Learning+Design

=**Learning Design in Gaming Environments to Support Learning**= As we continue to venture into the digital age, numerous technologies are being shared everyday. The field of education is still not fully committed to all of these technologies and gaming continues to be a controversial topic inside and outside of the classroom. From content to hours spent, researchers and parents have mixed feelings, and the actual learning that occurs within games will continue to be the critical aspect. Gaming has made its way into education for various reasons but mainly because of its ability to captivate the player's attention and hold it for long periods of time-engagement. Through analyzing educational game design, educators can better understand and accept the design elements that are conducive to learning. More importantly, it is critical to identify elements of game design that promote learning as well as the learning theories that conceptualize how video games foster learning. Using computer games and games in general for educational purposes offers a variety of knowledge within a virtual world. Through this avenue, the learning process is supported and facilitated and learning is inspired. Students learn to think, analyze, and make connections which are more rewarded in our society. We don't learn from games, we learn through them.

"//The reason most kid's don't like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it is utterly boring." (Dr. Seymour Papert, Prof. at the MIT)// //"Educational games are competing against the boring teacher in the front of the class who is just not capable of engaging his students."//

Here are some questions to help guide your thinking regarding learning designs in gaming:
 * 1) How do you design effective learning opportunities?
 * 2) Why is leaning by experience more efficient than learning by studying?
 * 3) How do you provide the learning experiences needed to respond to current challenges?

Regardless of the considerable resistance to the value of games for learning, formal education can accept and integrate games as educational technology by connecting existing game design with scholarly accepted pedagogy (for more about problems with learning and gaming see the @Problems and Challenges page). Theories of Robert Gagne and Howard Gardner demonstrate how beneficial games already embody the fundamental elements of learning and instructional theories so they constitute sound educational pedagogy.
 * Learning Theories**
 * Constructivism - Seven pedagogical goals are used which are 1) to provide an experience with the knowledge-construction process, 2) to provide experiences encouraging appreciation of multiple perspectives, 3) to embed learning in realistic contexts, 4) to encourage ownership in the learning process, 5) to embed learning in social experience, 6) to encourage the use of multiple modes of representations, and 7) to encourage self-awareness of the the knowledge construction process ([Robinson, 98]; based on works of [Honebein, 96 and Cunningham et al, 93]
 * Constructivism guides the design of effective learning environments. According to Vygotsky and Newman, students bring their prior skills and knowledge to the learning community and the teacher structures learning situations in which each learner can interact with other students to develop new knowledge and fashion their own needs and capacities. Knowledge is generated from experience with complex tasks rather than from isolated activities like learning and practicing separately. As a result, skills and knowledge are best acquired within context. According to Vygotsky's theory, problem solving skills of tasks can be graded on (1) those performed independently by a student, (2) those which can be performed even with help from others and (3) those that cannot be performed even with help. By means of the second, the classroom becomes a community of learning in which the students transfer learning from classroom to real life and back and from one subject to another.

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 * Constructionism
 * Designing and developing video games, rather than playing them, applies a constructionist approach to learning with games (Robertson & Good, 2005; Robertson et al., 2004). El-Nasr and Smith (2006) viewed game modding—the development of new modules in an existing game using tool kits packaged with the game—as a constructionist method of learning. The constructionist approach to learning involves two activities: the construction of knowledge through experience and the creation of personally relevant products. The theory proposes that whatever the product, be it a birdhouse, computer program, or robot, the, “design and implementation of products are meaningful to those creating them and that learning becomes active and self directed through the construction of artifacts” (p. 2). Steiner, Kaplan, & Moulthrop (2006) concurred with this constructivist view and contended that, “children as design partners improve the technologies they consume as well as gain educational benefits from the experience” (p. 137). Burrow and More (2005) applied constructionist techniques in an architecture course by having students render their designs with a game-engine thereby exploring spatial relationships as well as atmosphere, lighting, and other environmental conditions in a 3-D simulation of their architectural designs. (See the @Game Creation page for more information).
 * Situated Cognition/Learning - Games provide information in a relevant context or setting. Learning takes place alongside social interaction and collaboration.
 * In a symposium on learning theories for the analysis of educational video games, Halverson, Shaffer, Squire, and Steinkuehler (2006) asserted that situated cognition provides a meaningful framework for the study of games, given that games have an ability to situate learning in an authentic context and engage players in a community of practice. Dede, Nelson, Ketelhut, Clarke, and Bowman (2004) outlined both constructivist and situated learning design principles present in effective video games including GST (guided social constructivist design), EMC (expert modeling and coaching) and LPP (legitimate peripheral participation). These authors employed such principles in evaluating game design and applied their findings to future iterations of the design.
 * Lunce (2006) also argued that situated or contextual learning provides the rationale for simulations and simulation games in a classroom environment because of their ability to provide an authentic context in which to situate learning. According to these and other scholars, the authentic, situated context affords greater content mastery and transfer of knowledge than a traditional classroom learning (Dickey, 2005, 2006; Klopfer & Yoon, 2005; Schrier, 2006).
 * Herrington & Oliver, who have written extensively on situated learning and multimedia, suggest that to marry up to the theory, programs need to:
 * Provide authentic context and activities.
 * Embed expert performances and model processes.
 * Provide multiple roles and perspectives.
 * Support collaborative construction of knowledge.
 * Provide coaching and scaffolding.
 * Promote reflection to enable abstractions to be formed.
 * Promote articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit.
 * Provide for integrated assessment.

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Areas of Learning in Which Video Games Can Contribute
//McFarlane, 2002// //﻿// Research has stressed the influence of the use of video games in improving students' strategies and procedures in order to develop learning in general. In 1996, Greenfield researched children between the age of 12 and 16 by using mostly adventure games and concluded the following:
 * **Areas** || **Aspect video games can contribute** ||
 * Personal and social development || Provide interest and motivation to learn; Maintain attention and concentration ||
 * Language and literacy || Encourage children to explain what is happening; Use talk to organize, sequence and clarify thinking, ideas, feelings and events ||
 * Mathematical development || Use everyday words to describe position ||
 * Creative development || Respond in a variety of ways; Use their imagination in art and design music, and stories ||
 * Knowledge and understanding of the world || Use early control software to investigate direction and control ||
 * Physical development || Fine motor control can be developed with increased refinement in using a mouse for navigation and selecting objects ||
 * 1) Video games aid the development of strategies for reading three-dimensional images.
 * 2) They help to develop learning through observation and hypothesis-testing
 * 3) They broaden the understanding of scientific simulations.
 * 4) They increase strategies for parallel attention.

McFarlene and co-workers (2002) show that most teachers acknowledge how games contribute to the development of a variety of strategies that are essential for learning: problem-solving, sequence learning, deductive reasoning, memorizing along with group strategies that include cooperative work and task-based learning. The work methodology for creating a learning environment is based on four types of actions:
 * 1) Experimentation - learning objectives and activities are established
 * 2) Reflection - Results obtained in each group are analyzed
 * 3) Activity - Students must specify the use of other materials outside of the game
 * 4) Discussion - Relevant to reflection, joint discussion regarding the proposed activities

In 2004, BETA shared that it is in provoking and harnessing emotions such as satisfaction, desire, anger, excitement and pride in achievement, within the player that games software can benefit education.

//Formal learning transforms the experience of the player making specific experiences relevant in a broader context through the concepts used during the exploration of the game.// //﻿// //﻿//

Learning Outcomes
Learning embedded in a motivating setting improves learning outcomes in which the engagement facilitates learning. Learning occurs when the learner is mentally involved and actively interacts withe the game. The game must provide a balance of challenge and possible courses of action. To begin creating a successful game-based learning opportunity, elements of learning and engagement should be taken into consideration:
 * Determine Pedagogical Approach (how you believe learning takes place)
 * Situate the Task in a Model World
 * Elaborate the Details
 * Incorporate Underlying Pedagogical Support
 * Map Learning Activities to Interface Actions
 * Map Learning Concepts to Interface Objects

Empowered Learners (exert from Gee's 13 Principles of Learning in Video Games)

 * 1) **Co-design**: Good learning produces active agents (producers) not just passive recipients (consumers). Players make things happen as they are continuously pushed in the interactive environment. They are co-creating the world they are in and making their own decisions and actions. Motivation is created through ownership, buy in, and engaged participation. Learners should not be forced to complete work but rather be agents in their own learning in order for the curriculum to be shaped by the learner's actions in meaningful ways.
 * 2) **Customize**: We all know that every child learns differently which makes it difficult for learners to be agents of their own learning if they cannot make decisions regarding how their learning will work. They should be able and encouraged to try new styles so games allow players to customize the game of play to fit their learning and playing styles. Students will be able to discover their favorite learning style within the classroom and try new ones without fear. They will learn about how and why they learn and also about how they learn and think without risking a bad grade.
 * 3) **Identity**: "Deep learning requires an extended commitment and such a commitment is powerfully recruited when people take on a new identity they value and in which they become heavily invested—whether this be a child “being a scientist doing science” in a classroom or an adult taking on a new role at work. But academic areas are not first and foremost bodies of facts, they are, rather, first and foremost, the activities and ways of knowing through which such facts are generated, defended, and modified. Such activities and ways of knowing are carried out by people who adopt certain sorts of identities, that is, adopt certain ways with words, actions, and interactions, as well as certain values, attitudes, and beliefs." Ironically, when learners adopt and practice such an identity and engage in the forms of talk and action connected to it, facts come free—they are learned as part and parcel of being a certain so t of person needing to do certain sorts of things for one’s own purposes and goals (Shaffer 2004). (For more about identies and learning see the @Identity and Avatars page).
 * 4) **Manipulation and Distributed Knowledge**: Cognitive research suggests that for humans perception and action are deeply inter-connected (Barsalou 1991a, b; Clark 1997; Glenberg 1997; Glenberg & Robertson 1999). In general, humans feel more empowered when they can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways. Students use tools and technologies that empowers their thinking and learning.

Games are not in and of themselves excellent learning experiences, rather it is the design of learning within the context of the game that leads to real learning. James Gee points out the design aspects that make games valuable learning experiences:
 * Problem solving.
 * Clear goals (with the ability to rethink and change them).
 * Copious feedback.
 * Well-designed experiences.
 * Mentoring in game AND in meta-game communities.
 * Performance in the task before achieving competence.
 * Failure.[[image:teacher.jpg width="362" height="363" align="right" caption="Google Images"]]
 * Well-ordered problems.
 * A cycle of expertise that builds on itself.
 * Smart tools used to achieve the goals and learning.

Nolan Bushnell ("the father of the game industry"), like so many other parents, wishes his children had a teacher like Tim Rylands. Tim is was the most popular teacher at a small elementary school in Chem Magna, near the city of Bristol. He believes the visual richness of landscape inspires his students' creativity. "The digital life in which kids live today is turned off at school. That leaves them with boredom and frustration..." Bushnell believes that video games help children learn by teaching creative problem-solving, how to formulate hypotheses, to test and revise them. They can even teach the fundamental principles of scientific research. Students learn more than writing skills because they listen, explore and talk while going through a game. According to Marc Prensky, another game developer, who wrote Digital Game-Based Learning: "Games offer players the chance to make decisions, get feedback, level up and become heroes. That's how educations should be organized. You learn more and more, you apply that knowledge, and you'll get a great job." [8]

Games are interesting because they're difficult which is the essential message the world of game culture offers to education: Learning is fun when it's intellectually stimulating. Gee explains: "The game industry is selling products that are complex and hard to master, and take a lot of time to master. The fact that people are buying them contradicts the idea that everything should be fast and easy. In fact, a game that is too easy will get criticized in reviews and will not become a success. A game should be challenging, fair and deep. If it's not, it won't sell."

Below, he describes how gaming and learning are linked. [3]

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Video games support the fact that young people have a gift of learning by themselves. Games call on their natural need to develop themselves, to feel masterful and competent which brings pleasure and pride. " Video games present a radically different vision of education: kids who are able to learn by themselves. Even when schools fail, students actively look for ways to learn. Experts don't need to impose an education program to tap into that innate need."

David McDivitt, high school history teacher in Indiana used the game, Making History: The Calm and the Storm. His research showed that the students who didn't read textbooks or attend classes but played and discussed Making History learned more about World War II. Also, the answers to essay questions in the classes exclusively using the game were more reflective and better reasoned. He was struck the most by how the students talked about the game outside the classroom and stated that extracurricular conversations about the politics of leadership are not typically seen after reading a textbook.

The Benefits of Learning and Gaming
media type="custom" key="10081165" Tom Chatfield describes seven lessons from games that can be used outside of games, e.g., for learning initiatives:
 * Experience bars measuring progress
 * Multiple long- and short-term aims
 * Rewards for effort
 * Rapid, frequent, clear feedback
 * An element of uncertainty
 * Windows of enhanced attention
 * Other people

Rick Van Eck discusses **How Video Games May Transform Education** media type="youtube" key="khJDLo0oMX4" height="349" width="425" align="center"

There are critical aspects that must be investigated regarding gaming in education in cooperation with the designers. Organizational aspects, the role of the teachers, individual differences, the transference of learning, complex learning, and the context of learning are some components that need to be properly researched. Within the context of learning, the practices and the role of the game in a specific context deals with four fundamental aspects: The integration of games and learning becomes more significant when new technologies enable increasingly sophisticated game experiences. Motivation and reflection are critical components of the learning process which is explained in Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory.
 * 1) How the game is contextualized: it forms a part of a daily activity; it is based on something extraordinary, as a reward, as something without relation to a usual practice, etc.
 * 2) The type of exercises carried out: the development of the sessions.
 * 3) The type of interaction between participants: the role of the teacher, competitive activity, co-operative activity, both, etc.
 * 4) The qualities of the critical and reflective elements of the game itself.

Educational Gaming �� Play �� Flow �� Motivation �� Learning //Games foster play, which produces a state of flow, which increases motivation, which supports//

//the learning process. The juncture of learning outcomes with well-designed game mechanics can// //result in learning experiences which are intrinsically motivating. The challenge for educational// //designers is to build environments where the dynamics of learning are fully integrated with the// //dynamics of game-play.//

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 * Gaming can make a better world**

//The traditionalist are right that learners cannot be left to their own devices, they need smart tools and, most importantly, they need good designers who guide and scaffold their learning (Kelly 2003). For games, these designers are brilliant game designers like Warren Spector and Will Wright. For schools, these designers are teachers. (Gee)//

[1] Dondlinger, M. (2007). Educational Video Game Design: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Applied Educational Technology, 4(1)
 * References**

[2] Open-Ended Video Games: A Model for Developing Learning for the Interactive Age Kurt Squire []

[3] James Gee on Games and Learning []

[4] What is Game-Based Learning []

[5] Gros, B. (2007). Digital Games in Education: The Design of Games-Based Learning Environments. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40(1).

[6] Gee, J. Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines

[7] Paras, B. Game, Motivation, and Effective Learning: An Integrated Model for Educational Game Desgin

[8] Visscher, M. (2006) Reading, writing and playing The Sims: What video games can teach educators about improving schools.

[9] Rick Van Eck How Video Games May Transform Education

[10] Video Games and Learning. Retrieved from []

[11] Tom Chatfield The Benefits of Video Games and Learning

[12] Jane McGonigal Gaming Can Make a Better World