Collaboration

=**Collaboration and Gaming**=

One of today's educational buzz words is collaboration. Collaboration is viewed as a positive concept that promotes engagement and learning. However, what does it truly mean to collaborate? "Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal, but in its negative sense it is working as a traitor. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative ventures, but a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective) — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources." [[|A]] Although people have to learn to work effectively and efficiently at it, collaboration seems to be a skill observed as young as 5 to 7 years old. [[|B]] With that being said, there are many ways in which people collaborate on a daily basis- one of which is through gaming.

Games promote interactions - these interactions may be with physical objects, concepts created with technology, and/ or other people. Online games allow individuals to enter a virtual environment that they would otherwise probably never experience. They also provide an avenue for non-face to face, direct communication either across the room, town, state, country, or world. People can discuss and learn from others that they would might otherwise never get to 'talk' with. This promotes collaboration among a wide array of backgrounds, education levels, languages, careers, interests, and age groups. With this vast diversity in the gaming world, it can be a limitless educational tool that is literally at our fingertips.

The following video clip is of Miguel Nussbaum from the Games for Learning Institute, who at the time of the video was working with almost 100 schools in five countries to bring small group collaboration into the classroom. According to Nussbaum, "Games are collaborative....not one-one." The plan is to take the idea of massive gaming communities and bring them into the classroom where students would be participating and collaborating in the same location. It encompasses the concept of augmented reality, which will still be present, but it is no longer just through the screen, now the classroom has become a virtual environment. Nussbaum's educational onlline games seem to promote engagement, learning, and collaboration.

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Ideas such as engagement, learning, and collaboration are present during the use of online learning circles. The participants in the learning circles are teachers and their classrooms, which come together in a virtual space to engage in their curriculum around s specific theme for 3-4 months. At the end of their virtual interactions and collaboration, each class collects and publishes its work as a project. [|[C]] Although the idea of gaming is not directly related or mentioned in the basic idea of online learning circles, it seems that it could be incorporated fairly easily. The classes could still meet online to engage and learn from one another, but the final project produced would be a game around their selected theme. The Online Learning Circle model, located to the right, already includes norms of trust, respect, open and flexible thinking, individual responsibility, and group reciprocity [[|D]] All of these norms or characteristics would need to be present to participate in online gaming and likewise in the collaborative effort of designing an online game with a specific theme. Using the Online Learning Circle concept to have students from different classrooms work together to compile skills, knowledge, and ideas that ultimately would lead to the creation of a group-inspired game goes beyond the norms of the learning circle and could tie into the real world if so desired.

Although the Online Learning Circle would need minor tweaks to incorporate online gaming, the thought of students helping students design educational games is not a brand new concept. George Mason University is in a partnership with McKinnley Technology High School in Washington D.C. creating a youth-based program where students work with scientists, experts, and other students to design and build educational games [[|J]]. The [|ITEST:Game Design] focuses on mentoring and collaboration while learning how to design engaging, educational games. Student who had a strong interest and background in technology, specifically gaming, became Student Mentors who assist less advanced students in the building of the educational games. Interactions between the mentors and students along with experts allows for collaboration of ideas and the building of new skills that may have not been developed in a traditional classroom setting. Below is a video from the program where Student Mentors are assisting students in the program and teaching them game design.

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Technology in the 21st Century has opened the door to new skills “that are necessary to succeed in an ever-changing, global society where communication is ubiquitous and instantaneous, and where software tools allow for a range of creative and collaborative options that yield new patterns and results that we are only beginning to see. The skills include critical thinking, teamwork, problem solving, collaboration, facility with technology, information literacy, and more; they are all fundamental to the success of knowledge workers.” [[|E]] These skills are not necessarily new to education, but are they being taught and reinforced in a way to ensure that our students are successful adults. Skills involving technology and collaboration appear to be very important as we continue into the 21st century. Therefore the use of educational games that promote collaboration should become more common in the field of education. Whether playing or creating online games students will learn important collaborative skills such as negotiation, critical thinking, decision making, and planning. [[|F]] A student will continue to develop and master these skills as the content, situation, and circumstance continue to change throughout their educational careers.

According to an article written about Teachers Evaluating Educational Media (TEEM), a research group, "The children questioned as part of the research said working in a team was the most important aspect of playing video games." [[|F]] Working in a team means working together, which a direct form of collaboration. An advantage of online gaming in the development of collaborative skills. These skills include but are not limited to the ability to listen, ask questions, convey ideas, follow directions, participate in conversations, ignore distractions, seek out help, take criticism, and complete tasks [[|G]]. Students who engage in collaborative online games would develop and master these important everyday skills and apply them to their real world lives. With the except of the controversies over the graphic nature of various video games along with the ideas that online games are socially isolating and desensitizing, my research did not find ideas or examples of disadvantages to collaborative, educational online gaming. [[|H]] If games were designed with learning and collaboration in mind for educational purposes, the extreme graphic nature of various games would no longer be an issue nor would desensitization because the violence, aggression, and anger would not be present in educational games. Also if collaboration is used either to design the game or to be successful playing the game, then it would no longer be socially isolating for its participants. Students would be working with others to master the skills of the game, which could then be transferred to real-life, social interactions outside of the gaming world.




 * [|Students Study the Pros and Cons of Games]** is an article with a video about a course designed to study the Psychology of Video Games at USC. The course discusses the possible negatives of gaming which can include addiction, promotion of violence, and confusion of fantasy and reality. More importantly the course focuses on the positives of gaming such as improved memory, problem solving skills, and team work. [[|I]]
 * [|Students Study the Pros and Cons of Games]** is an article with a video about a course designed to study the Psychology of Video Games at USC. The course discusses the possible negatives of gaming which can include addiction, promotion of violence, and confusion of fantasy and reality. More importantly the course focuses on the positives of gaming such as improved memory, problem solving skills, and team work. [[|I]]

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are a type of online game where many people interact with one another in various types of virtual worlds through the manipulation of an avatar or online identity (for more information see the Identity and Avatars page of this wiki). In MMORPGs, players communicate regularly with one another during the game and can form guilds or clans (people that often play together). These guilds or clans can range from four or five friends to the upwards of a 1000 people. Interaction and collaboration widely go hand in hand in MMORPGs because players will have to strategize together as well as use teamwork to help protect each other, heal each other, and damage their common enemies [[|K]]. Players can interact with others that help to balance out their strengths and weaknesses in order to make the guild or clan the most successful. Communication and collaboration amongst players help them to form strategies based on individual actions and personalities. People who may not interact willingly in real-life or are considered to be more of an outcast can communicate, interact, and collaborate with others in these virtual settings. Some of the communication skills that these people learn and develop can then be transferred to their interactions in the real world. However, too much reliance on virtual worlds for interactions and collaboration can lead to possible social isolation and in some cases internet addiction [[|L]].