Professor Maja Pivec, University of Applied Sciences – FH Joanneum, Graz, Austria

The first talk was by Maja Pivec from the University of Applied Sciences in Austria who works with ISFE and European Schoolnet who conducted a literature review of 130 reports on game based learning (GBL). It was noticed that the majority had not undertaken a vigourous methodology when conducting their research. It was however found that GBL:

·         can be used to lead and direct learning

·         offer a more relaxed, less peer pressured environment 

·         is widely viewed as a safe and creative environment for learning

Pivec put forward that it was necessary for teachers to take advantage of these tools but that most teachers currently do not use them due to limitations in resources and ability.

65% of teachers asked were interested in using games in the classroom but lacked not just the technology but assistance and training to implement them.

Pivec believes that as games development is an expensive undertaking that most developers will not undertake GBL, and teachers will therefore have to adapt off the shelf games to suit the purpose.

Within the field of GBL the teacher becomes a facilitator, but there is a problem in that most teachers are not gamers and even if they are, they do not know how to integrate the use of games within the classroom.

This would indicate the need for staff with the knowledge of games based learning that can support, train and create resources for teachers who wish to incorporate games into education.

Further reading can be found at www.Engagelearning.eu

The literature review can be found here: http://isfe-eu.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=u4jalp5rp1ig41rs1fvsbu6o84&oidit=T001:w7ol0v3qaghqd4ccxic50wc9x

Dawn Hallybone, London Borough of Redbridge
Steve Bunce, Northumberland County Council
Vicky MacKenzie, Teacher, Lairdsland Primary, East Dunbartonshire
Kim Applin, Learning & Teaching Scotland
Anna Rossvoll, Aberdeenshire Council

The talks from these delegates focused on the use of games within the primary education sector primarily using the Nintendo Wii and DS platforms as a core on which to hang subject based activities such as using Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training to develop mental maths abilities, using Cooking Mama to teach cooking skills that are then applied to make food to be sold for an Enterprise unit, and using Guitar Hero as the basis of creative writing.

These talks seemed more focused on learning using games rather that games based learning.  The games were used in the same way a text might have been used ten years ago, without bringing the interactivity of the medium into play. While completely applicable to the KS1, KS2, and possibly even KS3 of the national curriculum, this would be of no use with more mature students.

What was interesting however was how these were used to encourage and develop collaborative learning. Students had to work in groups to create communal pieces of work such as “diving logs” of their time playing Endless Ocean.

Friday 20^th March 2009

Tom Watson MP

Mr Watson wanted to lend his support to the games industry and become the voice for the industry in Parliament. When talking about the use of games in school he commented “What we call technology, they call life” and that children today “work, think and play differently than their parents” and that as a result we require a “21^st century education system for 21^st century needs”.

Nolan Bushnell – Co-founder of Atari

Nolan Bushnell, widely recognised as founder of the video games industry and founder of Atari, proposed a new way of teaching, which he calls the SNAP Education System.

He commented that “ignorance and apathy are the enemies”, that the classroom no longer works and that there is more competition for the attention of students today. He made the comparison that if a TV show wanted to reduce its ratings to 0 it would “put on a talking head”, inferring that this is what is essentially happening within the education system. He asked how you compete with media that have such higher production values.

Bushnell then went on to observe that within the traditional classroom setting the delivery is in a one to many format with the majority of the class being either lost or bored, and that the majority of time in the classroom is spent on discipline.

He then proposed the abolition of the classroom and to instead have subject specialists be available from a “mission control” style hub on an open source platform via the internet that the students can access as and when they need to.

He argues that this methods of teaching would allow the focus to be on the individual. The self-esteem of the student can be increased through the differentiation of the taught materials. He argues that this system would allow students to excel in spite of any external factors in their lives.

The computer can act as a catch all for all subjects including music and art, with Dance Dance Revolution teaching coordination and Guitar Hero being likened to three chord songs. The computer can be used to reduce the barrier to the creative process that comes from the lack of expertise in the artistic techniques.

Within the system he sees students writing a short amount, every hour with the correction of this text received within ten minutes and being outsourced to non-teaching staff to optimise the time spent by teachers actually teaching.

He then went on to talk about the compulsory introduction of exercise into the program, with a period of 20 minutes at 80%-90% of the student’s maximum heart rate. This would encourage neurogenesis, the development of new neurons within the brain.

Game based learning within this would allow for greater integration for those students for whom English is not their first language, with language selection options. Bushnell puts forward that it will also give a system of establishing pre-conditioned knowledge – a so called “mind inventory” that can be built upon with further modularly delivered units.

A abridged copy of the talk can be found here: http://newlearning.blip.tv/file/1905445/

Graeme Duncan – Chief Executive, Caspian Learning

Founded in 2002 Caspian Learning specialises in games and simulations for the commercial, military and education sectors.

Focusing bespoke solutions, they have produced “Rome in Danger”, an educational game based on Roman history, which has scored 98% in engagement as scored by 300 trial students.

They argue that engagement is only one factor that can be measured in ensuring the product is effective and that safe failure can also be a factor. This was then illustrated using an army simulation of a vehicle checkpoint, allowing officers to apply prior knowledge in context and get immediate, audio-visual feedback on the decisions they make.

He then went on to discuss the application of “Web 3.0” technologies in the application of games based learning, with the application of 3d technologies via online, casual and social games. The platform will be able to facilitate learning via the internet.

Within the “media savvy” generation, people are demanding more digitally demanding within the work setting. These can make learning more immersive, more contextual, give the ability for safe failure, critical thinking and immediate feedback.

Duncan also predicted the move of GBL over to the internet and its introduction into social media networks and casual games sites such as Facebook and Playfish.

Dr Jacob Habgood – Head of Serious Games, Sumo Digital

Dr Jacob Habgood describes previous edutainment games as “chocolate covered broccoli”; the game is the chocolate, the broccoli the education, children eat the chocolate and leave the broccoli. The learning content is extrinsic to the game, tacked onto an existing game rather than being a part of it.

Habgood suggests making the learning content more intrinsic and illustrates this with his PhD game, Zombie Division which he used to empirically prove that intrinsic games are more motivating as measured by the amount of time spent playing and the knowledge gained buy the students using a pre-post-delay test method.

He has since developed a WiiWare title called Outnumbered that teaches maths that further illustrates the intrinsic integration of learning content. He argues you don’t have to make maths fun, it is merely a medium to work with.

The game covers the relations and connections between addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and integrates the learning content into the core mechanics of the game.

The game has players trying to protect their tower from monsters with numbers above their heads that scroll in from the left side of the screen. Players must hang the numbered goo on the monsters to reduce their number to 0. Should the player subtract too far and fall below 0 then the goo falls off and they must start again. The player can also grow their own monsters to defend their tower, using the addition of numbered goo to grow them to a numerical size that is able to defeat the attackers. Magic is then introduced to introduce multiplication and division.

The difficulty of the game is then controlled using a cognitive model to track the application of the key concepts and differentiate the player experience.

Sean Dromgoole – CEO, Some Research / Gamevision

Dromgoole discussed some of the research figures surrounding the games market as found in autumn 2008.

There are 55.3 million people in the UK aged 6+ of which 16.7 million are active gamers (active defined as bought or played a game in the last year). Within this the major platforms are the Sony PSP (2 million), Sony Playstation 3 (2 million), Microsoft Xbox 360 (2.3 million), PC (3.9 million), Nintendo DS (5.8 million) and the Nintendo Wii (6.1 million).

Looking at gender balance, the PS3 and 360 markets were 75% male, while the Wii was virtually gender neutral.

It was also noted that the majority of play takes place offline, with women preferring to play offline with other people.

Dromgoole then impressed that the nature of a good game is good gameplay, before breaking this down into its component parts:

·         understanding a given environment

·         teaching skills that can be used in the environment

·         testing those skills

·         completing of tasks

·         rewarding the player

·         progressing to the next stage

He then observed that this is incredibly similar to the teaching methods used in school.

He also mentioned research conducted by the developers of EVE Online, into the maximum size of an effectively communicating group on the internet, which was indicated as standing at 180 people.

Summary

Though there did seem to be a heavy focus on off the shelf games used in schools, there were some core concepts that reinforced the work we are doing with the Phoenix ARG.

Pivec’s discussion on GBL and how it can lead and direct learning with the teacher as facilitator mirrors the intentions of our project though I however disagree with the her perceived cost of producing games. The PC market, Wiiware or Xbox Live Arcade have far less development costs associated with them, predominantly due to the lower technical demands and digital distribution methods that are associated with the platforms.

The primary education talks, while aimed more at learning using games, did raise the point of games being a facilitator for collaborative working, another aspect of our game.

Watson’s quote of “we require a “21^st century education system for 21^st century needs” resonates with our aims and while Bushnell’s concepts are radical to say the least he also made some valid points about the amount of time spent on classroom disruptions and that GBL can be used to enable student differentiation.

Games as a means of “safe failure” as mentioned by Duncan was something that we are wanting to develop on within our ARG, the nature of simulation aspect allowing them to respond to challenges within a turnaround company without having the serious consequences that would result from poor judgement. I also concurred with his appraisal (though obviously biased by his company’s position) that games and game based learning will make greater use of the vast resource that is the internet.

Dr. Habgood’s talk on intrinsic integration was by far the most beneficial talk of the conference. His work on integrating the learning content into the game will be of great benefit in creating the ARG, as well as for my dissertation. It really impressed on me the necessity to avoid the “chocolate covered broccoli” approach that defined the edutainment era of the early 1990s.

Dromgoole’s talk on the facts and figures surrounding the UK games industry was useful as much from a personal standpoint as for designing the ARG. It is quite rare to get definitive figures from the games industry and so to hear from someone who analyses data for all the major industry publishers was very enlightening.

While the talks were interesting I also had the opportunity to network with conference delegates over the course of the two days, meeting people from TruSim, Sumo Digital and Ideonic all game developers looking into creating serious games. Talking with these people helped me to get an idea of where developers are looking when it comes markets for GBL and the process they use when creating game based learning.

The additional funding has allowed me to be able to register for the Game Based Learning Conference 2009. This should be a very rewarding conference and allow me to see what else is being done in the field of games in education and serious games. It will also give me a chance to listen to (and hopefully meet) industry leaders such as:

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari 

Ian Livingstone, Creative Director of Eidos & Skillset’s Chair of the Computer Games Skills Council

Michael Rawlinson, Director General of ELSPA

Dr Jacob Habgood, Head of Serious Games at Sumo Digital Ltd

Chris Deering, former President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe & Chair of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival

Alice Taylor, Commissioning Editor for Channel 4 Education (I’ve heard Alice speak before at the ARGs in Charity & Education Conference in November, really interesting considering how little she could say about he upcoming projects)

Also after talking to Terry last week, who in turn spoke to Steve Hand (Head of Creative Technologies), it looks like I am going to be travelling to Paris with a group of staff. We”l be liasing with a university over there about joint projects utilising Moodle.

At the same time I have been talking to Vaughan Powell about the possibility of creating some alternate environments for his work using the virtual reality lab for rehabilitation. Which hopefully will yield results.

I’ve not had to write in a journalistic style before so that in itself has been a challenge. Also taking into consideration such things as omitting where possible specifics such as dates and figures that would have variances year on year so articles can be reused without editting on the part of the lecturer has been a challenge.

Still working on the ARG. We’ve started using some online project management software called Basecamp which I’d thoroughly recommend. Even in its trial version it has proven to be a useful tool for tracking what I need to do and when it needs to be done by. I’ve also put together the Phoenix UK website, which is the consultancy the game is based around. I used some free CSS and manipulated it to suit which I think has given me a slightly better knowledge of what different aspects of CCS script are for.

I’ve got a presentation coming up at the beginning of February for the faculty mashup day. I’ve got to say I’m a little nervous about standing up in front of lecturers and explaining what I’m doing and how we hope it can improve the teaching of the Enterprise unit. It will however give me a great opportunity to practice presenting/pitching an idea to a group.

I took the opportunity last week to chat with Mat Garey about the games industry. It was really beneficial to talk to someone who had recently been a member. We discussed ways of presenting game designs and how might be best to stand out from other applicants both in that field and as a potential producer. For both people skills seem to be essential as well as the ability to communicate with differing groups of people. He also suggested getting to grips with some of the game engines out there would be of benefit, especially the Unreal engine if I get the chance.

I was also provided with some PowerPoints from Sony today on games and the skills needed by graduates by a lecturer entering the industry. I hope I can use these to help develop my skillset into something that is desirable by the industry.

The ArchVis project seems to be coming together quite nicely, helped by the level of commitment the two guys who are producing the models. It should be finished by the beginning of next week all going well. The only real challenges have been created by my couple of days off ill but things are still on track.

I’ve also been coordinating the Architectural Visualisation project that Roger put my way. I had a meeting with Martin Andrews, the architect, which helped to establish his requirements which I could then pass on to the students involved. I feel this is helping my project and people management skills, which are essential should I apply for a job as a games producer.

I have also been working on addressing the non-standard units within Victory and identifying what needs to be done with them. This has meant liaising with the members of staff that own the units and identifying the courses and course modules the Victory units are associated with (if any), who within the course they need to be delivered to and whether they need to be replicated each year.

I’ve started on the first of the websites for the ARG project, learning how to use the new tools available with Adobe Master Collection CS4. So far this has only been Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver but I hope to look at Flash at some point as well.

I attended a training session on podcasting yesterday delivered by E-learning. The course actually consisted of showing people that it’s more than likely that they don’t actually need a podcast but perhaps just a streaming or downloadable audio file to sit on their Victory site. The methods by which to do this were very briefly touched on but the general message was to where possible get the guys in the Rotunda to do it for you. The most beneficial thing that came out of it was the potential (subject to discussion with the relevant lecturers) of doing a video glossary for dance notation. Speaking to Mat Saxey from the Rotunda it shouldn’t be a technical problem and could ptoentially be a route into getting the Performing Arts areas of the department to engage with Victory.

I have been asked this morning whether I would be interested in doing some production work for Roger Eglin. He is involved in an architectural visualisation project and wanting someone to act as a producer above some of his animation students. In the initial phase it will be a two week timeframe, with the animators using SketchUp to produce the visualisations and me overseeing them. It could potentially be good experience for approaching a production role after my degree.