Proof of the Pudding Part 2

Building on a previous blog post (proof of the pudding), this post looks at the practical use of games based learning in the classroom. I didn't deliver the lessons, instead it was delivered by teachers at Kings's School Winchester.

What was particularly interesting for me, is that it wasn't delivered as a facilitated game - this is the way I normally deliver our Sustainaville product. Kings' School still used it as a collaborative game, but the students inputted their own decisions into the game and the teachers supported the game sessions more lightly. The students quickly picked up the game rules (due in part to worksheets produced by Kings' School Teachers) and made group decisions in what is a reasonably complex simulation game.

Report on Sustainaville by Jane Berridge, Enterprise Co-ordinator, Kings' School Winchester
For our year 9 Enterprise Day, we took the 330 students in the year group off time table and set them a business challenge based around a theme.  The theme was sustainability and the students were asked to investigate how they could improve their community in a sustainable way.

We wanted to provide the students with information and learning that related to a sustainable community project whilst being motivational and fun.  So, we chose to start the day with Sustainaville.

Sustainaville Dynamic Main Screen

The whole year group was split into teams of three.  Each team worked at a computer and took on the role of town planners.  Their brief was to look at different sectors of Sustainaville and decide where they needed to invest to improve the town and make it a better place to live.

To make the activity even more challenging, there were tutor group competitions with spot prizes and a prize was awarded to the team with the highest score in the year group.

The game was very successful and the feedback from students and adults was excellent.  The students said ‘we really enjoyed the game, especially when we won the tutor group challenge. We have learned what sustainability is and how to help the environment. Also, we learned how to work with others and to be confident when making business decisions.’  

The teachers said they thought it was a very useful and the students gained a lot from it.

Background on Sustainaville by Paul Ladley (games-ED)
Sustainaville is a games based learning product produced games-ED. The key to success of Sustainaville is that it incorporates the 6 Key Principles of Collaborative Games Based Learning. In particular: it supports group game play; it uses technology appropriately (in Kings's case 1 computer per group not 330 computers) and it supports multiple conversations. The last principle is expanded in an earlier blog post - The Art of Conversation.

Feedback provided via report screens

In terms of Enterprise Education, Sustainaville helps learners to understand the importance of businesses in providing employment and prosperity. Learners understand how investment and specific sector skills underpin sustainable growth plus how generic skills and business improvements impact on competitiveness. They also discover that businesses do not operate in a vacuum and that social and environmental factors can both impact on the success of businesses and can be made worse by business activities.

The game allows the learners to practice skills that they and businesses need. They develop strategies, plan actions and manage budgets. They make choices and work within constraints. They use decision-making skills, practice problem-solving skills and work in teams.

Teaching Methods Deployed:
• Debates
• Discussions (experience transfer)
• Educational games
• Role-playing
• Simulations
• Pupil/student-led activities or exercises.

They Are OK, Are You?

I'm Okay, You're Okay

This post isn't strictly about games based learning; instead it describes a games based workshop delivered by my colleague Mary Dees to an adult audience. The workshop has some very interesting implications for education, hence the reason it is worthy of a blog post.

Before I describe the workshop, it is worth noting at games-ED / pixelfountain we think of games based learning as an education tool and when we deliver to adults we use the term learning simulations. This is pretty much a (marketing) terminology issue, as there is a huge amount of overlap between the two audiences in terms of the actual games and their delivery. So when I refer to game or simulation in this post, then I am essentially describing the same thing.  Anyway, before I get muddled in mire of the learning lexicon, let me tell you about the workshop and its application in education.

The Workshop
The workshop was run at ITA National Conference 2011. It examined the Transactional Analysis theory of life positions. It explored conflict and collaboration including existential and behavioural life positions in both 2 and 3 dimensions - 2D OKness and 3D OKness. 2D OKness is concerned with I and You; it is most commonly known in the expression "I'm okay, you're okay". 3D OKness adds another dimension - Them.  The theories were practically explored and demonstrated using the Sustainaville games based learning product developed by pixelfountain (games-ED).

In the simulation game, the delegates had three years to make the community sustainable in terms of social, environmental and economic issues.  The delegates were divided up into eight teams and had limited resources and both common and conflicting priorities. As the learning-simulation progresses, the learners must explore the interrelationships between the different stakeholders in the community. They have the means of making improvements but the timing of some improvements can cause other areas of the community to suffer.

The simulation is a situated learning approach and provides the delegates with an opportunity to explore their interrelations with each other: one to one, inside their teams, between teams and as a whole community. What life positions do they adopt? Do they avoid conflict? Do they manage to stay ok / keep others ok whilst resolving conflict? How do they respond to stress? How well do they collaborate and work together for the good of the whole community?


Application in Education Settings
Sustainaville has been successfully used in education (see older post on Proof of the Pudding), but this workshop opens up more possibilities. We have understood and shown how collaborative games can develop team working /creative / critical thinking skills, but combining the approach with concepts from Transactional Analysis delivers additional outcomes.

2D OKness and 3D OKness help individuals and groups firstly understand how and why they interact in certain ways and also to help them to move into more constructive ways of behaving. By delivering these concepts within a collaborative games based lesson, the learners are able to move from theory into practice. The Sustainaville situated learning simulation will give learners the opportunity to explore how they think, feel and behave under certain circumstances. It will enable them to experience conflict and practice collaboration. The simulation also includes the context of protecting the planet enabling the learners to look at life positions in relationship to future generations and species.

Specifically (in terms of the UK) the approach could support: Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL); Personal, learning and thinking skills (PLTS); and Personal Social Health Economic education (PSHE).

SEAL: Improving behaviour, improving learning. SEAL seeks to develop skills such as understanding another’s point of view, working in a group, sticking at things when they get difficult, resolving conflict and managing worries.

PLTS provides a framework for describing the qualities and skills needed for success in learning and life. The framework comprises six groups of skills: independent enquirers, creative thinkers, reflective learners, team workers, self-managers and effective participants.

PSHE is a planned, developmental programme of learning designed to help learners develop the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their lives, now and in the future. It deals with real life issues which affect children and young people, their families and their communities, and engages with the social and economic realities of their lives, experiences and attitudes.

Further Reading:
The full paper “They Are OK – Are You? ITA Conference Delegates run a Simulated World” can be found at http://www.pixelfountain.co.uk/organisational-transactional-analysis.html
Blog post: The Art of Conversation.

Education and Technology Conference 2011

I  will be delivering demonstration and discussion of Sustainaville games based learning at Education and Technology Conference 2011 on June 28th in Leeds. games-ED are also exhibiting at the show. I hope to give the attendees a taste of playing the game (time permitting), some case studies on Sustainaville usage and some practical advice on implementing games based learning. This latter bit will be focussed around the Games Based Learning Analysis and Planning Tool (see the slideshare widget on the side of this blog or you can find it on  http://www.games-ed.co.uk/resources-contact.html). Click here for more on my Sustainaville games based learning workshop and for that matter other workshops at the conference

The conference is being organised by webanywhere and includes keynote speakers, hands-on workshops, a range of exhibitors and an awards ceremony.

The Speakers:

• Professor Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity and peer interest. Sugata addresses one of the biggest issues in modern day education, the fact that often the best teachers and schools simply don't exist in the places where they are needed the most. His experiments have looked at what happens when kids are given self supervised access to technology. Starting in the slums of New Dehli he provided 'Hole in the wall' access to the internet and observed children teaching themselves not only how to use computers and the Internet but also new languages in order for them to understand and access online resources effectively.
• Matt Lingard has worked in the field of educational technology since 2001, at London Business School, London Metropolitan University, and since 2005 at the LSE. He has an MA ICT in Education from the Institute of Education, University of London, where his dissertation focused on lecturers' attitudes to using VLEs for teaching. 
• Chris Lackey is a filmmaker and animator from Los Angeles, California. Chris has been working in Hollywood for the last 16 years, creating television and movies for a variety of companies. Now living in Yorkshire, Chris is working in schools to work with pupils on animation, film making and photography workshops.

. Have a gander at http://www.educationtechnology2011.co.uk/index.html


I will report back on how the workshop and indeed the conference went.

Getting Started with Games in the Classroom

Arguably, this should have been my first post. But hey ho...

This post is inspired by the question "What is holding back widespread adoption of games based leaning?"

The simple answer is there probably isn't enough good quality games based learning out there. A lot of what has been done so far in the field has been with commercial entertainment games. Another answer is that, barring the early adopters, educators have not latched on the benefits of games based learning or simply don't know where to start.

Back to Basics

Developers and educators should get back to basics. If we were buying a car, we might consider whether the car looks nice and suits our needs. We might think about how we are going to use the car. We might worry about support from the dealership. We might think about the long-term and wider outcomes, such as the environment and whether we would be better off using public transport. And finally, we would be concerned about the cost.

These five factors hold true for games based learning and they are: design, delivery (usage), technology & support, outcomes and cost.

Readers can find more on the five factors in a Games Based Learning Analysis and Planning Tool at http://www.games-ed.co.uk/resources-contact.html

While I am writing about Getting Started, it is worth mentioning Digital games in School Handbook.


Digital games in School: A handbook for teachers
http://games.eun.org/upload/gis_handbook_en.pdf
The handbook was written in the framework of European Schoolnet's Games in Schools project which began in January 2008 and ended in June 2009. The project's aim was to analyse the current situation in eight countries (Austria, Denmark, France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain and UK) with regard to games based learning.

The core of the handbook is based around three sections:

• Why use digital games for learning.
• Choosing the appropriate game. 
• Conducting a play session.

The Conducting a play session includes a useful section on  evaluating and strengthening pupils’ knowledge through a debriefing session. Unfortunately, the assumption is that the game is played and the educator then debriefs the session to ensure the learning has taken place. This is mainly to do with the fact that the handbook is heavily biased towards commercial entertainment games. But even so, I would argue (see Six Key Principles of Collaborative Games Based Learning) that it is better to create break points during the game play for analysis, reflection and scaffolding. Game playing can be collaborative and be an anchor for conversations, so it is such a shame to see so many photographs in the handbook of young people plugged into the games and donning headphones.

Having said that the handbook is a useful read and includes a taxonomy of games, glossary, a section on games for learners with various disabilities and some links to portals where games can be found - but obviously my loyal readers will know the best can be found at http://www.games-ed.co.uk :)

When Will Educators Get Serious About Gaming?

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Bruce Dixon asked, “What's holding [games based learning] progress back? Is it that gaming, by its very name, cannot be taken seriously by the wider education community, or indeed the wider community in general? Is it possible that gaming is only now starting to reach a level of "maturity" and sophistication from an affordable technology perspective, that it can finally provide what might be to be "serious opportunities for learning"? Or is it something that might be seen as driving what could be called subversive pedagogy?


Whatever the reason, it's time we thought beyond the fundamental research around the value, impact and opportunities game-based learning provides, and spent some time trying to leverage the evidence we do have be presenting it to a much broader community.

I certainly agree with Bruce on this last point and I shared some evidence in a recent blog post (Proof of the Pudding).


I like to think the problem is an issue of evolution rather than revolution. Specifically, rather than  parachuting commercial games or gaming styles into classrooms, we need to consider what teachers actually want. I think that is a teaching resource that delivers outcomes where traditional approaches might not be suited.

As a consultant and lead designer at games-ED I have delivered over 40 classes using games based learning. I have also delivered over 300 workshops using serious games.

During this time I have:

1. Run classes with commercial-style games where it was hard to extract learning, although there was a lot of engagement. There was also technical difficulties due to graphic cards.

2. Developed and delivered a single player game that was designed to work in the classroom. This was more successful in terms of learning outcomes, although again it was difficult to drag students away from the game.

3. I have developed and delivered collaborative games based learning where a whole class takes on different roles in a simulation. This approach fits into standard teaching practice with natural breakpoints for reflection and scaffolding. It delivers curriculum outcomes and improvements in personal learning and thinking skills.

Much of the research done on games based learning has been on commercial games (or games developed in the style of commercial games) rather than purpose built games based learning. It is this fact that is highlighting some of the technical and pedagogical issues surrounding the adoption of games based learning. I say this, as our experience does not fit the research. I would say the two most important issues around the adoption of games based learning are sales and marketing. When the big players start putting their weight behind the approach things will change.

So, on that note, if there are any large education resellers out there, who want to link up with a  games based learning company, I might be able to help :)