Dear Esther

UPDATE: This game is now available for Macs. Yippee!! I'll be buying Dear Esther this week and will create a new post with my review after I've played.


After watching this review of the new, narrative game, Dear Esther, I wanted to buy immediately. From the short glimpse, it felt like an interactive mystery. Instead of solving riddles or puzzles, you are trying to discover what happened on this deserted island. I would guess, as a player of the game, you might feel like an investigator.

I can't give you a first-hand account of my experience with this game because it is not yet available for Macs. I would have purchased the game tonight had a Mac version been available. Just the story and graphics alone I think are worth the $10 price tag.

In a math classroom, the game may provide a conversation starter for problem solving. In reading/language arts classrooms, the game may provide inspiration for students writing their own backstories or events they think could have happened in this land.

If you purchase this game, I'd love to hear about your experiences and how you would use it in the classroom.

The Escapist : Reviews : Dear Esther Review

Numberz

After all of my talk about games, I decided it's time to include a game in this blog. Below is a fun game that is all about making tens. It feels more like an off-the-shelf game than an educational game, so you students will likely enjoy playing it. They'll feel like they are playing, rather than learning, but they will be becoming more fluent with addition as they learn the combinations that make 10.

Games in Education

Photo provided by Bjorn Hermans.

This semester I'm taking a course on educational games and simulations from Boise State University. I'm excited about this course for many reasons. The first is obvious. I'm a game lover. Some of my best memories from growing up is playing games with my family. And I still love gathering with friends, both on and offline, to play games.

As a tutor first, then as a teacher, I incorporated games in my teaching. I just knew that they would encourage even the most reluctant student to just try. In the classroom, there's a fear of being wrong, of failing. That doesn't exist in games. If you lose, you aren't a failure. You can try again and you might win the next time. Removing the fear of failure makes students more likely to participate.

I have known the value of games just by experience. Now I want to learn more about what the research and the experience of game developers tells us. I want to be able to create educational experiences that utilize the best games have to offer.

Image provided by Fantasy Art.

Besides my love of games and wanting to know more about how to utilize them to improve education, there's one more major reason I'm excited about the course I'm taking. This course is set up using a gaming structure. Instead of having assignments, I have quests. Instead of earning a grade on class activities, I earn points. My goal is to "win the class" by earning 2000 XPs.

The logical side of my brain is fighting against this concept. It feels like putting a game shell on top of a class. I'm doing the same things I would have done in a regular class. The only difference is that I earn points towards leveling up. Will that game shell really make a difference?

At the same time, the game-lover in me is curious. Will this gaming format engage me in a way I haven't been engaged in a class before? Will I do more work just to earn more points? Will I feel in competition with my classmates and be driven to earn more points so that I can outrank them?

One of the quests I selected today involved watching this TED talk.  I have seen much better videos about gaming and how to use their mechanics in education. But this video is a good introduction if you haven't read much about gaming. It starts with some staggering statistics on how much we are spending on games. The speaker, Tom Chatfield, eventually explains 7 ways in which games engage us.
It's a bit dry, but informative.

During the video, I found myself musing about creating a game-based learning math course. There are so many resources on the web (mostly low quality, but there are a few gems) that it seems like it would be easy enough to pull together a set of activities to create at least a mini-math quest. Without creating a few of my own tools or using offline materials, I could not cover all of the skills expected by the Common Core State Standards for any grade. But I could definitely create a game that could be used as a component of a math course. The teaching would happen offline, in the classroom. The game would be a way for students to maintain math skills they had learned. It would be the "spoonful of sugar" that would make homework more enjoyable.

Eventually, it is my goal to create a math game that does teach, in addition to provide practice, in a game-based format. This game will engage students, put them in the drivers seat of math in way that helps them understand it in a meaningful way, not just a memorization of rules. Students will learn math by doing math in situations they find interesting. Doing so will require a team of software developers, math education whizzes, and all sorts of creative types, just as game developers do. I am certain my ideas for this game will continue to morph this semester. I'll be throwing out what doesn't work and pulling in more of what works. It'll be an interesting process of refinement that I am curious to see develop over the coming months.

Related articles

• Bribing Students to Learn their Math Facts (prweb.com)
• Daily iPad App: Motion Math HD (tuaw.com)
• Motion Math: Helping Drive iPad and Education Research (wired.com)
• MIT's Education Arcade uses online gaming to teach science (technology-headlines.com)

Too Distracting?

Photo provided by Homer Township Public Library

Mixed messages abound when it comes to using digital educational tools. The media and societal opinion would have you believe that technology is the savior of our education system. A meta-analysis of games is discussed in an article titled The Effectiveness of Games of Educational Purposes: A Review of Recent Research, by Josephine M. Randel. The article reports that out of 67 studies over a 28-year period, only 22 studies favor games. The rest show no difference between games and conventional teaching methods.

Today I read an article by Richard Clark titled Cognitive and Neuroscience Research on Learning and Instruction. He poses an interesting reason why we may not be seeing the results in games we are expecting. It boils down to distractions. Clark sites the following:

Another recent insight from extensive research on cognitive load theory (Mayer, 2004; Sweller, 2006) concerns the destructive power of common features of multi-media instruction . . . When instruction provides distractions such as music, animated agents who give us advice, tabs that allow us to get additional information, pages of text to read on the screen and key information embedded in irrelevant contextual information, we must spend effort ignoring the irrelevant to select and learn the relevant information (Clark & Choi, 2007).

It appears that the bells and whistles often thought to make digital learning more engaging cause more harm than good. Even help text can be distracting depending on how it is presented.

So what about games? The gamification drum is beating louder every day and is even being used in businesses to motivate and engage their employees. Games, even with their distracting elements, engage students, hook them, and make them WANT to learn...right?

A number of studies and reviews of studies that examined the benefits of games have been conducted (for example, Chen & O’Neil, 2005; O’Neil, Wainess, & Baker, 2005). All of the studies that have been published in reputable journals have reached a negative conclusion about learning from games. Apparently, people who play serious games often learn how to play the game and perhaps gain some factual knowledge related to the game – but there is no evidence in the existing studies that games teach anyone anything that could not be learned through some other, less expensive and more effective instructional methods. Even more surprising is that there is no compelling evidence that games lead
to greater motivation to learn than other instructional programs.

No greater motiviation... Wow! I feel like I have been sold a bill of goods from those who push the gaming trend. They make huge promises of motivation and engagement. They rarely promise educational gains, which I always thought was suspicious. But now...not even motivation.

This article by Clark had no good news for technology in its current state. He gave some recommendations for the design of digital learning tools (not games) that were proposed by Mayer in 2001. (You can read a summary of the design principles in this wiki article.) I can see these design elements in new learning tools, but I haven't found a learning tool that has followed the advice of eliminating distractions.

The best advice I can give for teachers and parents looking for that magic tool that will make it easier for your student to learn...buyer beware.While it is fine to use new technology that your students/children enjoy, don't expect it to take the place of conventional learning. As far as the research shows, we just aren't there yet.

Key Elements of Educational Games

As mentioned in a previous post, I asked educators to choose 5 elements they felt were most important to make an effective learning game. I threw out a few suggestions, but encouraged respondents to add to my list.

The two features that tied for first place were "engages students and gets them excited about learning" and "explicit goal (win objective) and a clear map for achieving that goal." This second winning feature isn't something I had in my list. I posed this question in three different online communities, and this second feature was mentioned (unprompted) in each of the three communities.

The full list of features mentioned as key for learning games are listed below.
    
    •    Engages students and gets them excited about learning (tied for first)
    •    Explicit goal (win objective) and a clear map for achieving that goal (tied for first)
    •    
Provides instructive feedback (tied for second)
    •    
Adapts to student performance (tied for second)
    •    
Requires students to use reasoning skills rather than simply answering factual questions. (tied for second)
    •    
Some levels require collaboration with other students either online or in person (when possible)
    •    
Set in a real-world context (only if it increases transference)
    •    
Encourage further exploration and learning on the topic outside of the game environment.
    •    
Provides unlimited practice (but with different numbers/scenarios)
    •    
Pedagogy is integrated into the technology
    •    
Game mechanics are intrinsically, deeply connected to the target concepts
    •    
Customizable so students can be “assigned” activities
 
My original question was to choose 5 features that are important for making an effective learning game. The top five features in this list all tied for either first or second place, so I feel they are a good reflection of what educators feel are important in learning games.

In my post on Games and Engagement, I mentioned a program called iSTART that helps improve students' reading comprehension. The developers of this program added gaming elements to increase student interest and motivation. On it's own, the program was successful in improving reading comprehension, but in the long term, students got bored and disinterested. The features that they added were:

• feedback
• fantasy
• personalization
• choice
• curiosity

On the surface, these don't appear to match what teachers chose as key elements. Based on what I've read about the program, I can say that the fantasy, personalization, and elements to arouse curiosity provided engagement. Choice and feedback is tied into the explicit goal. Students choose what activities to work on knowing the goal and receive feedback based on their performance. Prior to adding the gaming features, the program already provided instructive feedback, adapted to student performance, and required reasoning skills.

Interestingly, the program already included most of the other elements teachers chose as important which gives you some idea of why the program was initially successful from the start. Adding the other more visually obvious gaming features focused more an engagement--the key element that keeps students interested long term.

Games and Engagement

Recently I asked educators to name the top 5 features necessary for an educational game. I am currently grappling with this question. I've seen a lot of research about games that tends to boil down to -- We intuitively know that games help students learn, but the only data we've collected shows that games improve motivation.  Data showing both an increase in motivation and in academic success (in whatever way you want to define that) either doesn't exist or I just haven't found it yet.

So I posed this question to mine the intuition of educators who feel that games help students learn. I asked them to choose the top 5 features necessary to make a game that is both fun and educational. I knew I'd get a wide variety of responses, but I hoped the "cream" to rise to the top.

The feature that received the most attention was about gaining student attention -- a game should engage students and get them excited about learning. Of course, that's why we all play games. A good game engages some part of our brain whether it be the thrill of competition or an interest in dominating the world. ;-) While I know the importance of engagement, part of me wishes that what we teach would be exciting enough to get student attention. Is the best part about a game is that it provides a carrot to capture student interest? Do we run the risk of games becoming a crutch or will games serve the purpose of providing engagement until a genuine interest develops?


I recently discovered the research of Dr. Danielle McNamara regarding the reading comprehension program iSTART. iSTART is a digital reading program that has been shown to be successful with helping students improve their comprehension skills. The only problem with iSTART is that students quickly lost interest. The program was tweaked by adding gaming elements. Some elements distracted from student learning, while others made students pay more attention. The final product, iSTART-ME, include the most beneficial gaming elements that heightened student interest while not detracting from student learning.

This kind of motivation, or engagement, I can get behind. When there are skills students need to master, and the only means of mastery is practice, and practice can get a little boring at times...bring in the carrot. Isn't that what we all do when we attempt to start a new habit or make changes? 

Would you like a carrot? Check out Daily Feats! It is a site where you can earn points for doing those little things you know you need to do but just need a little motivation to do. Ok, it's not as motivating or engaging as a game. It is just one example that shows we gravitate toward experiences that give us some sort of reward or that respond to our actions in a positive way.

There's more I want to say about the survey I did with educators about games, but this is enough to chew on for today. You'll see more about this in future posts.

Math = Fun

After college I started a tutoring business I called Math = Fun. I had become the go-to girl for my friends in high school who struggled with Algebra. (I lost that reputation when I almost failed Geometry...and Trig was no picnic, either.) I remembered how great it felt to be able to remove a friend's cloud of confusion.

I started my tutoring business with grade school students. My mission was to help end their struggle with numbers and begin to see the fun in math. At first I just helped them with their homework or had them do worksheets of problems to help build their math muscles. But that got boring, and un-fun, very quickly. So we moved on to games. I infused math into their favorite games like Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. They loved it! They lost their fear and anxiety of math and just did it. And the more they did it, the more they could do.

Since that time, I've taught many students from grade school students through adults. Through these experiences, I found that explanations were great, but FUN was even better. Of course, students have to understand the math first or the fun won't happen. It would be like not being able to get past level 5 of a video game because you don't understand the game's tools or strategies -- supremely frustrating. But adding an element of fun seems to make the understanding come a bit easier.

From my non-researcher perspective, fun helps lift the "I can't do this. I hate this!" chat that continually plays in some students' brains. The more failures they have experienced, the louder this chat is. My relatively few bad experiences with math through my schooling days contributed to that chat. I'll still hear it from time to time when I am faced with a math problem above my level of understanding in a situation that is NOT fun. But give me a game, and I'll keep at it until I eventually learn it.