Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

-Vicki S. Williams

Abstract
Interactive games have evolved a great deal since the days of pinball machines and etch-a-sketch doodles. For many years, the closest games got to “electronic” was “electric.” Today’s games have the potential to teach scuba diving or physiology, cooking or construction skills and they can provide realistic scenarios for practice of these to mastery. With all this potential, how can we harness the avatars and elements to help people learn – and not realize they are learning at all. This paper describes an attempt to harness and promote serious gaming as a viable instructional strategy.
 

The Origins of Electronic Gaming
Interactive games have evolved a great deal since the days of pinball machines and etch-a-sketch doodles. For many years, the closest games got to “electronic” was “electric.” The first computers were unwieldy things that barely found their way into business and industry, let alone institutions of learning. As computers began to demonstrate their potential for activities other than banking and engineering, however, creative thinkers saw a way to create fictional worlds where anything was possible. The only limits were the computer’s physical size and the need for programmers and Computer languages to make things happen. The user had limited control over events, but the seeds of computer gaming began to grow and develop.

Early on, A.S. Douglas created a version of Tic-Tac-Toe on an EDSAC computer with a primitive CRT display. In the late 1950s, Higinbotham’s Tennis for Two was developed and was played on an oscilloscope. The year 1962 brought SpaceWar!, the first game designed to be played on a computer and 1967 introduced Chase, the first computer game to be played using a television as a display. The all-time classic, Pong, was developed in 1972, just before Atari released it as their first home video game.

At first, only those few with programming skills could write the codes that made the ping pong ball bounce off the “paddle” or the brick crumble from the “wall” in BrickOut, but as programming languages evolved, casual programmers began painfully to create simple games using Basic and other new languages. Games that engaged the user at a higher level tended to use the new GUI, but the player essentially interacted with the programmed game by using the up and down arrows or by clicking on objects to make decisions, as in the original Myst. It wasn’t until the invention of the mouse and the microchip that things really began to take off. Then, according to Bellis (http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcomputer_videogames.htm) in 1980, Atari's "Asteroids" and "Lunar Lander" became the first two video games to ever be registered in the Copyright Office. Computer games were becoming mainstream.

Today, it’s definitely not your mother’s Etch-a-Sketch anymore, as an electronic etch-a-sketch game was developed by an elementary school student and appears online at http://scratch.mit.edu/ . Pong is now on the Web at http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/extra/pong.html . Even Brickout has grown into an online game and Myst has found PlayStation and Nintendo DS. Go bowling or play golf in your livingroom.

Sony produces its PlayStation series, while Nintendo manufactures several gaming consoles including the Wii and the DS, and Microsoft makes the XBox series of consoles. In the recent survey of Penn State students, 44% of the students who play computer / video games have a PlayStation 2 or 3, 37% have an XBox series machine, and 26% own a Wii. Of these, 20% believed that playing the games helped them develop their critical thinking skills. What is it about video and computer games that motivate students to learn?
 

Games and Learning
Beginning with simple ones, games have long been recognized by teachers as a way to engage students and make learning more fun. In the early 1970s, Oregon Trail and other early computer games incorporated skills in math and geography, but also promoted higher-order thinking by including the need for “hunting”, negotiating, problem solving, and decision-making skills. It was a first attempt at computer games as problem-based learning. According to Wikipedia, Oregon Trail has also migrated to the Web as Westward Trail (http://www.globalgamenetwork.com/westward_trail.html) and there is a Facebook version as well now. The Voyage of the Mimi, developed by Bank Street College of Education in the 1980s, led students to explore the world around them and learn in a virtual ocean.

The gameshow Jeopardy! has created a classroom version that promotes their format as a way of learning (http://www.sonypictures.com/tv/shows/jeopardy/interstitial.php), allowing teachers to insert their own questions. Wheel of Fortune has been used in the same way (Feldstein & Kruse, 1998). Television moves to the computer. Crossword puzzles, word-searches, and other games, first used in a paper-and-pencil format, have gradually moved to online versions.

There are online games for kindergarten children to learn the alphabet and their and numbers and even Fisher-Price sells online games for toddlers. FunBrain.com and funschool.kaboose.com have all sorts of online games and learning activities for school children. Teachers can go to Quia.com and create customizable games. Although some things are harder for an individual to learn than others, learning new material should not be painful. The K-12 world can make learning fun.

These children are growing up with online learning opportunities in game form. Their expectations for learning will not necessarily be of hour-long college lectures, but of an electronic or online activity. Immersed in their learning, it will happen without their realizing it. They learn leadership skills playing World of Warcraft (Brown & Thomas, 2006). They become part of their learning. In their imaginations, they move around within their learning. How can we compete for their attention with talking heads and static PowerPoint slides (or worst yet, hand-written overhead transparencies)? How can playing electronic games encourage them to learn content? Clark Aldrich states in his blog (http://clarkaldrich.blogspot.com ) that serious gaming is gaining momentum. He says:

The serious games movement has a very specific premise: One can create learning experiences that are so much fun, so much like a great computer game, that people will engage them primarily to meet a need for entertainment, and through that process, will happen to learn quite a bit. As a result, the serious game, and the content itself, will spread virally, and as long as they are accessible, will increasingly enrich a given culture. The example is SimCity. And fair enough.

Theoretical Grounding
The use of electronics for games, simulations, and role-plays in teaching and learning is not new. Many sociologists in the 1980s were trained in counseling and questioning techniques using laser discs that branched from one scenario to another, asking questions and giving feedback. Negotiation skills were taught using videotapes controlled by a computer and scores of “if-then” statements, but it is the power of today’s computers and the World Wide Web that can transform them into interactive worlds of their own. While we know that single episode games can teach basic knowledge and skills, there are also games that span time and space itself and teach without appearing to do so. When investigating why electronic gaming has the potential to play such a strong role in learning, several learning theories seem to surface in support.

The principles of Social Interaction Theory (Vygotsky, 1978), Social Learning or Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977),  Constructivism (Bruner, 1966; Jonassen, 2006; Papert, 1998), and Situated Learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) all support the application of electronic / online gaming as a viable environment for learning. They propose that learning is a social activity and a well-constructed educational gaming environment can support individual learning as well as learning from peers and others who may join the game. Games are a social space for learning.

Vygotsky (1978), in his Social Interaction Theory, refers to how learners acquire knowledge from their elders (i.e., parents and teachers), but also from their peers. In a virtual environment such as an online game, participants observe one another and build knowledge on their own from personal trial-and-error learning, as well as from observing cause–and-effect consequences in the behaviors of others with whom they share the environment. As knowledge and confidence increases, the reliance on others as “teachers” decreases and the learner moves toward self-efficacy – toward mastery and self-directedness.

According to the Theory into Practice (TIP) Web site (http://tip.psychology.org/bandura.html ), Albert Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory says “the highest level of observational learning is achieved by first organizing and rehearsing the modeled behavior symbolically and then enacting it overtly. Coding modeled behavior into words, labels, or images results in better retention than simply observing.” This opportunity to organize and rehearse can be presented in an educational gaming environment. There, a representation of the human, an avatar, can observe and practice symbolically. When ready, they interact and share with other avatars in the virtual space. Avatars can interact with other avatars or elements the environment itself, making decisions, suffering consequences of poor decisions and learning. This is valuable when the behavior is one that involves risk in the real world. They can learn to fly without crashing a real plane. They can share what they have learned.

Lave’s ( Lave & Wenger, 1991) theory of Situated Learning (http://tip.psychology.org/lave.html) purports that “as the beginner or newcomer moves from the periphery of this community to its center, they become more active and engaged within the culture and hence assume the role of expert or old-timer.” In a game, players may contribute hints or guidance of some sort to newcomers. When a game is played over time, it is possible that this sharing of knowledge may lead to social relationships between the individuals within the game itself. Social Constructivist theory (Bruner, 1986) includes activities such as peer-instruction and collaboration, as well as group problem solving and cognitive apprenticeships where the old-timers mentor the newcomers, all skills we encourage in the classroom. Educational gaming can encourage them in the virtual space, where some may or may not meet in the external world, but are companions in the game.

In many ways, Constructivist theory (Bruner, 1966; Duffy & Jonassen, 1992) lends itself well to describing how game theory and learning can come together in a game to teach strategic thinking. Learners can create new knowledge through experience and interaction. Well-designed serious games can create an environment rich in context and situational application that allows the learner-player to experience the virtual environment, interacting with the environment as well as other players, to arrive at knowledge through a series of actions and reactions.

In his Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, (Prensky, 2001), Marc Prensky quotes Bruer (1999, p.155) as saying “Brain reorganization [i.e., learning] takes place only when the animal pays attention to the sensory input and to the task.” Learning is accomplished only by interaction with the content and spending time on task. Even learning by repetition is simply spending time with the content while it gets encoded into long-term memory and what better way to spend time-on-task than in a game. If learning is brought about by experience, then give them the opportunity to get experience.

Baby-boomers thought and learned differently because of television, the Gen-Xers think differently because of personal computers, and today’s children think differently because they exist in a world where minds leap about like the Web sites they explore. They expect the fast pace of an electronic game. Prensky calls it “twitch speed” (Prensky, 2001, p. 3). They multitask mentally as well as physically. Although his views are criticized by David Merrill (who doubts that “edu” and “tainment” really go together (Filipczak, 1997)). Prensky describes it as just another symptom of this generational digital divide.
 
In other words, the Internet generation’s brains are not wired like those of their predecessors. Even in 2003, a Pew Internet and American Life Project report (Jones, 2003) indicated that:

Gaming is integrated into leisure time and placed alongside other entertainment forms in their residence, and that it forms part of a larger multitasking setting in which college students play games, listen to music and interact with others in the room” (p.2).

Students tended to play games as short diversions from study or while IMing friends.

Now, our challenge is to create learning environments that engage these multi-taskers. Imagine that they come to university after years of Math Blast and are asked to sit quietly and work as individuals for 75 minutes twice a week. Outside the classroom, and sometimes inside the classroom, we compete with Facebook and YouTube for their time and attention. A survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (Jones, 2003) showed that “70% of college students reported playing video, computer or online games at least once in a while, and 65% of college students reported being regular or occasional game players.” To engage them in learning, only an immersive environment like that of a computer game can sustain their focus and channel multi-sensory input, regardless of how entertaining the instructor might be. Plus, games are ready to teach after 9 pm, when students are most active (p.7).

Benchmarking other institutions and organizations
While several universities such as Michigan State offer credit courses in Game Design, serious gaming as instructional strategy is just emerging. The University of Minnesota has a Flash Games site, but teaching about educational games is not the same as teaching with educational games. Economics professor Jeffrey Sarbaum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has created an electronic educational game to teach economics. His Economics 201 course is taught online and teaches the principles of microeconomics through an online  game. Sarbaum believes serious games can entertain and teach at the same time. The first semester it was offered, the course enrolled 90 students. The next semester, 175 students signed up for the course.

Some instructors are just scratching the surface of educational games’ potential for instruction of complex concepts. As one example, the University of Washington’s Foldit (http://fold.it) teaches the structures of protein folding and biomedicine. The Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab has developed Scratch as a collaborative project with the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and a grant from National Science Foundation, Intel Foundation, and MIT Media Lab research consortia. According to the MIT Scratch site, Scratch is a simple programming language that “makes it easy to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web”   As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

The University of Wisconsin – Madison’s School of Education is working on design and development of innovative game modules to support young people's media literacy and sponsors the Games, Learning, Society group and calls their programs learning systems. The Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Lab at Michigan State University (http://gel.msu.edu/) says they “design innovative prototypes, techniques, and complete games for entertainment and learning and to advance state of the art knowledge about social and individual effects of digital games.”

Another name for educational gaming is serious gaming, or “immersive education” (includes virtual worlds as well as 3D games) as it is referred to at Amherst College, Boston College, Columbia University, and Harvard. Harvard has established an international Immersive Education Initiative that brings universities together “to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems.” (http://immersiveeducation.org/).

The military has recognized the value of and used serious games and simulations for some time in training pilots and soldiers. Created as an interactive  a recruitment tool, gamers can play America’s Army game (http://www.goarmy.com/aarmy/index.jsp) which they describe as “… an entertaining way for young adults to be educated about the U.S. Army and see some of the career opportunities available to Soldiers in the U.S. Army — all this as a virtual Soldier. America's Army emphasizes teamwork, values and responsibility as means to achieving the goals.” Then, there is Full Spectrum Warrior – edutainment or training?

The corporate world is also partnering with game developers to create leadership programs, such as the Attent with Serios enterprise application created by Seriosity and IBM. They describe Attent as:
 

an enterprise productivity application inspired by multiplayer online games.
It tackles the problem of information overload in corporate email using psychological and economic principles from successful games. Attent creates a synthetic economy with a currency (Serios) that enables users to attach value to an outgoing email to signal importance. (Seriosity, 2007)
 

 An article posted in Wired (Brown, J.S. & Thomas, D., 2007) described the role of serious gaming in leadership and strategy training: 

Simulation games have proven excellent tools for training people in manual skills; for example, X-Plane, a flight simulator that runs on home computers, has been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. But accidental learning transcends intentional training. When role-playing gamers team up to undertake a quest, they often need to attempt particularly difficult challenges repeatedly until they find a blend of skills, talents, and actions that allows them to succeed. This process brings about a profound shift in how they perceive and react to the world around them. They become more flexible in their thinking and more sensitive to social cues. The fact that they don't think of gameplay as training is crucial. Once the experience is explicitly educational, it becomes about developing compartmentalized skills and loses its power to permeate the player's behavior patterns and worldview.

Where does Penn State intend to go with this emerging learning environment and how can we take advantage of its potential in instruction?

The Educational Gaming Commons (EGC) initiative is a blend of an online Community Hub and an Educational Gaming Commons Lab that will be designed to foster active collaboration within the PSU Educational Gaming Community. Within this environment, faculty and students connect to projects that investigate and demonstrate the educational potentials of games. By tapping into the intense interest in gaming we strive to initiate new game development activities that can support teaching, learning, and research.  Using an Affiliate Program we will link these students to each other and to faculty with gaming projects.

The community of practice, once established, can thrive and evolve. At University Park we will create an Educational Gaming Commons Lab that will serve as the heart of the initiative. Furnished with large screens, powerful computers, and comfortable furniture, the Lab will encourage both the development of instructional games and the study of the gaming phenomenon - to stimulate research, application and education in educational games, including the use of virtual environments and simulations for serious gaming and learning.

But the design and development of pedagogically effective games takes time and resources. In order to be ready for the incoming students of 2013, the “Internet Generation” - the “digital children”  - we must begin the initiative now–with an eye to that date that is not as far away as it may first seem.

References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Brown, J., & Thomas, D. (2006, April). You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired! Wired, (Issue 14.04). Retrieved June 26, 2008, from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/learn.html.
Bruer, J. T. (1999). The Myth of the first three years: A new understanding of early brain development and lifelong learning. New York: Free Press.
Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Duffy, T., & Jonassen, D. (Eds.). (1992). Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Feldstein, M., & Kruse, K. (1998). The power of multimedia games. Training & Development, 52(2), 62-3.
Filipczak, B. (1997, August). The F word. Training, 34(8), 27.
Jonassen, D. (2006). On the role of concepts in learning and instructional design. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 54(2), 177-197.
Jones, S. (2003, July 6). Let the games begin: Gaming technology and entertainment among college students -- Pew Internet Report. Retrieved June 9, 2008, from http://www.pewinternet.org/report_display.asp?r=93.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Papert, S. (1998). Does easy do it? Children, games, and learning. Game Developer, (September), 88.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5).
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
 

Additional publications by Marc Prensky (http://www.marcprensky.com/ ):
Prensky, M. (1998, January). Twitch speed. Across the Board, 35(1), 14-19.  Retrieved June 5, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 25169135).
Prensky, M. (1998, October). Bankers trust: Training is all fun and games. HR Focus, 75(10), 11-12.  Retrieved June 5, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 35174889).
Prensky, M. (2003, October). Digital game-based learning. Computers in Entertainment, 1(1), 4.  Retrieved June 5, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 818393431).
Prensky, M. (2005). "Engage me or Enrage Me" - WHAT TODAY'S LEARNERS DEMAND. EDUCAUSE Review, 40(5), 60-64.
Prensky, M. (2005, December). Listen to the Natives. Educational Leadership, 63(4), 8-13. Retrieved June 5, 2008, from Research Library Core database. (Document ID: 958372371).
Prensky, M. (2008, March). Turning On the Lights. Educational Leadership, 65(6), 40.  Retrieved June 5, 2008, from Research Library Core database. (Document ID: 1455541231).