The new version of Risk therefore comes with stickers, special rules, secret pockets and other tricks which make permanent changes to the game. If you make  a choice between two cards, for example, the other card is destroyed. Literally (from the rulebook: ”If a card is DESTROYED, it is removed from the game permanently. Rip it up. Throw it in the trash.”). Other changes affect the board or the rules permanently – and they come into play when certain conditions are met, such as ‘open the first time a faction is eliminated from the game’. Plus, deliciously intriguingly, one envelope secured to the box base labelled ‘Do not open. Ever’.

Winners in the game get to create special conditions in the following game (such as founding a new major city) whilst losers also carry certain conditions into their next game too. All of this means that the game becomes a campaign, rather than a  one-off scenario, where player actions affect not only the current game, but will have repercussions for future games too.

This innovative approach is not for everyone, of course – many players (particularly beginners) like boardgames precisely because they can write off a poor loss by starting a new game afresh, each game providing a fixed structure for developing a beginner’s gameplay: an essential time-honoured learning curve.  And some who like the aesthetics of board games will be appalled at the idea of destroying or defacing cards or boards – designer Lewis Pulsipher has attacked this aspect of Risk Legacy. It is also pretty obvious that you need regular players to get the most out of Risk Legacy – a game-loving family, or games group. But all this aside, the idea and possibilities are fascinating both for future boardgames, and for education.

The traditional method of learning a boardgame, outlined above, carries a number of similarities with the way we tend to teach courses in higher education: we tend to explain complex subject concepts in the same way each year to new students, and (particularly in practical subjects) rely on the students to practice those concepts with real-world examples or conditions: multiple case-studies or assignments giving students a new chance in each case to develop and consolidate their understanding. The problems with this approach tend to be at the start, when students with a range of background experience are taught key concepts in the same way and at the same level; differential understanding then leads through to poorer or greater application of the knowledge in later exercises or assignments.

Experiential education tries to solve this problem by designing the teaching and learning around students’ existing knowledge, so that each student is learning on their own trajectory: it is, however, difficult and time-consuming to achieve – particularly with large numbers of students. The approach used in Risk Legacy might, though, be of interest here: the idea that students carry knowledge and decisions between each learning module, case study or assignment – and the modules or assignments themselves actually change based on those ‘carried forward’ conditions. Educational methods such as ipsative assessment (see Hughes, Okumoto & Crawford 2010) already utilise this approach, but are not widespread and suffer from the same problems of scalability for large student numbers. Maybe more scalable approaches could be used which allow students to carry conditions and effects through a number of case studies or exercises though, leaving assessments largely unchanged but altering the conditions and learning paths each student takes to their goal. In effect, turning discrete learning scenarios into a longer-term learning campaign.

In the weeks leading up to the fifth European Conference for Games Based Learning, participants from around the globe were checking the news sites for updates on the situation in Athens. The organisers (Sue and Elaine from ACI) did a wonderful job keeping everyone up to date as the days approached, and set up a travel discussion for those wishing to share lifts from the airport on strike days.

I slowly watched many of the authors in my own mini-track on Games on  a Budget pull out due to cancelled flights (including Nic Whitton, the co-chair, although more due to safety/mobility issues given the imminent arrival of Little Whitton #2); but as I met up for conference drinks at the hotel reception on Wednesday eve, it was good to see that around 80 attendees had managed to avoid any strikes and help contribute to the local economy. Before that I’d spent the day with German experiential education expert Jule Hildmann and her partner, avoiding the police barricades and explosions from the central square; touring around the (closed) ancient sites before climbing a hill to hit a layer of tear gas and splutter back down again.

Konkkaronkka

The first day of the conference had been compressed to cover missing sessions, but I was pleased to chair a near-full mini-track. The focus was on low-cost or traditional-influenced games, and the track opened with a paper by Nic Whitton on the possibilities and affordances such games present to education, and the call for more studies into this timely area (given shrinking budgets across education and heightened by the local economic crisis). I presented my work on Of Course! - the course design board game and its ability to set up a detailed context using simple games-based tricks. A beautiful, cute board game for nursery-age children in Finland with learning difficulties, Konkkaronkka, was presented by Päivi Marjanen who described how the game encouraged peer learning amongst playtesting sessions. The key to this very successful game was the close work between tutors/carers and the game designers at the start; and the extensive playtesting with the target audience; a digital version was created, but in testing it was found that the children talked to the computer and not to each other, so this development was stopped.

The horse & fountain game

In the wider conference, other low cost/simple games were in evidence too: a fascinating activity presented by Ivar Männamaa (University of Tartu, Estonia) which distilled the complex and difficult issue of cultural integration into a metaphor of horses and watering holes. Using home-made, brightly coloured hexagons (fountains) and half-hexagons (horses) students have to position their horses to occupy a portion of the fountains; another team’s horses can then  choose to share or overtake some or all of the fountains. A simple but clever scoring system and rules mimic aspects of cultural integration, and initial tests have proved very effective in generating discussion around the issue which spirals out from the activity. A good example of the generation of complex contexts and ideas with simple game elements.

Other papers of interest included Io Iacovides (PhD student with the Open University) who presented her initial study of breakdowns and contradictions during gameplay: a breakdown being a short term problem or issue, with contradictions being wider problems which go against the context of the game or the needs of the player. Using special study rooms which could track player reactions, Io looked at eight game players and non-game-players in detail. In her paper and the ensuing discussion, the usefulness of these concepts in looking at engagement were considered: breakdowns (if accompanied with breakthroughs) might in fact be more engaging over time, whereas contradictions might cause a dramatic loss in engagement. Eleni Timplalexi (Athens University) described a live action roleplay for high school chemistry students, where groups ‘time travelled’ between two rooms: one a Renaissance alchemy lab where the source and properties of materials could be investigated; and the other a modern chemistry lab where the knowledge of materials could be put into practice to make useful compounds and products. Nikolaos Avouris gave an accomplished keynote on Friday morning overviewing the use of games within Museum education: highlighting the overuse of ‘games overlaid on a weak subject link’, but focussing on the growing use of pervasive games and games with a social connection such as Pheon and Ghost of a Chance at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

As usual for this conference, the long discussion time in and between papers, and the willingness to talk (and eat, and drink) long into the night, meant that I returned with many more ideas, links and new contacts than I could cope with. Athens itself provided contrasting memories: from the sublime remains on the Acropolis and surprising us whenever we turned a corner from tourist tat to stunning remains; to the hair-raising run through narrow streets to avoid protestors and police bombarding each other with water, gas and masonry. But the abiding memory will be of a set of wonderful international friends who took it all on board in a playful way, and ensured we all learned from the experience.

Gratuitous shot of the Parthenon

Every two years since 1983, Cambridge has played host to 90 people from literally every corner of the world – roughly half from developing countries. Drawn together by deep interests in delivering open and distance learning (ODL) to all areas of society, the participants spend three and half very full days listening, reflecting and (75%) discussing and challenging issues shared across institutions and continents.

Started by Alan Tate (now Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the Open University) and Roger Mills (now Research Associate at the Von Hugel Insitute, University of Cambridge) after they returned from a large and impersonal distance learning conference, with a mission to create a small, social, discussion-based event; the conference has remained much the same for all fourteen events. I attended for the first time two years ago, and played a much larger part this year, but like all other 89 attendees was saddened to hear that this would be the final conference. Alan, Roger and Ann Gaskell (Assistant Director, Teaching and Learner Support at the Open University) have put huge chunks of their working lives into the conference, and deserve a well-deserved rest.

Madingley Hall; a fine setting

Home Groups

What sets it apart from other conferences? The small numbers, the deeply engaged participants from all levels of institutions around the world, and the long discussion time between papers and workshops I’ve already mentioned; but for me the best part is the use of ‘home groups’ to explore and reflect on topics in much more detail within a small group. Timetabled daily for an hour after the main keynotes, these allow deeper and more contextual discussion on key topics for the group members, and are certainly where I have had my most valuable reflections and ideas. This year, I was invited to facilitate one of the home groups, and was rewarded with a fabulous group of people and some fascinating discussions and debates – which you can read on our Cloudworks page. I also got to know all 17 members of my group extremely well, and have forged many friendships.

Croquet on the lawns (one of the many challenging contrasts!)

Social Justice

This final conference was based around the theme of social justice, which was covered at various levels of depth in the keynotes, papers and home groups. The conference has always been one demanding open minds and guaranteed to shift your core beliefs and moral outlook; but this year’s theme created an even more challenging lens with which to take in and absorb worldwide contexts. We heard about the mind-boggling numbers UNISA (South Africa) has to deal with – 140,000 students on one course; 7,000 students registering each day at the start of session; only 17% of students with any access to the internet – about continuing inequality in the education of women in Nigeria, and how ODL is being used with difficulty to provide some empowerment; and many problems and issues surrounding cross-border delivery of courses, due to political/cultural differences. Those of us working in institutions in the developed world were left questioning why we presume to know what the people of distant countries need in terms of education (and charge them a fortune for the ‘solution’) when we barely know what the needs of our own local area are. Alan Davis (Vice-Chancellor at Empire State College, SUNY) provided an interesting take on the latter problem in his keynote which described the make-up of SUNY’s state-wide market and how the College provide student-staff co-created curricula to meet individual needs.

There were other incredible examples of how ODL has been applied in highly contextual ways, with creativity and sheer belief in social needs: most notably Mohammed Rezwan (Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha)’s floating school - a boat which responds to the problems caused by the annual Bangladesh flooding which leaves a third of the country under water (and rising, thanks to global warming) by collecting children from several waterside villages, and then converting the boat into a school with mobile internet access. As a reward for attending, the children are given charged solar lamps to take home and use overnight, before returning them for charging the following day: a very well thought-out approach which considered the very specific local context.

Indeed, the topic of context was raised throughout the conference – the simple, unquestionable fact that before providing education services to a particular social group or individual, you should know something of their context and their needs. Historically, and continuing today, are examples where exactly the opposite takes place: western providers market ODL courses to individuals in developing countries who might spend their entire savings or wages on them in the belief of quality and status – but at the detriment to local institutions who might offer a far more contextualised course and would keep the money and expertise within the local economy.

Games

I had a hand in providing another source of contrast from the serious, belief-shaking matters in much of the conference: two workshops which used fun and playfulness to achieve some equally serious outcomes. The first, with Patrick Kelly (Open University) and Deanna Douglas (Athabasca University) was based around the professional links we’d made at the previous conference, which have continued through regular video-conferences around shared topics of interest to this day; the workshop used a ‘speed dating’ activity to match up couples who shared common interests, and hopefully generated quite a few new friendships and links which will pervade as richly as ours. The second was based around my course design boardgame, and along with my colleagues Clifford Fyle and Nichola Hayes we guided participants through the design and purpose of the game (which aims to set a local context for ODL design, as described above) and generated much interested discussion.

I arrived back from the four days with pages and pages of notes, and a head full of thoughts. I’ve also felt my outlook on ODL, and my own institution’s use of it, shift – with a stronger focus on the need to think carefully about who we design for, and why. The sort of reflection and conceptual shifts all conferences should lead to, but very few do nowadays. Heartfelt thanks therefore go to Alan, Roger, Ann, and all the participants who were there sharing, discussing and reflecting with me. It’s such a shame there won’t be another chance to further challenge ourselves in two years; but the 14 Cambridge International conferences have left a great legacy.

Alan Tait, Ann Gaskell and Roger Mills; with participants

I contributed a chapter on the use of pervasive or alternate reality games (ARGs)  in museums, drawing on a very interesting interview with Georgina Goodlander about her work at the LUCE foundation on the two ARGs Pheon and Ghosts of a Chance; and the work Juliette Culver did with Bletchley Park on our charity ARG for Cancer Research UK, Operation:Sleeper Cell. I strongly feel that ARGs provide a compelling approach to museum education, due to their low-tech and cheap budget (yet highly engaging) nature. Hopefully my chapter will encourage other museums to try this out.

The rest of the (mammoth, and expertly woven together by editor Katy Beale) book has an incredible variety of theoretical and practical approaches, case studies, and thought pieces. They cover game approaches from simple card games and treasure hunts, to multiple actor staged events and high-end digital installations; with many involving the museum audience in co-creation or collaborative outputs.

It’ll take a while to read through them all, but I challenge any museum education officer not to be inspired by at least one approach.

Finally, Kris and Alicia revealed all at the mLearnCon recently in San Jose. Details of the (clever, and discussion-inducing – much like my Course Design Boardgame) game are described well here, but the most interesting thing for me was their design process, as shown in the slides linked below.

As they went through repeated playtests, Kris and Alicia made the game elements simpler and simpler – removing, at one stage, every trace of technology and focussing purely on the cards, gameplay and discussion. This idea of simplifying things down so that the initial aim/context is diluted to simple, but powerfully raw, parts, is one fascinating me at the moment.

Oh, and Kris, I’d like a pack please

Fast forward three months, and a group of researchers and practitioners within higher and further education who all shared an interest in the use of games within learning (either directly, or indirectly through research) met together in a first SIG online meeting. And there was much rejoicing.

Between then and now, we’ve been working on a variety of projects to consolidate our approaches and develop new research and outreach; including creating a web site and membership scheme to allow anyone interested in the area (games for adult learning) to join in. We are pleased to announce that this is now open to all:

• About the GL-SIG (and how to join)

What about the pub?

The first challenge: open the Lego packets

Last week, the core members of the SIG met for the first of what we aim to be six-monthly ‘face to face’ events. I hosted at the University of Leicester, and we spent a fabulous 24-hours (including a sleep and university catering-supplied bacon butties) packing in a whole host of work including, but not limited to:

• competing in a lego-building ‘contextual’ challenge
  

  Make my day, punk

• setting out the aims and structure of a planned white paper on games and learning
• discussing Aaron Dignan’s Game Frame (see Nic’s thoughts here, which matched the discussion pretty well)
• pooling research ideas and opportunities
• playing and critiquing my course design board game (very useful feedback) and  decamping in the evening for beer and some highly competitive games of Carcassonne, Ruk Shuk and Pass the Pigs.

Playing the course design boardgame

Waterford street, by akahodag

Getting to Waterford was an interesting game in itself, myself and fellow speaker Nicola Whitton travelling the opposite way out to the eastern coast of Essex, for the daily flight from London Southend to Waterford. However, safely arriving in the Viking hotel (complete with Asgard bar) after a rather beautiful flight over lamp-lit coastal villages, we were prepared for the following action-packed day.

An opening keynote from Michael Hallissy of Dublin’s Digital Hub set the tone  of the event, with tales of ambitious games-design projects for young adults which led to further questions about the roles of technology, pedagogic design, and the benefits and pitfalls of games-based approaches. The symposium then split into two streams, allowing participants to cross streams after each paper via changeover periods (a good model which many other conferences could take note of).

The range of papers in the two streams was impressive in both breadth and depth. In the space of an hour, I heard a fascinating and detailed physiological discussion of the use of ‘sonic spaces’ to enhance student immersion and engagement from performer and researcher Flaithri Neff of Limerick Institute of Technology; and a case study in the use of a simple board game to introduce key concepts in genetics teaching to students and younger learners. The board game, presented by Eoin Gill of Waterford IoT, was produced as part of a European 2Ways funded project with the GENIE CETL centre at the University of Leicester (and, embarrassingly, was the first I’d heard of it, but I shall be off to see them this week!); and it was an excellent example of the use of a simple game to quickly set a complex context, through the use of simple targetted elements: players receive an alien body and a pen, and move around the board adding random mutations to their body whilst watching their population grow and shrink.

Eoin Gill and the genetics boardgame

The board game formed an excellent case study for my own paper, which centred around the use of simple games or game-based elements to set up authentic contexts – following up my earlier work (see Moseley, 2010 in publications) and focussing on their use in course design and delivery.

A few research postgraduates presented their work, which added some fresh and detailed studies to the mix – Karen Orr, graduating from Queen’s University Belfast, provided one of the most interesting with her psychometric tests and scale to determine people’s attitude to games use in education. She determined three factors: benefits (perceived usefulness), self-efficacy (not wanting to look stupid), and boastfulness/confidence (in own ability to play and learn from games). It will be interesting to see papers which result from this thesis in due course.

Patrick Felicia followed this with his own initial analysis of data gathered from a survey of Irish educators in Higher Education, on the use and attitudes to games-based learning in the classroom. There were some interesting early outcomes, including a lack of difference by gender, and a dip in effectiveness if games-based approaches are over-used.

Ryan Flynn, lecturer in games design at the University of Greenwich, presented a fascinating paper on the development of a ‘realistic’ simulation for Social Work training, and the decisions taken about levels of realism and immersion appropriate to the project. Ryan is developing a R.E.A.L. framework which considers the various factors influencing the level of realism required for any application – one to keep tabs on as it develops.

The day finished with an extremely positive round-table discussion about consolidating expertise and moving the games-based-learning agenda forward in Ireland. Some real strides were made through discussion in the room, and we could certainly do with these levels of energy and positive action in England.

Packed around these highlights were some interesting discussions over coffee and home-made cakes, demonstrations of games-based applications by IoT Masters students, and (to finish off the day perfectly) a fabulous meal in a cosy restaurant in Waterford centre. All in all, a fascinating, friendly and energising symposium – congratulations to Patrick and Waterford.

A nice example of why context is so important has come into my consciousness recently, from two games my household has been playing. To be more precise, my daughter has been playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village on her Nintendo DS, and I’ve been spending longer and longer snippets of free time with Broken Sword on my iPhone.

Both are narrative-based mystery games, and both contain a number of puzzles of varying difficulty (I’ve helped my daughter with some, she’s helped me with some of mine). Both, indeed, are pretty enjoyable to play. But Broken Sword is an excellent experience, whereas Professor Layton is only good. And it all comes down to the way the puzzles are integrated into the games.

Nice puzzle, but what's it got to do with a secret village?

In Professor Layton (a mega-popular series amongst 10-30yolds) whilst some puzzles are part of the game narrative (looking for clues in a study indicating the escape route of a villain, for example), others are linked to the narrative but a little contrived (such as the railway porter trying to fill the carriage with a minimal number of scented roses which have set rules around the coverage of their scent), and several others eschew any pretence of being part of the narrative: a man on the street will stop you and say “I have this puzzle which has been foxing me – help me out!” – leading to a puzzle about colours or shapes. My daughter finds these annoying, wanting to get on with the story.

In Broken Sword, a beautiful port of an older game series, the puzzles are so cleverly woven into the engaging narrative, that you would be hard placed to list them out as individual puzzle instances on reflection. You might, for example, extract pieces of a torn photograph from a safe, place them on a table nearby and then start fitting them back together – all a very natural progression of narrative, but executed as a clever puzzle; in another case a heavily secured door has a series of sliding locks which need to be negotiated to be able to pull back the bolt; and there are countless other smaller problems to solve as you negotiate a particular location or mission (gathering water in a bar towel to be able to carry it out to a cavern and mix it with plaster of paris found elsewhere to take a cast of an impression made by pressing a key into sand, was one of my particular favourites).

Piecing together some evidence within the narrative

None of the above puzzles or approaches are ground-breaking or new of course (much like many methods used in teaching and learning), however, the way they are integrated into the narrative or context of the game varies dramatically, and the resulting game experience is far more engaging where the context is constant throughout. It’s no wonder that so many students complain of ‘wanting to get on with the subject’ when faced with another out-of-context skills session.

The future of Higher Education? Oxford's Dodo contemplates its former self.

The conference focuses on teaching and learning issues within History teaching, and (based on my previous visit in 2009) is a fabulous, discursive conference with student needs and a passion for teaching History at its heart. This one proved to be no different, with the added feel of impending loss and yet a collective belief that these issues, and the community surrounding them, should continue and grow.

Held in the beautifully situated Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford, the conference opened with a discussion and workshop in which we proactively discussed the key activities of the subject centre, and how these might continue within – and in addition to – the new, cut-down, structure. The four key features were support for new teachers (the Centre’s most impressive work to date, with plans to link together a number of disparate schemes into a UK-wide network of training and support for new lecturers and postgraduates), community (a proposal to take this online and augment a continuing annual conference), publication (the proposal for a new journal to fill the current gap in T&L for History) and regional support (opinion was split on whether the new stringent times will allow for regional support to continue, or whether the three areas above should provide national support with local search/theme options).

The rest of the two-day conference covered some fascinating themes, all surrounded by lengthy post-presentation discussion. Highlights included:

• The use of the Big Society as a theme to frame historical discussions around, by George Campbell Gosling (Oxford Brookes) – this was paired with my session on the Great History Conundrum and contextual training, and led to an interesting discussion around the use of modern/familiar contexts as a basis to work in related historical aspects and skills, with equal thinking around ways to counter the negative reception political hot potatoes (in George’s case) and games (in mine) get within higher education.
• A heated discussion around the use of final essays for testing learning outcomes,  and rubrics around these. This merged into discussion around effective feedback (the It’s Good to Talk project based at DeMontfort University and presented by Sam McGinty – and one which an upcoming project on audio feedback at the University of Leicester will link in to) and work-based learning (Harvey Woolf and Richard Hawkins from Wolverhampton) – all of which opened up debate around the alignment of assessment and feedback to real activity, and useful outcomes for the student. A case study in personalised, peer-assisted feedback was given by Chris Szejnmann (Loughborough) who described his use of simple Flip cameras to provide reflection and feedback on student presentations.
• A fascinating study around international and regional effects on student work and transition in first year undergraduate courses (Melodee Beals, from the report International Students in History)

Augmented by lengthy coffee-breaks and a chance to reflect on each topic with colleagues, all of the participants took something away which would impact on their own practice in one way or another. For me, five days on, my head is still buzzing with some of the ideas around assessment and feedback – but also, reflecting on the way that communities of practice can form and flourish around issues invoking such a keen interest as student learning in a subject close to one’s heart. I doubt very much if this will be the last time these participants will be gathered together and discussing the latest issues affecting students of History in higher education. Thank goodness.

• Observing Emerging Student Networks on a Microblogging Service

It would be difficult to repeat the same approach now – Twitter being ubiquitous, with many student users; whereas when we ran the project it was still in its infancy – but there are some interesting results, particularly in the ways the undergraduate and postgraduate student groups used the service differently. There is more work to be done around how microblogging can affect the relationship between tutors and students,  and assist in the formation of small communities of practice – tantalising glimpses of which are included here.