ECGBL 2009, Graz: Games and Learning

One of many traditional watering holes

On behalf of my co-authors, I set off to Graz (on a plane, for the first time in years and since the security increases: give me the Eurostar any day) to present our paper on Motivation in Alternative Reality Games (Moseley, Whitton, Culver, Piatt) at the 3rd European Conference for Games Based Learning (ECGBL).

After having followed tweets from the 2nd ECGBL in Barcelona last year, I was keen to find out whether the conference lived up to its hype, and was rather bowled over. First impressions, however, were not so wonderful – with the advertised twitter tag #ECGBL rather useless to the band of twitterers due to no wifi or connection within the main building – and a very sparse attendence (40 or so for the opening plenary).

That soon changed though: a comprehensive overview of research into games in education by Liz Boyle set us on our way, closely followed by my paper (which went down a treat – literally, with my generous distribution of gummi-bears: the idea being that the person at the very back would be motivated to stay at least until the bag reached them). The Prezi for our paper is here: http://prezi.com/snzgvgwrwtzh/ – paper itself to follow shortly.

Sharing my session were two great siblings who were to share many beers with me over the coming three days: Jule and Hanno Hildmann provided a microcosm of the spread across the whole conference: Jule discussing the use of outdoor activity games to engage under-privileged students; and Hanno musing on the use of mobile devices for assessment.

This set the scene for the remaining two days, with sessions varying from board or mind games through to Second Life and 3D graphics-rich commercial quality games. What was remarkable was the level of pedagogic and learning knowledge base for a huge slice of the papers: most games had been designed with a need in mind, and solved it with considerable skill.

Nathalie Charlier's First Aid Game

I’ll describe three papers which I found fascinating. The first, from Nathalie Charlier, demonstrated an ingenious and beautiful hand-crafted board game she had designed to assess First Aid training – although the game could be won by clever strategy, the assessment scores were based on knowledge which was peer-assessed throughout the game: hence allowing 40 students to be assessed without any teacher intervention.
The second was a paper by Warwick PhD student Wee Hoe Tan, which I chaired: this was interesting in that it used a commercial game (Spore) to support an A-level Biology course, but deep learning occurred not within the game itself, but in the discussions around the use and information in the game by the students and tutors – this led to an interesting discussion in the room, and suggests that even poorly linked off-the-shelf games (which Spore was not, I should note) could be used as catalysts for high quality learning.
Thirdly, the paper by Fiona Littleton and Hamish Macleod from Edinburgh provided a fascinating window into their MSc course in eLearning, which immerses their students in Second Life, World of Warcraft etc. From discussions I’d had with Hamish and Fiona over dinner, I knew how forward thinking this course is, and the audience again provided a good prolonged discussion of the various merits of the games platforms and whether technology in itself is a key factor, or if the benefits are more related to roles, personalities, memorable events etc.

Graz itself is a very beautiful (in an austere way) small city, with a central berg and the new blue heart-shaped kunsthaus dominating the skyline. The conference dinner was held in the latter, and a great time was had by all – as the clock struck midnight, I was able to celebrate my birthday with a hearty international group, fuelled by the local beer and hearty slab-of-meat based dishes.

Tchüss, Graz; and make a note of October 2010, when the ECGBL will move to Copenhagen.

ALT-C 2009: Manchester

My thoughts on the way to ALT-C this year were rather mixed. The problem with all previous ALT-Cs I’d been to has been the predominance of technology-focussed papers, with little in the way of pedagogic thought, evidence-based practice or strong research – so this was a real risk again. On the plus side, I knew many more participants this time round (almost all through my Twitter network) and was looking forward to meeting them and networking; but also, with my day job now taking a focus on distance learning, I was on the lookout for a new range of topics.

Oh, also, I was to be staying with my brother and sister-in-law-to-be in the rather swanky Hilton which now dominates the hitherto rather confused Manchester skyline. Thanks to them, I had a very comfortable base.

So to the conference itself. I’ll cheekily fit into the ALT-C mould by first noting the technology I used – of note only because it’s the first time I’ve conference’d with an iPhone, which rather revolutionised the way I interacted with it, socialised and recorded (see a fuller description here if you’re that way inclined).

I’ll deal with the game-related sessions in a separate post, and focus on the main education themes here. I was aiming for those on feedback and assessment methods, mobile learning and open and distance education (including Open Educational Resources, OERs) in the main. These, sadly, largely disappointed.

Using CRS for fieldwork

On assessment methods I saw nothing of interest; on feedback the presentation of a forced feedback-read for students within BlackBoard before they can receive their mark, by Stuart Hepplestone et al from Sheffield Hallam, was interesting – although there was no solid data yet on how the students reacted to or benefitted from it. A nice side-idea from this project was getting older students to write the instruction guides, rather than staff. I also took part in a great workshop on alphanumeric portable CRS (classroom response systems) which used a mixture of well structured questions and instant feedback in the field and back in the classroom to develop and reinforce learning – an impressive improvement on previous use of simple ABCD devices I’ve seen which don’t encourage deep learning.

The most interesting OER project was the OLNet.org project at the OU, which aims to gather together existing resources in a useful and searchable way, emphasising reuse rather than creation. The questions from the floor afterwards were particularly good, with a suggestion that open pedagogies for using the open content would be a very useful addition. A project worth watching.

There were sadly no mobile learning papers of note that I could see (surely a huge omission), but one online project to support students at point of need by involving tutors in the use of google talk and wikis to help exam revision was interesting (Manish Malik from Portsmouth) though short on details/feedback. The most thought-provoking session of the conference for me, though, was Dave White’s update to Prensky’s digital natives, with his ideas of Natives and Residents (I’ve followed – and liked – this idea for a while): great discussion after. Oh, and our Twitter paper went down well too.

The keynotes (viewable here, go to Sept 8/9/10) were good overall: Michael Wesch started with a great anthropological study which moved from Papua New Guinea to the ‘I want to be on TV/Youtube/famous’ attitude of the contemporary 18-year old. Martin Bean gave an upbeat first keynote of his time as OU vice-chancellor; but Terry Anderson finished off with the best of the three: a fast-paced but always interesting look at the nature of the modern student and how they arrive at university with their own already formed ideas of the tools and information which is relevant to their life (it is up to us to widen and expand this view) and a plethora of open resources and tools which it will take an interesting week or two to work through.

The venue was good, if a little inflexible in terms of workshop/symposium-friendly rooms; the locale perfect for social meetups (plenty of bars serving great beer at proper northern prices) including the excellent Manchester Museum across the road, with its tyrannosaur, fabulous anthropological and egyptian collections, and collection of live lizards and frogs (through which Alan Cann gave us a guided tour). F-alt ran its usual collection of slightly disorganised but well attended and lubricated sessions, and putting faces to, and sharing drinks and ideas with, Twitter friends made it the most social ALT to date.

Overall, a very good three days. A noticable increase in pedagogically-driven papers, if not always supported by good evidence, but it’s a move in the right direction. And socially/network-wise, a cracker.

Mmm... beer

A Puzzler’s Tour of the South-West

I’ve just returned from two weeks’ holiday in the south-west of mainland Britain (Devon, Cornwall and the Forest of Dean area), and as well as being a good chance to clear brain and reflect on the last year, the monsoon-like rain we’ve been having was a good excuse to find indoor entertainment for adults and young kids (7 and 2) alike.

As we variously scampered or trudged around various exhibits, I found myself thinking about games, interaction, and good old engagement. So here are a few musings and observations on a handful of attractions and their approaches to entertaining young and old alike:

When the lights went out: neolithic lighting

Kent’s Cavern, Torquay, Devon: http://www.kents-cavern.co.uk/
The guide’s informative and lighthearted banter, developing narrative, and use of simple effects like killing the lights; using a lighter to light moss-filled neolithic shell lamps (sight, smell, atmosphere); simple props (skulls, bones), all contributed to a fascinating and constantly thrilling experience for young and old. The keys here: narrative, surprise, variety, atmosphere.

Eden Project, St. Austell, Cornwall: http://www.edenproject.com/
Visually and ethically very impressive, this is actually very linear and non-interactive: I got interest from the numerous exotic plants and some of the information boards, but  much of the info is too long/dull, and the occasional dioramas are static. The kids there basically got enjoyment from running around, and parents spent time chasing and telling them off. There are kids’ activity books, but they are too wordy for reading as you go around, and although there are stations where the book can be stamped which my 7 year old liked, they follow the linear path and provide long wordy information sheets which the kids ignore.

A marble run at the House of Marbles

The House of Marbles, Bovey Tracey, Devon: http://www.houseofmarbles.com/
Consists of very small traditional museum with interesting (to me) behind-glass displays of board and tabletop games through the ages; four marble runs which extend interest for young and old alike with multiple outcomes each time; but best of all was an outdoor courtyard area, with a number of large traditional games (skittles, chess) and some marble-specific ones: adults and kids alike had great fun with these. In summary, it works due to a good mix of static/variable and interactive elements.

Living Coast, Torquay, Devon: http://www.livingcoasts.org.uk/
Similar in many ways to the Sea Life Centres; but differs in that the penguins waddle amongst you, most of the wildlife is very close if not open to you, and the indoor activity area is superb – giant sand pit, climbing wall (a sea cliff) for kids and adults, some very well designed penguin-themed touch-screen games, an excellent floor-projection game which involved running around jumping on objects, and team games across light tables. Superb and very educational.

On the hunt for fauna in Cardiff Castle

Cardiff Castle, Cardiff, South Wales: http://www.cardiffcastle.com/
This is an impressive complex. Various stages of use and occupation on the site give a slice through history (Roman walls, Norman keep, Victorian neo-classical tower and stately home). Much is run-of-the-mill modern museum fayre (an ‘audio-visual’ film; a audio-visual commentary to carry around which has long, adult-oriented and rather dull descriptions) but two things excited the kids: climbing the Norman keep and looking out of the arrow slits (always good!), and the worksheets for the Victorian house: one intended for younger children asked them to find animals in each room: some were in carvings in the doorways, some in tapestries, some in the architecture: all adding up to a great treasure hunt which we all took part in. A sheet for older kids, full of long descriptions and little in the way of ‘activity’, was not so good.

TechniQuest: engagement in black and white

TechiQuest, Cardiff, South Wales: http://www.techniquest.org/
A science park, with two floors packed to the brim with hands-on experiments. This was incredible. The activities appealed to all ages – plenty for parents to get involved in too – very few were out of action, and all induced learning through play in a completely invisible way. Highlights: things to take away (eg spirograph pictures), music to compose (including a giant floor piano for the 2-year old), water fun (racing boats, spraying targets), communal interaction (sound waves across the room, comparing yourself to other visitors on that day etc.). 100% engagement; but then of course this is a self-created attraction, not applying visitor interaction to an existing site.

Puzzlewood: Tolkein's inspiration for Mirkwood?

PuzzleWood, Forest of Dean: http://www.puzzlewood.net/
This small, family run site consists of two excellent elements: one almost entirely natural – the puzzle wood (spooky natural mossy woodland augmented with the remains of Roman open mining, and wooden bridges and lookout points) – and the other man-made: an indoor maze with secret doors, tunnels, bridges and a hunt for seven animal symbols. All of us – 2 to 36 – loved both, and yes, I did get hopelessly lost…

And that concludes my little holiday report, with an eye to engagement and visitor interaction. There are quite a few things I’ll be bearing in mind in my own work, and many which reinforce the already-known benefits of keeping things varied, in context, and interesting on many levels.

Games in the Midlands

In late May, I joined in a research/workshop event organised by the ARGOSI (Alternate Reality Games for Orientation and Student Induction, based at Manchester Metropolitan University) project team, at Aston University in Birmingham.

As well as wrapping up the project, and working out how it would continue and spread (Brighton may be taking it on next year), we pooled our various experiences together to think about ways in which immersive/alternative reality games could help solve two perennial problems in higher education: induction (ie. becoming a student), and research skills (becoming an effective student). We also looked at new media or digital literacies too, being another hot topic which fits nicely into the ARG-online sphere.

Several coffees, chocolate muffins, Werthers Originals and live-linkups later, we came up with an interesting little project which I can’t reveal too much about, but suffice to say it combines principles from Facebook-style games, online searching and online treasure-hunt style games (like http://thenethernet.com/) to teach prospective students about university life, research skills and digital literacies. More information to follow, I hope.

Nightlife consisted of reimagining various ‘classic’ tabletop games (principally due to lack of instructions) like Kerplunk and a card-based football game, before settling on a grand Scrabble match. The Manchester crew were surprisingly lurid in their choice of words, I have to note…

In addition to the above, we wrote and tried out several sample puzzles for the project – here’s one for you to try from Scott Wilson:

1. Where Am I From?
   http://blog.arukikata.co.jp/tokuhain/glasgow/images/P1030870x.jpg
2. Where Am I From?
   http://www.jarviscocker.net/
3.  Where Am I From?
   http://www.buckice.com/images/hw_coal.gif
4. What links the three locations above?

We also scoped out a new collection of essays, on the use of alternative reality / immersive games in education, covering some very exciting areas: again, more of this to follow.

All in all, an excellent event: many thanks to the ARGOSI team for organising and funding it. These short research gatherings are a great hotbed for ideas – unfettered by talks or strict agendas, but focussed on a particular theme. I look forward to more of the same in the future.

Reality Bytes: ARGs in Academia

An article I wrote for the British Universities Film  & Video Council’s excellent Viewfinder magazine has just been published (June 2009, no 75).

In it I give a brief overview of what an ARG is, why it is so interesting for education, and some examples of recent ARG-related work in educational settings.

Click the cover for a PDF of the article; use the link above to obtain a copy of the full printed issue.

Immitters and Irritation

A little while back I came up with the idea of an immitter – essentially a twitter account which would deliver appropriately spaced and relevant tweets to those new to twitter, allowing them to gradually see the usefulness of the tool without having to build up an instant and relevant friend network (which takes some time).

In the context of higher education, the immitter might pull in subject- or topic- specific feeds from elsewhere, mixed with comments from tutors or course administration: all focussed on a particular subject cohort.

However, since this idea was formed, the commercial world has woken up to Twitter, and companies and PR agents are now emitting swathes of marketing tweets and – worse – using searches on vaguely relevant words to follow and retweet our own posts (I recently received a horde of lesbian porn followers when I used the word “bi” in a very much unrelated tweet; and the reporting of a toy robot race with my daughter which included the word “scientific” was retweeted to a wide audience by the rather too eager @ScienceTweets organisation). It is now getting more and more difficult to keep your Twitter followers in check, and keep your feed relevant and free from spam – indeed, many people are starting to protect their updates to protect their sanity, which rather goes against the Twitter ethos.

So, I go back to the original aims for the academic immitter, and suggest that some of the companies looking to utilise Twitter for their own marketing emitter should take note:

• volume of information is critical: 1-4 tweets a day depending on maturity of twitter audience;
• content of information is even more critical: all tweets should be either directly relevant, or recipients should be able to see the link to their own interests;
• to achieve the above two aims, the target audience must be a coherent interest group or community;
• may be automated (via relevant feeds etc.), manual or a mixture of the two. Some manual input probably required to ensure relevance of content.

Student superbrains: learning from guild play

I was reading the very interesting article from Douglas Thomas and John Brown in the newly formed IJLM online (http://ijlm.net/missives/doi/abs/10.1162/ijlm.2009.0008) : Why Virtual Worlds Can Matter.

Their description of guilds within World of Warcraft (the study of which is not new of course: see Steinkuehler 2004, Dave White’s Community Development in the Pursuit of Dragon Slaying and several others) really grabbed me though.

For those not in the know, serious World of Warcraft (WoW, or any of the other massive multiplayer online roleplaying games, or MMORPs) players form into groups or guilds, and work together in these units to solve bigger problems, fight larger battles, and generally enjoy the community aspect of the game (which can sometimes extend into real life meetings etc.).

Thomas and Brown suggest, from a study of WoW, that individuals within these guilds solve small problems or make small discoveries (such as finding out how a particular magic artefact works) – they then pass on this discovery to others in the guild, hence sharing knowledge across the community. But then comes the good bit. In doing so, other members of the guild will apply their own thinking and skills to the problem and solution, improving on or widening the original solution to make it more effective or applicable (such as casting a particular spell when using the artefact to boost its power). Solutions are therefore improved over time, re-shared across the guild, and recorded for future use.

It really excited me to think about this in terms of student groups. The idea that each individual student could solve a small problem, but then share that with their peers, who would use their own skills and contexts to adapt and improve the solution; but always ensuring that the group as a whole knew the latest solution, the history and the applicability for the future.

Instead of understanding magic artefacts, imagine that the problems are related to research skills or problems, induction issues, or pertinent subject disccussions. Each student in a group gets to work on one of the problems/issues, but all students get to see and apply/improve all of the problems over time, forming a community of practice as they do so.

Now, for somewhere to put this idea into practice…

Reflection in small, assessed, bites?

Following a very thought-provoking post by Alan Cann:

http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2009/02/dont-mention-b-word.html

…I’ve been mulling it over with a coffee. His post talks about his students’ dislike for reflectve writing in blogs – mainly due to the time and thought it requires. It combines two key topics (reflection and modern, appropriate, assessment) – both of which are vital, I think, for the near future in education.

Myself and Alan have already tweeted about the difference in expectation/ease of reflection in Arts/Sciences, which means that some longer forms (blogs, wikis) do work to a certain extent in Arts subjects, contrary to Science contexts. However, this still leaves two problems: reflection for scientists (that could be a conference in its own right, no?!) and appropriate and clear assessment.

For the first, I like the idea of micro- or mini- blogging. short statements which encourage instant and secondary reflection (just finishing a class/activity, and in the evening – for example) combined with communal comparison (‘I thought bit X was really unclear: I can’t see how it fits in’ / ‘I agree – foxed me too. Anyone get it?’) We know scientists talk in single sentences so Twitter (or my proposed 300-character mini blogging service, Yakkus) might be just the thing.

Visual Assessment Guidelines

For assessment, I’ve had the same problem as Alan. Complaints from students that it’s too difficult to comprehend; increasingly convoluted attempts to express it. With micro- mini- blogging, this should be easier. A string of sample tweets/yakks down the page, each with a green-yellow-red coloured bar indicating the depth of reflection and collaboration (see example at side). At-a-glance assessment guidelines.

The more I think about this, the more I like it. Any thoughts from the scientists?

Will this twittering come to any good?

Twitter is suddenly flavour of the month, as even your Grandmother will tell you (mine told me yesterday, at any rate). Boosted in recent months by high profile twitterers Steven Fry (http://twitter.com/stephenfry) with 122,000 followers and counting, a reformed Jonathan Ross (http://twitter.com/Wossy) with 56k and US President Barack Obama (http://twitter.com/BarackObama) topping the lot with 225k – although since his inauguration he’s been rather quiet. Both Fry and Ross also recently brought Twitter into the real world, the former tweeting (via a proxy) a speech in Apple’s London Store, taking questions from Twitter as well as a live audience (see the #fryappletalk tag stream); the latter taking a random word from Twitter and planning to insert it in the Bafta ceremony on 8th Feb. To give it the final official sanction, the BBC ran a major news item concerning the microblogging site last week following tweets covering the US plane landing in the Hudson River.

At the University of Leicester we’ve been trialling our own Twitter revolution, providing small groups of students with iPod Touches (courtesy of a succesful bid to the JISC HEAT3 scheme) for four weeks, and asking them to tweet their location and activity, and (optionally) anything else they wanted. The aim was to find out more about the modern student experience (where and how they go to study and relax). This is not the first use of Twitter in education, I should note (see Diane Skiba’s roundup and check out the Twitter stream to any conference worth its salt nowadays), but it is still a fledgling area.

Working with Alan Cann (who introduced me to Twitter last year and gives a good intro to it) and Jo Badge in Biological Sciences, and Stuart Johnson in the Student Learning Centre, we have so far trialled the service with a first year undergraduate science group, and (currently) a postgraduate cohort in Museum Studies.

The undergraduate group took a little time to get started, but started to introduce study and social tweets in amongst their location/activity ones (such as ” is rather worried about the assessment tomorrow and is preparing herself for failure” and the rather illuminating “has the words ‘russian bride’ written on his hand, and can’t remember much of last night…. Now for chemistry revision”). 

What’s been fascinating me, though, is the postgraduate group in my own Faculty. A group of ten Museum Studies students, all taking a module on Digital Heritage which I teach on, they launched themselves into Twitter from the word go. It has become their way of discussing seminars, bouncing ideas, co-ordinating study sessions, sharing links and references, etc. (“Reading about kandinsky and art and music. How apt on an iPod”; “will send you those articles about e-games and museums”; “we’ve re-arranged for Wednesday at 3pm” ): watching the Twitter stream is a fascinating insight into the way modern postgraduates operate. Furthermore, their tutor created a special Twitter account of his own, and uses it to make them aware of his availability or any extra sessions or events: in turn the students use it to ask quick questions and clarify points of study.

It will be very interesting to see whether this constant and clearly useful dialogue continues when the iPods are returned in a week – I suspect it will, given that many tweets are sent from mobile phones or laptops rather than the devices themselves - but regardless, it’s a wonderful example of how an engaged, specialised peer group have embraced and turned Twitter to their own advantage.

More results and reflection to follow.

Same old party? Think!

I’ve just about returned the house to normality after a successful birthday party for my 7yo daughter and 17 of her friends last weekend. They had a great time, by all accounts, and haven’t stopped talking about it all week, according to their parents. My daughter has been to around eight parties so far this school year, and yet the most we get after these is one or two “I didn’t win a prize, but everyone else did” -type comments. This mismatch happens every year.

This is not because we have the most prizes, the best food, the most expensive bought-in conjurer, or take them to the best activity centre. In fact, it’s because we do the exact opposite.

Uniquely, we hold the parties in our house. We devise the games and entertainment ourselves (no outside performers), and we have hardly any prizes or sweets. But the key to the success of the parties are the fact that we spend a few hours a couple of weeks before planning a theme, a set of original (or new twists on old) games, and think carefully about keeping every kid occupied at all times with something.

This year, my daughter being 7 and liking spies, it was a 007 theme – there were four groups of spies up against each other, and the winners (individual or group) of the games won points for their team. We had pass the parcel to start, but with spy-themed forfeits in each wrapper rather than sweets; in musical statues, we secreted one of the statues away each time and the slueths had to work out which one it was; we had them in complete silence for 5 minutes (remarkable to watch) as we showed a clip from Goldfinger and at the end asked the teams to answer observation questions on it; team challenges, where they had to pick a specialist in smells, sight, geography, etc.

Basically, at an unconscious level, we thought about engagement – kids need to have something to do, and to feel that they are playing a part and getting attention. It didn’t take much preparation to maximise their participation and input throughout, and as a result we didn’t have any problems, tears, boredom, or much chaos. But most importantly, they all had a great time and lots of memories to replay.

Astute readers will have spotted the analogy, I hope. For 7 year olds, think students. For parties, think courses. Although pink wafers and party rings wouldn’t go amiss at both.