Games Based Situated Learning and Sustainaville

Welcome to the first blog post in this series!  I spoke briefly in my previous blog post about how pixelfountain and games-ED use Games Based Situated Learning (GBSL) as the theoretical underpinning of our products.  In this series of blog posts, I will explain further what I mean by this and offer a case study of one of our products in particular: Sustainaville.  This learning simulation is typical of our approach although all of our products are underpinned by the same theory.  The series draws material from the Games Based Situated Learning paper written by the other author of this blog, Paul Ladley.  The full paper can be found on the resources page of our corporate website.

Click for Sustainaville demo.

Index:

• Games Based Situated Learning – A Contradiction?
• games-ED (Games Based Learning)
• Marrying up to Situated Learning Theory

The first part of the series will introduce briefly some of the theories that underpin our products and games based learning at large.  The main focus of this series is Games Based Situated Learning, which we have discussed before, but several years ago and very briefly.  I will also try to uncover whether Situated Learning can actually occur through games and simulations, i.e. is that situated enough?

I will then introduce one of our games-ED products: the learning simulation Sustainaville.  I will explain the simulation and how it is used in a workshop including the plan > do > review stages.

The final and main part of the series will essentially be a judgement of Sustainaville using some theoretical principles outlined in the first part of the series (put forward by Jan Herrington and Ron Oliver, 1995).  This checklist can be used to judge other serious games and learning simulations in a similar way.  We will back up our judgements with both qualitative and quantitative feedback from our workshops.

games-ED (Games Based Learning)

This is the second blog post in the series.  Click back to the index if you are lost.

games-ED current products can be described as resource management games. They are played in a classroom environment on a single computer by the whole class. The games narrative is structured around a relevant context such as a community – they are situated. The class is spit into sub-teams that have to collaborate to achieve common goals such as improving the community.  Sustainaville is one such game.

The games have been used in schools, college and universities and are built on tried and tested adult learning products.

Using the Game in a Lesson
The game plays over a number of rounds (simulated years). The rounds are sub-divided into three phases (plan > do > review). The rounds progressively speed up, as the learners get to grips with the task at hand.

The class is divided into sub-teams. In Sustainaville, the teams are: Local Authority; Education, Learning & Skills; Health; Third Sector; Housing; Utilities; Transport and Enterprise Partnership. Each sub-team is presented with a mission outlining their objectives. Ultimately, the sub-teams work as one team with one score.

It is important to note that the game based lesson sits within a games based learning pedagogy. In essence, pre work, taught material, follow on exercises and assessment wrap around the game based lesson. As Francis notes (2006), games need to sit within broader games based pedagogy in order that a game might be effectively used in classroom contexts.

Phases of the Game Rounds (Plan > Do > Review)
Each round of Sustainville has three phases: plan > do > review:

PLAN:

• Investigate the main graphic, which shows a virtual community with problems such as air and water pollution, congestion, poor housing, unemployment, poor health and rising waste.
• Investigate report screen that help learners to make decisions. The reports show cause and effect and will enable the learner to see the impact their decisions.
• Learners consider cross linkages with other sub-teams and understand that they can achieve more if they work together.

DO:

• Having looked at their reports and developed a plan, the sub-teams can invest their budgets by making purchase decisions.
• Negotiate with other teams and choose win-wins to create a sustainable community.
• After all the budget decisions have been made, the sub-teams present their decisions to the whole group explaining what they have bought and why.  
• The purchases are input into the game by the teacher.

REVIEW:

• The round is updated to the next year.
• The learners consider the impact of their decisions (improvements made to the community):
• The main graphic changes: wind turbines, less pollution, recycling facilities and more housing.  
• The sub-team reports change.
• The score shows how the teams have performed as a whole group. The educator gives feedback on their performance, and the learners can reflect on the decisions they have made. 
• The learners now need to plan what they want to achieve in round 2.

See the next post in this series for how Sustainaville Marries Up to the Theory.

Marrying up to Situated Learning Theory

This final part of the series uses Herrington & Oliver’s ideas (described in the first part of this series) as a design checklist for our product Sustainaville.

Authentic Context
The Interface must map to the situation where the authentic activity would normally take place.  In addition, the learning should be complex and sufficiently large in scope to provide realism when problem solving.

In Sustainaville, learners are presented with a dynamic screen that shows the virtual community changing. The game play itself maps to the real world as learners play the role of decision makers (sub-teams in the overall game) in a virtual community.

Feedback from primary school students:

• “It is harder than I thought to run a town.” 
• “When you could see the town from the past years how it changed.”
• “Sometimes there is a disaster that you don’t know.” 

Over the workshops there was also between 67% and 88% improvement in understanding of sustainable development.

Authentic Activities
Along with an authentic context, the programme should enable learners to participate as though they are the experts.  It is through simulated authentic activity that the learner becomes immersed in the process of learning.

In Sustainaville learners are assigned objectives. They have to develop strategy, deal with incidents, make decisions on how to use resources and negotiate with other sub-teams.  These authentic activities and context interplay to produce a rich learning environment.

Feedback from primary school students:

• “It was like you were a proper business man.”
• “I liked making the decisions on what to buy and how much to buy.”
• “I will take away… planning, working together, making the right decisions.”

Over the workshops there was around a 57% improvement in decision-making skills.

Modelling of Processes and Expert performance
At the core of games-ED products sits the algorithm. It is the algorithm that fires out numbers in response to delegates’ decisions. Purchases in the game alter parameters, which in turn alter other parameters. The algorithm and the interface / activities that surrounds it represent the model of the reality. The algorithm is developed with the aid of desk research and interaction with subject matter experts.

Multiple roles and perspectives 
A situated learning environment provides the learner with the opportunity to investigate multiple roles and perspectives.  Roles and perspectives are brought to the fore in Sustainaville by the placing of delegates into sub-teams. Each sub-team has its own report (perspective), but at the same time the whole group is scored collectively (big picture). These sub-teams need to work together to achieve the overall goal (a constructed understanding). It is this pluralism of thought that the learners need to balance to gain a fuller understanding.

Feedback from primary school students when asked ‘what key learning messages will you take away?’:

• “That when your managing somewhere you need to make sure people are happy and that little things can be very important.”
• “That people have harder jobs than I thought.”
• “We need to keep the environment healthy and public transport is better than cars.”

Collaboration
From the perspective of the situated learning theory, the decision to run Sustainaville as a whole class exercise rather than as standalone software makes sense and adds real value to the experience of learning. The sub-teams need to work together as one team and it is those that do so, that go on to post high scores.

Feedback from primary school students:

• “I liked that we worked together to make the community good.”
• “I liked it when we had to work in a group and play a game to improve the area.”
• When asked ‘what key learning messages will you take away?’: “Work together, make group decisions.”

There was between a 41% and 61% improvement in group working after playing the game.

Game collaboration can have wider benefits. “Social interactions and relationships were seen by some of the interviewed teachers as having been positively enhanced by game-based learning activities in the classroom.” Ben Williamson, Futurelab 2009.

Reflection
A situated learning environment should allow learners to reflect upon a much broader base of knowledge to solve problems. The game anchors the discussion, but the delegates are encouraged to share experiences and knowledge. At the end of the session and after each round, the class is asked to think about the experience from different points of view. The learners are encouraged to build abstractions. Follow-on exercises, either completed as homework or in the next class, allow the learners to further consolidate their understanding and reflect on what they have learned.

A pupil from one workshop responded on his questionnaire that he would like “To do this in citizenship lessons.”

Articulation
Dialogue and articulation of knowledge occurs amongst learners (sub-teams), at the class level and can be educator-led. These conversations, not the technological interactions, should account for the majority the lesson.  In a workshop, the educator’s role is to encourage debate. A key question, as the learners’ decisions are keyed into the simulation is, “so what were you thinking when you made those choices?” The group can be encouraged with, “so what do the rest of you think about that?”

The learners often go through a process of transformation and feel able to participate in a way they could not have dreamed of before.  This is in part because of the inclusive nature of the exercise, but also because democratising nature of the game - games have a leveling effect: prior knowledge is only partially useful and game format may allow previously disengaged or under performing students to succeed.

A class teacher observing one workshop commented: “The children were fully engaged for all the session and the ‘buzz’ in the room was one of real active learning”.

Feedback from a primary school student when asked ‘what key learning messages will you take away?’: “How to discuss and think about decisions.”

Coaching and scaffolding
‘Many designers of interactive multimedia believe their programs should be self-contained ... Situated learning sees the teacher’s role in coaching – observing students, offering hints and reminders, providing feedback, scaffolding and fading, modeling, and so on – as integral to the learning situation’ (Herrington and Ron Oliver, 1995).

The role of the educator in Sustainaville is crucial. The teacher acts rather like the conductor in a orchestra, keeping the process flowing and providing scaffolding and stimulus as and when required.  The educator plays the role of the expert, as described in traditional situated learning. To enable the educator to do so, the software supports them. Contextual help is provided, by clicking on screen elements, to enable the educator to discover what makes up the particular element and its current value in the game.

A teacher overseeing one workshop commented: “the children were able to work [the purchase items] out with peer support or asked for clarification from an adult”.

Integrated assessment
Rather than considering the assessment as an add-on to the course, it should be integrated into learning itself.  Integration should not merely be a case of placing multiple choice questions within the learning sequence, instead the learning and assessment is one and the same thing, creating an authentic experience.

The score in Sustainaville is a highly motivating device. The decisions that the delegates make are fed into the algorithm and the score is fired out each round as the team endeavors to make the community a better place.

The in-game reports can be exported for analysis by the educator and to provide the basis for follow-on reflective / extension work. The reports are aligned to the curriculum, so that they can provide part of the evidence base for broader assessment.

A teacher overseeing one workshop commented: “[The children] were genuinely interested to see the impact their purchases had made on the town. They were disappointed to see the results/consequences of their purchases in Year 2 and were keen to rectify them in Year 3!”

Feedback from primary school students:

• “I liked finding out what score you got at the end and looking at the improvements.”
• “It was very fun and you learnt a lot.  It was great being in charge of the town and seeing what the result was.”

I hope you enjoyed this series!  We thought we had better show some practical evidence of the benefits of games based learning after so much theory.

Don't forget to like games-ED on Facebook and Google+ and follow @PaulLadley on Twitter for blog updates and interesting things we find while poking around the internet.  You can also now follow us on Pinterest.

Motivation, Motivation, Motivation

Get them early!

Student motivation is obviously an extremely important topic for educators, researchers, parents and so on and we have talked about it previously, in our blog post ‘Gamification in Education’.  Encouraging children's intrinsic motivation can help them to achieve academic success (Adelman, 1978).  Motivation is essentially the drive to sustain, intensify and discourage behaviour (Reeve, 1996) and this can stem from both internal and external factors.  Internal factors include responsibility for learning, values and perceived ability etc of the child (Ainley, 2004).  However, there are also external factors that can affect student motivation.  For example, Ainley argued that types of schooling practices could promote or hinder motivation such as peer groups, tasks and instructional practices.  Educators can’t do too much about the child’s internal motivation, but they can definitely help in external ways.

But are the benefits of motivation that great?  It seems so (bullets from http://www.netc.org/focus/challenges/student.php):

• High motivation in students is linked to reduced dropout rates and increased levels of student success (Dev, 1997; Blank, 1997; Ames, 1992; Newmann, Bryk, & Nagaoka, 2001).
• Students are more engaged in learning when they are active and have some choice and control over the learning process, and the curriculum is individualized, authentic, and related to their interests (Anderman & Midgley, 1998).
• Intrinsically motivated students retain information and concepts longer, and are less likely to need remedial courses and review (Dev, 1997).
• Intrinsically motivated students are more likely to be lifelong learners, continuing to educate themselves outside the formal school setting long after external motivators such as grades and diplomas are removed (Kohn, 1993).

Intrinsic motivation is not quite the same as internal motivation and therefore, can be encouraged.  Intrinsic motivation is based on enjoyment of the activity rather than completing something simply to gain an external reward (extrinsic motivation).  Teachers can, in most cases, make lessons, subjects, topics etc more enjoyable, which could increase student motivation and yield the above effects.

Technology is one way that they could do this.  This excerpt comes from Alexandra Usher and Nancy Kober’s paper, Student Motivation: An Overlooked Piece of School Reform (2012):

“Creative educational uses of technology hold promise for increasing motivation for a generation of students who have grown up teaching themselves to communicate online, surf the Web, write blogs, or edit photos. Several characteristics of technology make it especially motivating, some scholars contend. Video games can build a mastery-based mindset by gradually increasing the level of challenge, helping students visualize complex concepts, and giving students frequent positive feedback. Interactive and social media technology can stimulate the interest of bored students and the participation of shy students. Web-based instruction can motivate students by creating more opportunities for active choice and collaboration. Educators around the country are incorporating technology into their teaching and a myriad of ways. Examples include using video games to reinforce concepts in math and science or incorporating Twitter into a real-time discussion board during class. Research on the effects of newer technologies for learning is thin, however, and experts caution that how the technology is used is the most critical factor.”

A literature review by Patrick Felicia entitled, ‘What evidence is there that digital games can contribute to increasing students' motivation to learn?’ (2011) also throws up some interesting findings.  It illustrates how some features of video games can promote intrinsic motivation.  The review demonstrates that games are employed to successfully increase motivation on the part of the learners, in a wide range of settings, for different topics (subjects), and to address the needs and specificities of different types of learners (e.g., gender, age, or special needs).  The review shows that games can teach both academic and non-academic skills, and motivate students to collaborate, share information, and increase their attainments.  These ideas are essentially what I was aiming to convey in my blog post ‘Unorthodox Uses of Games in Education’.

However, as we have mentioned in other blog posts (such as ‘Five Things to Think About When Using Games in the Classroom’), Felicia notes that games alone might not be enough.  He argues that additional mechanisms should be employed to engage, teach and change behaviour.  For example, game design (e.g., personalized strategies, adapted challenge or a good balance between educational and entertaining features), and teaching strategies (e.g., briefing, debriefing, and teachers' support).  We have talked about these themes before (for example, in ‘Six Key Principles of Collaborative Games Based Learning’) and both pixelfountain and games-ED products have these ideas at their heart as this page from our website shows.

These ideas are all rather theoretical, but we have blogged before about how these ides work in practice.  For example, ‘Is Game Based Learning More Effective Than Traditional Methods?’ and specific to gender, ‘Boys will be Boys’.  We have also covered these themes in the case studies of using our games-ED learning simulations in schools (Proof of the Pudding parts 1, 2 and 3).

It seems almost common sense to say that motivation can both alter student behaviour and attainment and that it can be encouraged.  However, this is often, as Usher and Kober put it, overlooked.  Motivational techniques also seem to be stuck in the past, which may be why they are less effective.  It seems odd to deprive children of the technology that they have been immersed in all of their lives, just because they are at school.  Children today have been brought up in an extremely stimulating world; it is no wonder that they lack motivation at school if teaching methods are outdated.  Maybe an injection of technology and games based learning is what is needed.  What do you think?


Resources

1. Adelman, H. S. (1978) The Concept of Intrinsic Motivation: Implications for Practice and Research with the     Learning Disabled. Learning Disability Quarterly, 1(2), p.43-54.
2. Ainley, M. (2004). What do we Know About Student Motivation and Engagement? Australian Association for Research in Education, Melbourne.
3. Reeve, J. (1996). Motivating others: Nurturing inner motivational resources. Needham Heights, MA, Allyn & Bacon.

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