The blog looks at gamification, g-Learning and games based learning theory and practice. It provides insight (via games-ED and pixelfountain) on games based learning use in education and g-Learning (including learning simulations) use in adult learning / training such as application in curriculum delivery, training, awareness raising, organisational development, communications and engagement.
Recently, I was lucky to be invited to Aarhus in Denmark by the British Embassy Copenhagen / UKTI (UK Trade & Investment) to exhibit and network at the Knowledge is Great Conference. The conference was an opportunity for British and Danish companies along with educators and civil servants to discuss the future of games based learning.
So what did I take away from Denmark regarding games based learning? Firstly, schools get 50% funding towards the purchase of existing or bespoke digital resources. The Danish games based learning professionals were concerned about what would happen when the funding was removed in the coming years. A valid comparison was made to the demise of e-Leaning credits in the UK. Investment by schools could simply fall off a cliff. Civil servants from the Ministry of Education recognised this as an issue but were happy to let the market take control. Personally, I couldn’t help feeling that it would be nice to have a UK funding cliff to fall off, but I believe there is a place pump prime the industry.
But encouraging take up is not all about pump priming the supply side. There are demand side deficiencies as well. Specifically, teacher take up of games based learning. Here there are strong parallels to the UK situation. Teachers, while intrigued by games based learning, are reticent to take the leap rather like a novice player in a platform game. Pernille Korzon Dünweber from Serious Games Interactive made the point that there was a place for funding teachers in the use of games based learning.
Kristian Emil Andreasen (kanda) observed that the conference wasn’t attended by any entertainment games companies. I responded that there wasn’t intrinsically a problem with that; because while games based learning and entertainment games are obviously related, their design premise differs. Specifically, games based learning should be designed with learning at the forefront and not be crow barred in at the end. But, I think Kristian's point does have a broader significance, which was the point he was really raising, that games based learning needs to be fun and not just worthy, else students will reject it. Designers need to strike a balance between game play and learning outcomes.
Following on from the importance of game design, at the start of a group discussion, the facilitators asked the group to name their favourite game of all time. While this was a simple ice breaker, it revealed the Achilles Heel of part of games based learning industry. Of the 20 people in the room, half struggled to name a computer game that they had ever played. Clearly, for a lot of people at the event, computer games are more theory than practice.
Kathleen Stokes from Nesta spoke enthusiastically about games based learning from a UK perspective and talked about students becoming makers as well as consumers. Roll on the Year of Code, I say.
All in all, I would say Denmark and the UK are similar in terms of games based learning. There seems to be an enthusiastic but slightly frustrated band of developers, a government that is keen to promote games based learning and an education system that is still getting to grips with what it all means.
Highlights of the trip other than games based learning were happening upon the Aarhus Cathedral which, while fairly utilitarian from the outside, has an amazing interior with some spectacular frescoes. Vivien Life (British Ambassador to Denmark) kindly hosted a lovely evening meal at Nordens Folkekøkken. Also, I had a chance to visit the art gallery (ARoS). Your rainbow panorama by Olafur Eliasson on the roof of the gallery is a unique and amazing experience. I am told that Den Gamble By open air museum is also very impressive, but I didn’t have time to see it.
Anarchy! I hope it is evident from our previous articles that we think the current education system is outdated and flawed. It has its merits, but it is also has huge problems and is leaving many children ill-equipped and disenfranchised. I have selected five pieces of inspiration, four videos and an article, towards an education revolution. This is something I am passionate about, but they speak for themselves, so I'll just dive straight in and then let you mull them over.
I came across another fantastic, inspiring video. Please give this one a watch too. Also, you might be interested in another school which has used pupil directed learning, see our blog post, 'Games Based School'.
I am extremely happy to announce that I have been selected to be a Hot Topics Contributor for Microsoft Partners in Learning. I am now a contributor to their Games Based Learning Hot Topics page and have just uploaded my first post.
The post discusses the current education system and why it is lacking. I offer suggestions for improvement and explain why improvements are important. There are many ways that games based learning could be part of a solution to building a 21st education system.
The Gamer Disposition is a collection of five key attributes that gamers possess that make them great employees. They were thought up by John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas in 2008 and published in the Harvard Business Review. The traits are not simply attitudes or beliefs but aspects of character and personality that players bring to game worlds and that game worlds reinforce. Brown and Thomas argued that these traits make employees better suited to the 21st century workplace than non-gamers.
So what are the traits?
They are bottom-line oriented – gamers like being evaluated and their goal is not to be rewarded but to improve.
They understand the power of diversity – in online games, having a diverse make up of skills and expertise in a team is an asset and often a necessity. Teamwork is very important.
They thrive on change – gamers expect change; they go beyond simply managing it and actively create it, thrive on it and seek it out.
They see learning as fun – for most gamers, overcoming obstacles is where the fun of a game lies. Their reward is new knowledge and turning that knowledge into action.
They marinate on the “edge” – gamers are innovative, they think out of the box even when a simpler, more mundane way of doing something would suffice. They explore the ‘edges’ to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the game.
The authors conclude, “Together, these five attributes make for employees who are flexible, resourceful, improvisational, eager for a quest, believers in meritocracy, and foes of bureaucracy.”
What could the education system take from this?
I imagine you can see where I am going with this. If these traits make for great employees, perfectly suited to the 21st century workplace, should we not be doing more to help this process? Many children will play games in their own time, however some won’t. Games based learning in schools could be a safe, monitored and educational way of helping them develop these traits. The belief that video games are bad for children (whether at home or in the classroom) is simply outdated and there are a myriad of skills that can be gained and developed through playing games.
The traits are also not simply useful for work either. Being able to cope with and thrive on change, seeing learning as fun, appreciating the power of diversity, being innovative etc are all great traits for people to have in general. They are important life skills that cannot easily be developed and practiced in such a fun way. And there are plenty of other 21st Century Skills that games and games based learning can develop (see ‘21st Century Skills and Games Based Learning’). For example, our educational products are designed to not only support the curriculum and develop subject-based knowledge, but to develop collaboration skills, problem-solving skills, systems thinking, strategic thinking and so on (see the games-ED tab above or visit our website).
This TED talk from Dr. Richard Van Eck brings up some very interesting points. I would greatly recommend watching the video, but as it is 20 minutes long and not everyone will have the time, I will summarise the main points here for you. If you have watched the video, please feel free to ignore the summary, just skip to the black text later on.
Why raise test scores when they don’t measure what we need them to in the 21st century?
If we really cared about learning, we would individualise it to each student – not ready to do this.
There are two main modes of change / reform:
Changing because if we don’t adapt, we can’t survive.
Disruptive technologies – new technology that solves problems that we face but in a way that forces us to change our behaviour.
The Industrial Revolution changed the education system to produce workers. Children were all taught the same things, in the same place, at the same time. We now live in an ‘information age’ where ideas are the new commodities.
Situated cognition - if you are going to teach someone something, you should teach them in the environment that they will use the knowledge – learn by doing. This promotes faster learning, better retention of knowledge and the transference of knowledge to the real world. Games allow this.
Games promote systems thinking – currently education teaches discrete facts, not connections and systems.
Games promote collaboration – social negotiation of skills, collective intelligence, collective problem-solving all prevalent in games.
Games promote problem-solving. The problems presented require new knowledge to be generated to solve it. There is a value for the learner in solving the problem. Schools sometimes get the first aspect but usually try and persuade children to “just do it, trust me it will be important later.”
Games produce engagement (engagement is not about fun or motivation but cognitive effort). The challenge should be optimal – too hard and they’ll quit, too easy and they won’t want to play. Zone of proximal development: some things so easy we don’t need help to do them, some things too difficult no matter how much help, some things where the challenge is ‘just right’. This is where all the best learning occurs as it keeps people operating at the maximum of their ability. This is what games do – can choose difficulty at start and can’t move on until mastered initial skills.
But, games are disruptive technologies and this has practical consequences. Games will require fundamental shifts in the education system.
Current tests don’t measure 21st century skills and tests might not be able to ever measure these skills.
Collaboration vs. cheating – how will we adapt to these new ideas?
Individualised instruction – currently we fit education to the lowest common denominator, which means that some children are not optimally challenged. If we individualised learning, some children would take 2 months to complete the curriculum and some, 2 years. Practical and financial consequences.
If we bring in games, we will have to adopt everything that comes with them. Disruptive technologies by definition, destroy things; revolutions are messy.
Games may not save the education system, they may destroy it and this might be exactly what is needed.
Dr. Richard Van Eck makes some great points, I completely agree that our current education system is somewhat ignoring these 21st century skills. I also agree that the education system needs a revolution. However, I thank that games can be integrated into our current education system very easily and this could produce change for the better now. People, on the whole, are scared of change and the idea of a revolution, whilst headline grabbing, might not be feasible. I am not sure if he meant it to come across in this way, but it seems that Dr. Van Eck is arguing that there is an either / or choice to be made: either we stay the same or we have a revolution. I think there could be some middle ground.
What exactly are 21st century skills? This is another good article, which lists the essential competencies for a student in the Information Age:
Ways of thinking - Creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and learning.
Ways of working - Communication and collaboration.
Tools for working - Information and communications technology (ICT) and information literacy.
Skills for living in the world - Citizenship, life and career, and personal and social responsibility.
In a dynamic and competitive knowledge economy, innovation, creativity and problem solving are everything. We exist in a world dominated by the likes of Apple and Google. For these firms to survive, they must innovate. They require a workforce of creative critical thinkers. Furthermore, to survive in this economy and obtain employment, these are the skills that students need to be learning too. Games are a great way of encouraging the development of these skills. Succeeding in playing a game often requires problem solving, critical thinking and most definitely decision making. These skills can be practiced in a safe environment. For example, puzzle games such as Portal require explicit problem solving involving physics. However, all games involve some form of thinking skills such as these. How do I fulfil my Sim’s life ambition? How can I make my theme park more popular? How can I make my town more sustainable (an example of our learning simulation, Sustainaville)?
Communication and collaboration are also extremely important. On a purely practical level, flatter organisational hierarchies require good communication skills. This is common in a knowledge economy. Further than this, the most successful companies have realised that their workforce are their best resources. They have also found that collaboration can encourage innovation and so on. For example, Google have special areas of their offices specifically designed to stimulate ‘spontaneous’ communication and collaboration with people that they wouldn’t usually come into contact with. They also have small collaboration zones such as yurts and huddle rooms.
Image from Marcin Wichary on Flickr.
Games can encourage collaboration in different ways. First, multiplayer games can obviously provoke communication and collaboration. For example, players in games such as World of Warcraft, Halo, Portal and so on need to work together to succeed in their mission / level. In our games-ED learning simulations, players make up sub-teams that need to work together to achieve the overall outcomes of the whole group. The sub-teams are in control of one sector / building e.g. local council, health sector, private sector which must work together to improve the virtual community that they have been put in charge of.
Single player games can also encourage communication such as “Guess what I did on Fifa last night?” or “Have you been on this quest in Skyrim?” However, they can also encourage collaboration such as “How did you do that pass / goal celebration?” or “How did you defeat that boss / find that item?” While talking about communication and collaboration, I’d just like to bring your attention to this Swedish classroomless school. This innovative new school in Sweden has no classrooms, focuses on 21st century skills and children are split into grades based on their level rather than age. One of their main priorities is the promotion of collaboration along with all the other 21st Century skills mentioned. Is this the school of the future? For more information on communication and collaboration see ‘The Art of Conversation’.
It goes without saying that IT skills should be encouraged through the use of IT based games. However, what about the final bullet point above: skills for living in the world? These benefits might not come about from all games. However, they will in many. For example, semi-realistic life and career skills are simulated in The Sims. You must manage your sim’s life, made up of physical needs, social life, love life, career, family life and so on. Other games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft have pretty strict rules about social etiquette and citizenship.
Our games-ED learning simulations are designed to educate learners about some of these areas. For example, The Climate Game teaches students about climate change and environmental responsibility and Young People First teaches students about young people’s issues such as teen pregnancy, worklessness and anti-social behaviour. For more information on how game-ED aims to encourage these 21st Century (or Personal Learning & Thinking) skills click here.
To conclude, these skills are needed in the 21st Century. Needed by job seekers, employers, organisations and our future leaders. In my experience, these are the skills that people are after (employers often just require you to have a degree, not a degree in a specific area) more than the knowledge of facts and figures. Some specific knowledge is needed sometimes, such as medicine and law. However, in many fields, knowledge needs to be gained on the job anyway. Why then, is so much emphasis placed on this type of knowledge in education when it will be forgotten? Why not put more emphasis on 21st Century skills?
Further Viewing
If you have the time, you might want to watch this video from Dr. Tony Wagner about what he calls, the ‘global achievement gap’ (the gap between what is being taught and what is needed to be taught in the 21st century).
