographics of casual games.

Casual Gaming Infographic

Source: One More Level Flash Games

Beach games

pipe game

During the summer I went to North Wales with the youth group I help lead. While we were away, we played lots of games. Not high-tech, computer-based games but real-world, physical games. It was a timely reminder to me that play, even for teenagers, does not always depend on bits and bytes but can happily exist with a few bits and bobs. In fact, the simplicity added to the fun.

We played a variety of short games on the beach. Some were physical, collecting as much water as possible with a pipe drilled full of holes for example. Some were creative, such as making pictures with beach-combed artefacts. Some were simply sporty, such as volleyball. Almost all the games were faintly ridiculous.

The variety of games catered for everyone’s preference and skill and avoided the situation where any of the young people could feel excluded. They gave every one a chance to shine.

The young people played in teams. The competition was an important driver for participation and each game had a scoring system that rewarded achievement and more arbitrary factors such as teamwork and flair. Having said that, everyone recognised that the scoring was simply a device to provide structure and was at the whim of each of the game leader’s discretion. The scoring was wildly inconsistent but no-one really minded.

But team play is more than competition, it is dependent on collaboration.  The games were designed to leave no-one behind – every game required everyone to participate. No-one could fail individually, but the team could succeed together.

These lo-tech games worked because they drew on the fundamentals of play:

• the society of shared voluntary activity,
• simple rules,
• clear goals,
• boundaries in time and space, and
• no material consequence

The morning on a breezy Welsh beach illustrated beautifully the simple joy of playing together.

Play and games articles

Some of the articles about play and games that I have seen in the last few weeks.

Theory

Online Games & Interest-Driven Learning are Transformative for Today’s Young Learners by @constances http://htn.to/anmyvV

Three Qualities That Make Video Games Better Teachers Than Teachers from EdReach http://j.mp/lNARUV

Gamification time: What if everything were just a game? From BBC News via @jonkingsbury http://j.mp/jdbxTK

Video Games and Learning « Sam Pabón’s Ed-Tech Zone http://j.mp/juDIHp

Parents are forgetting how to play with their children, study shows – article from The Guardian last year http://j.mp/jdoiSR

Video Games Help Learning Difficulties – PC Advisor http://j.mp/jIJg55

The British secretary for education Michael Gove and video games as a tool for learning> http://ow.ly/5w90f

Examples

Celebrity Calamity! – a game about financial literacy via @mcdanger http://j.mp/qBH8kj

@SixtoStart and BBC team Up for “The Code Challenge” @bbccode from ARGNet http://j.mp/iNEZfx

Video: A Fast-Moving Video Game Played On Scrolls of Printer Paper from Popular Science http://j.mp/joGpik

Play & games articles

dice

Some of the articles that have caught my attention in the last couple of weeks:

Play

Swings & Roundabouts in Whitehall: Pat Kane article for Play England’s Play Today http://j.mp/jKQWXV

Wanted: More Playful Parents http://j.mp/mII7ph

Games & education

How social media and game mechanics can motivate students – http://on.mash.to/ieEOyQ

Computer Games and the Future of Assessment by Gee and Shaffer in latest WCER Research highlights http://j.mp/l1E4gs

Storytelling in education and games http://j.mp/ktkVQQ

Video Games and Learning theory http://j.mp/juDIHp

Gates Foundation funding innovative education incl games http://bit.ly/iNzTqR

Serious Games: Can Gaming Teach Kids About Life? http://j.mp/jTGCd2

Gamification

Gamification time: What if everything was just a game? From BBC News http://j.mp/jdbxTK

The ‘Gamification’ of education http://j.mp/lZQReJ

Gamification: When two tribes go to work – The Independent http://j.mp/iLQQNW

What Gamers Want: Researchers Develop Tool To Predict Player Behaviour. From NCSU http://j.mp/kcJtIq

Psychology

Kinder, Gentler Video Games May Actually Be Good For Players. From Ohio Uni http://j.mp/mHGSYF

Violent video games reduce brain response to violence and increase aggression according to Uni Missouri http://j.mp/j7jSPs

Proof video games aren’t for teens: Average Gamer Is 37 Years Old http://bit.ly/lbD5AX

The Role of Failure in Gameplay from Chris Bateman at iHobo http://j.mp/jl6dNR

Re-Play: What can’t you play? http://j.mp/khKiVF

Resources

100 Learning Games Readings compiled by @deangroom http://j.mp/kFq2lY

Great selection of games and learning resources from @instituteofplay http://j.mp/m5EYIH

Random

The Game Narratives Drinking Game. http://bit.ly/j3NqXp

Failed Sim

classroom

I have had the pleasure and privilege of attending and presenting at this year’s Games + Learning + Society conference in Madison, WI.

My talk was one in the wonderfully honest, encouraging and educational strand, Hall of Failures.  The strand was an opportunity to share experiences of projects that have delivered surprising results or haven’t met expectations.  For me, it encapsulated the essence of games – improving through failure.

the essence of games – improving through failure

I talked about a project from a few years ago – a game-like simulation for school teachers that despite some excellent content, rigorous prelaunch testing and good intentions simply didn’t deliver what the users needed or wanted.  We revised it.  It stopped being a game but started being useful for this particular audience.  It taught me a lot.

Although the accompanying notes are sketchy, here’s what I presented:

Tweets this week

twitter

Some of the articles that have caught my eye this week.

Games

• The seduction secrets of video game designers from The Observer http://j.mp/jXRfP4
• Interesting article from @gamasutra – Unsocial ‘Social’ Games http://j.mp/kaItTZ
• RT @dripster: “Hollywood shuns intelligent entertainment. The games industry doesn’t. Guess who’s winning?” http://bit.ly/iEcxHk

Psychology

• Value of art? Men who visit galleries, museums & theatre enjoy better health and are more satisfied with life. From BMJ http://bit.ly/mSaZ3k
• The value of self-talk – Thoughts That Win from Association for Psychological Science http://j.mp/mhVnLF
• 10 differences between your brain and a computer http://j.mp/mqyXRA
• Satisfaction with life and the level of state intervention go hand in hand according to study http://j.mp/ih6lOV
• RT @TheEconomist: The OECD has launched its Better Life index to measure well-being as an alternative to GDP http://econ.st/lThxJR
• Economic Recovery is Stronger in States Where People are More Optimistic http://j.mp/lbG3PP

Social Media

• RT @BBCCollege: Social networks vs TV – top ten fascinating stats: http://bbc.in/jAHEYL
• Interesting paper by @mweller: Higher education and the promises and perils of social network http://j.mp/lIwuhK
• BBC – Newsbeat – Facebook should allow under 13s says Mark Zuckerberg http://bbc.in/jEHVeA

Multiplatform

• #BBC scraps #multiplatform commissioners. Report in Broadcast http://bit.ly/lKhCcY
• RT @SkillsetSSC: #FastTrain Multiplatform Production presentation from @Kirsty_Hunter now storified! http://ht.ly/52KZL

Learning

• Study highlighting benefit of physical activity for improving learning http://j.mp/mp4imS
• RT @SirKenRobinson: Nicely ironic piece on the trouble with innovation in education: http://wapo.st/jmiGeK
• RT @Propellernet: How social media and game mechanics can motivate students - http://on.mash.to/ieEOyQ – making learning fun?!

User Experience/ Usability

• RT kai_en_ong Our very talented Kutlu on: BBC Internet Blog: BBC World Service Language Websites: user experience and typography - http://bbc.in/jSHbeR
• RT @mylesrun: The State of iPad Usability http://feedly.com/k/kvcQ6p Good old Nielsen – stating the obvious and upsetting folks.

Random

• Something a bit random – ever wanted a really sharp knife? Watch this from PopSci http://j.mp/l1ZOZ9
• Turning 8-Bit Pixel Art Into Cute, Bubbly Vector Drawings from Popular Science http://j.mp/lQ70Kv
  
• RT brainpicker 30 ways to experiment with shadows in your photos – the ultimate guide to shadowplay http://j.mp/ks0OQo
• RT @robinbloor: Surely it’s no coincidence that the word “listen” is an anagram of the word “silent”.
• RT @LozKaye: Credit to BBC and ACE for releasing http://digitalcapacity.artscouncil.org.uk/ under Creative Commons. #digicaparts

Underage gaming

18 game

I received this note from a friend recently, I wanted to share it and my reply because I think this is an important issue for parents and children.

“A lot of children in my son’s class are playing games well above their age, specifically call of duty. My son is 9. He was shown it on a play date and doesn’t like it and has no interest in playing it so we are pleased about that. Unfortunately there is a lot of cod [call of duty] talk in class because a lot of parents seem unconcerned about their children playing 18 rated games. We have mentioned it to school and they are concerned.

My question is should we be concerned about 9 yr olds playing 18 games?”

should we be concerned about 9 yr olds playing 18 games?

I think it’s right to be concerned about the underage use of games like Call of Duty (COD).  Increasingly parents are succumbing to perceived peer pressure and allowing their children to play these games because ‘all their friends are.’ I know lots of parents that have decided it’s okay.

I think there are a number of reasons to be concerned.  It’s not just the gratuitous violence that risks becoming normalised, COD and alike are riddled with bad language, sex and other adult themes.

It’s odd that many of us regulate our children’s access to TV but feel that the violence presented in games is somehow different and therefore harmless.  But visual realism in these games is increasing.  What’s more, it’s participatory.  COD Black Ops has a gruesome torture scene, Modern Warfare 2 has terrorists murdering innocent civillians in an airport, and the player can join in.   Computer games present violence in the same manner that porn shows sex – entirely casual and inconsequential.  I can’t imagine many of us would be comfortable with our children watching 18 certificate films but the content in video games is basically the same.

Killing is the point of these games – it is relentless and mindless.  But that might not be an issue to those of us who know better.  There is no evidence to suggest that playing violent video games makes well-adjusted players more violent in the long term but there is ample research that shows a rise in aggression and drop in empathy immediately after playing.  Current studies suggest that violent games can exacerbate underlying psychosis, that is, if you have a tendency to be violent, first person shooters will make it worse.  Thankfully most of us aren’t psychopaths and by our early-mid twenties most of us have settled into our skins.  Young people are still ‘solidifying.’

Children mimic behaviour that they perceive as ‘grown-up’ – they are building their life experience – however unpalatable, the characters in these games are role models.  While this effect may not extend to actually being physically violent, it may well increase bad and aggressive language, the acceptance of racial and sexual stereotypes and the believe that such conduct is not just normal but desirable.  With a natural paucity of real life experience, children use whatever they can to build their world view.

There is another worry.  Between the ages of 10 and 13, the brain undergoes massive development.  It is similar to the changes that take place when children are toddlers, defined as the Terrible Twos/ Threes.  As the brain finishes its development, pre-teens reflect and adopt dominant environmental conditions, just as babies do.  The exposure to external influences literally sets the mental pattern for how we think, what we consider normal behaviour and starts our moral and ethical system of beliefs.  These things aren’t set in stone but undoing them can be hard and painful for all concerned.

If you are an adult with a wealth of life experience, established relationships and a stable brain then putting these games into context isn’t too hard.  It simply isn’t the same for children.

The ‘Safer Children in a Digital World‘ report by Tanya Byron is particularly helpful read.

What are your thoughts?

——–

Postscript – if you haven’t played COD Black Ops and want to see its ’10 Goriest Moments’ there’s a video on YouTube.  Two points: total gameplay might last 30 hours so keep the events in this 3 minute video in perspective.  Secondly, it is genuinely gruesome – you’ve been warned.

Art and Play

pens and pencils

One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is a website that will help primary school children (5-11s) with their art work.

The audience for the resource is quite complicated because teachers are likely to be the standard bearers for it – they’ll be the ones that direct children to it (at least in the first instance).  So the site has to be teacher and classroom (i.e. interactive whiteboard) – friendly as well appealing to the under 11s.  The task is further complicated by the double-edged sword of being a ‘fun’ subject – anecdotally, we’ve heard that teaching can suffer both from unimaginative lessons (“it’s already engaging what else do we need to do?”) and from the cacophony of opinions about creative expression.

Our expectation and aim is for the site to help teachers integrate and delivery ‘good’ art education into the classroom and produce a vehicle for children to structure their projects.

A device we’re exploring to promote participation is a scoring mechanism: a simple mechanic that rewards effort.  I’m not going to argue with Huizinga (or indeed my post on game definitions) when he says such activity is not a game but we’re hoping that the playful rewards will add value to each child’s involvement.  Not only will the scoring recognise effort, it will create an internal system of value to the resource – harder activities will carry greater recompense.  For example, identifying more features of a ‘great work’ will score more points, writing a note on what you’d do differently next time will receive a bonus, and uploading an image of your work will give you a badge of achievement.

The rewards won’t be as sophisticated or varied as Call of Duty but we recognise that they will have to have a meaningful currency if the points are to be perceived as worth acquiring.  If the rewards are too easy, they become cheap and unattractive, too sparse and there’s insufficient wage for effort.  Likewise, what exactly does acquiring the points mean? Can users brag? Compete? Unlock? Level up?  If a dollar or a pound is theoretically worth that amount of gold, what’s out precious metal?  It’s an issue to address.

One of the other interesting aspects we’ll be testing during development is whether such incentives actually promote learning or simply drive the children to ‘play the game better.’

I’ll let you know how we get on, but I’d be interested in hearing of similar activities if you have them…