games-based-learning and g-Learning blog: development

Showing posts with label development. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 December 2013

Our Blog Content by Category

We have written quite a lot of content on this blog so far. We thought we'd give you an easy way to browse our posts by category, so you can easily find the topics that interest you most.

Design & Development

Games Based Learning Theory - Why It Works?

Games Based Learning Practice - How it Can be Used?

Games Based Learning Benefits - What Skills/Knowledge can be Gained?

Gamification

Education and Education Technology

Please follow @paulladley on Twitter, games-ED on Pinterest and like games-ED’sFacebook and Google+ pages for blog updates and interesting games based learning findings.

Sunday, 6 October 2013

10 Resources on Creating your Own Learning Game

Image Courtesy of Ian Dick on Flickr.

I hope you all enjoyed our previous post (our very own infographic: “Quick Guide to Developing a Learning Simulation”). I thought I’d follow up this week by sharing with you a list of resources to help you further in designing and developing your own learning game. The resources cover cognitive flow, feedback loops, making games engaging, common usability testing mistakes and so on. The list is obviously not exhaustive and some of the more academic papers may warrant something closer to ‘skim reading’, but these are just some of the best and most useful articles, papers etc. that I have found. The first one is particularly interesting and definitely worth a read.

And for good measure, you might want to have a read of our post “Three ‘Games Based Learning’ Development Tools Explored”, if you are thinking about developing your own learning game.

Please follow @paulladley on Twitter, games-ED on Pinterest and like games-ED’s Facebook and Google+ pages for blog updates and interesting games based learning findings.

Friday, 27 September 2013

Quick Guide to Developing a Learning Simulation

It's been a long time coming, but as promised, here is our very own infographic. It is a quick guide to the process of developing a learning simulation. Feel free to use our infographic, but please credit us and direct people back to us if possible because they might be interested in our other posts. Click image for larger PDF version. Enjoy and let us know what you think in the comments section!

Monday, 3 September 2012

Three “Games Based Learning” Development Tools Explored

Developing with Adobe Flash

A lot of the games based learning products that I have developed over the years have been done using Flash. Adobe’s Flash is a fantastic tool and creates efficient code (a small file size that is great for web work) but is not necessarily that easy to use for non-programmers. In the last year, I have had a look at some other tools, which can be used to develop games based learning (even if that is not their primary purpose). This blog post is an overview my findings.

Captivate and other Rapid Development Tools
I have used Captivate within the context of e-Learning experiments and have blogged about these before at http://www.games-based-learning.com/2011/10/instructional-design-e-learning-and.html. The Situated example was an attempt to push Captivate to its limits. The SITUATED-training (http://www.pixelfountain.co.uk/captivate-situated-training-demo.html) course puts the trainee in a virtual setting where they need to visit various locations, talk to characters and interact with objects. The instructional design embeds a system simulation inside a dynamic story line. At the end of the training, the trainee is presented with a dynamic end report that shows what they did and didn’t do. The example I developed was a mini project management game, but the approach could be used in humanities and science education.

Captivate is traditionally used for system simulations, but it has a simple scripting language that can be used to control variables, visibility of screen objects etc. It is a bit clunky for people with programming experience, but as you can see from my SITUATED-training example, it can used to develop quite sophisticated solutions. For this reason and the fact that it feels more robust, I would rank Captivate above rapid development tools such as Articulate and Lectora.

Note: My experiments were done using Captivate 5.5 and I note that version 6 is now available.

Construct
Following on from a games workshop design project (http://www.games-ed.co.uk/games-design-workshop.html) with school children in St Helens (Merseyside, UK) I developed a prototype of the chosen design – Eco-Busters. Partly because I wanted to avoid the slow development process of Flash, I fished around the Internet for a game development tool. I settled on Construct 2 from http://www.scirra.com/. Scirra state that Construct allows you to create games effortlessly. They say Construct is a ground breaking HTML5 windows game engine that lets anyone make games without any programming experience.

My experience was that Construct is indeed powerful and easy to get into. But, the caveat I would give is that I have been programming on and off for 30 years – how time flies :( Anyway, I would say that Construct is a tad more difficult than Captivate but is infinitely cheaper in that it is free and Captivate is £850 on the Adobe site.

The Eco-Busters prototype can be found at http://www.pixelfountain.co.uk/Eco-Busters/ Note the game is HTML5, so you will need IE9 or Google Chrome or Firefox. The game is far from complete, but you will get the idea of what Construct can do. Make sure you read the instructions as the children’s design required an intricate method for controlling two characters. Also, there are other examples on http://www.scirra.com/.

MIT App Inventor for Android Devices
I was recently looking for a tool to develop mobile apps and again I wanted something that was quick to get into. App Inventor lets you develop applications for Android phones using a web browser and either a connected phone or emulator. Originally developed by Google, App Inventor has been made open source and has been taken on by MIT see http://appinventor.mit.edu/.

You build apps by working with:
 The App Inventor Designer, where you select the components for your app.
 The App Inventor Blocks Editor, where you assemble program blocks that specify how the components should behave. You assemble programs visually, fitting pieces together like pieces of a puzzle.

Once I had got the App Inventor loaded and connected to my phone, which was a bit fiddly due to me having to find a USB driver on the HTC website, everything worked smoothly. Overall the programming environment was straightforward and powerful. The blocks editor might be slightly tortuous for accomplished programmers but the visual approach will suit the novice. In fact, I did a little bit of programming with my 11 year old.

At this stage, I haven’t developed any games based learning, but App Inventor shows potential for gamified quizzes and one of the tutorials is a Whack-A-Mole game.

Conclusion
The above three development tools are not the only tools out there. I chose the above tools as they were easy to get into but also were more than simple presentation builders. Please feel free to comment on any tools that you have used.

Friday, 24 June 2011

Best of Both Worlds

I recently wrote an article on games based learning for Headteacher Update.

The article looks at the debate around games based learning and considers what educators and developers need to think about to when using / creating games based learning products.

Anyways, before I blog a spoiler, why don't you have gander a page 36 of the digital edition of Headteacher Update.

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Edit: Headteacher Update have published a web page version of my games based learning article.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Developing Games with Young People: LAP Recycling Game

Introduction
Following on from a previous blog post (Proof of the Pudding) where I wrote about using games based learning in the classroom, I thought I would share some experience of developing games with young people. I have been fortunate to have led on two such projects / workshops:

Local Area Partnership for Creative Learning: Recycling Game (described below).
Climate Crew (described in this blog post).

While it is worth noting that the trainers from games-ED (pixelfountain) have years of designing and developing games plus are experienced workshop facilitators, this workshop could be replicated without technical know-how.

Over the next couple of weeks we will upload the resources necessary to run these lessons. The free resource section can be accessed by signing up to our news and blog update via mailchimp.

LAP Recycling Game - Description

Opening presentation and quiz

The workshop was run as part of the St. Helens Local Area Partnership Climate Change Project. The workshop was held on the 25th January 2011 and began the process of designing a recycling game. The workshop was facilitated by Paul Ladley (games-ED) and officers from St.Helens Council. The young people came from 6 primary schools in St. Helens, Merseyside UK and were aged 7 to 11.

The workshop was split into three parts:

An opening presentation and quiz.
Each school generated an initial idea.
Two ideas were chosen and more detail was added to them.

Two teams worked in three groups to look at game play, graphics for the characters, scenes and menus and finally ideas to keep up the game interesting.

LAP Recycling Game - Challenges
Realism: The larger project was young people led. This meant that the designs had to be what they wanted, even if this meant making them happen would be difficult. It was felt that a sense of realism had to be injected into the designs so young people could design with their eyes wide open. Therefore, the presentation with embedded quiz included a slide on the golden rules of design:

Need - Think about what the player wants (educational, fun, challenge and information).
Platform - What gaming device should the game work on (internet, console, computer or mobile phone)?
Money - Consider the cost of developing the game.
Time - How much time will the game take to develop?

Voting: As expected, when it came to the final two, the groups tended to vote for their own design.

LAP Recycling Game - Outputs and Outcomes
The five game ideas:

Polluto – Polluto and his army are trying to stop you from making the world a better place. You only have a certain amount of time in each level. Can you solve the problems and find the green portal in time?
Walk around the World – Your character visits different parts of the world to solve environmental problems. As you try to solve problems such as removing litter, people create more!
Eco Factory – This is a game of mini games such as eco Pac Man. When you successfully complete a mini game, you earn part of an eco factory. When your factory is complete it will create eco products such as recycled pencils.
Eco Busters – You move through rooms in houses with your pet Munchie solving eco problems. As you and Munch (who can eat rubbish) solve problems you earn credits that enable you to buy more items such as another Munchie.
Eco Party Planning – Every party creates a mess! But if you can clear up and recycle everything properly you earn money. With the extra money your next party can be even better, but if you don’t earn money then your next party is going to be rubbish.

Presenting the game design to the group

The initial winners were Polluto and Eco Busters. The latter became the ultimate winner when other schools who had not been able to attend voted.

The children enjoyed the session, learned a lot and worked well right through to the end.

Two technical specifications for the games were generated and can be found in the full report – see the Slideshare widget in the sidebar of this blog or visit http://www.games-ed.co.uk/games-design-workshop.html

Ultimately, to ensure that the game is developed the following will need to happen:

Money to develop the game will need to be found.
An individual / design team will need to create a more robust design for a developer to work with. This will make the development costs cheaper, but will mainly ensure the ideas from the workshop are not lost in translation.

Developing Games with Young People: Climate Crew

Climate Crew (described below).
Local Area Partnership for Creative Learning: Recycling Game (described in this blog post).

Avatar design

While it is worth noting that the trainers from games-ED (pixelfountain) have years of designing and developing games plus are experienced workshop facilitators, some of the ideas from these projects could be replicated without technical know-how, specifically:

Logo theory, design and creation.
Computer Games Design.

Over the next couple of weeks we will upload the resources necessary to run these lessons. The free resource section can be accessed by signing up to our news and blog update via mailchimp.

Climate Crew - Description

The project was made of over 40 young people from 2 schools and a Girl Guides group from St.Helens, Merseyside UK. The young people were aged between 14 and 18.

The young people led the project and they all agreed on all aspects of the content of the workshops and skills they were to learn. The project ran three types of media skills workshops that a dual purpose; to provide media skills for the young people and to feed into a design of a game.

Each workshop was held over the course of the morning with additional one to one work in the afternoons for Mill Green pupils. The workshops were repeated in the evenings with the Guides with some changes to expand on the work done by the schools.

Workshop 1 - Creative Skills:

Theory of logo design > design roughs on paper > designs crated in a vector drawing package.
The guides developed a flier based on the logo.

Workshop 2 - Computer Games Design:

The Schools created initial designs: premise > story > game-play and Easter eggs (hidden features in the game).
The Guides drew up the screen designs on huge sheets of paper.

Workshop 3 - Computer Games Build (done using Adobe Flash):

Game inner working and artificial intelligence
Interface, animation and navigation coding
Avatar design and coding
Real world interaction

Workshop 4 – Testing

Climate Crew - Challenges

The young people in this project included those with learning disabilities and also young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. To ensure that the young people with learning difficulties could be involved as much as possible we ran follow-on session just for them – A tablet PC came to the fore in these sessions.

Even though the project ran over a number of weeks and multiple sessions, there still wasn’t enough time to teach the young people the varied skills they would need to design and develop a game. The approach we took was to let the young experience the spectrum of roles in a games company, rather than trying to make them expert in any one area. . The game was completed by the facilitators and can be found at http://www.games-ed.co.uk/bespoke.html.

Climate Crew - Outcomes

Flier design

The young people learned a lot of skills through designing, leading and implementing the project and through the interactive workshops including creative marketing and facilitation, project management, community leadership, computer game design and development.

Before and after the workshops the young people were asked to judge their skills in key areas, the data is shown below. The data shows that the young people gained skills in design and computer game development as well as communication skills. The workshops were ranked very highly by the young people, particularly the final workshop on game development where they saw all their previous work slot together as they built the game.

Workshop 1

47% improvement in understanding the use of logos for communicating ideas.
57% improvement in understanding climate change.
62% improvement of skills in logo design.
51% improvement of skills in graphic design (taking an idea to completed product).
31% improvement of skills in using a computer art/design package.
23% improvement in communication skills for the verbal presentation of ideas.

They also ranked the workshop in four different areas:

Skills Learnt = 7.6 out of 10.
Enjoyment = 8 out of 10.
Presenters = 8.4 out of 10.
Interacting with others = 8.4 out of 10.

The key learning messages they will take away include computer drawing skills, the benefit of sharing ideas and team work and taking an idea and developing it into a product.

“Computer drawing skills.”

“Sharing ideas is better than keeping it to yourself.”

“To work as a team and it will turn out good.”

“Taking ideas to full scale.”

Workshop 2

33 % improvement in understanding the use of games for learning and communication.
48% improvement in understanding games design.
46% improvement of skills in games design.
30% improvement in communication skills in the verbal presentation of ideas.

Skills Learnt = 7.2 out of 10.
Enjoyment = 7.2 out of 10.
Presenters = 8 out of 10.
Interacting with others = 8.4 out of 10.

The key messages the young people will take away include that all ideas are valuable, everyone can have a say, how to lower your carbon footprint and they key principles of game design.

“No idea is a bad one.”

“Bigger understanding of designing games.”

“That we should take our time to think of ideas instead of rushing.”

“That when designing a game it has to be simple but catchy.”

“How to lower my carbon footprint.”

Workshop 3:

25% improvement of their understanding the use of games for learning and communication.
58% improvement in their understanding of games development.
58% improvement of their skills in games development.
31% improvement of their communication skills in the verbal presentation of ideas.

Skills learnt = 8 out of 10.
Enjoyment = 8.8 out of 10.
Presenters = 9.4 out of 10.
Interacting with others = 8.8 out of 10.

When asked what they most liked about the workshop all of the students said the learning of the actual skills:

“Learning coding and algorithms.”

“We could do a lot of different aspects of game designing.”

“The animation of some objects.”

Climate Crew - Thoughts of the teachers/group leaders

Coding of the algorithm!

St. Aelreds Catholic Technology College:

“[I liked] when the pupils finally realised that they were in control.”

“Pupils enjoyed the experience, facilitators were fantastic with all pupils and were very patient with them. [The] highlight was last session.”

Mill Green:

“The students enjoyed working at St Aelreds school, it was a fantastic opportunity for them to work as part of a team with mainstream students. A fantastic idea for our students to have some individual input in the afternoon session back a Mill Green.”

St. Lukes Guides:

“Having sufficient leaders where the girls could work in individual peer groups worked well. This meant that we could get a good perspective from all ages ranging from 13 to 18. The final testing of the game was excellent – the girls had their own individual computer rather than sharing one between a group.”

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