ATLS

Taking Games Seriously

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Taking Games Seriously Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/24/2012 - 00:00

"I've been gaming since I was a little kid", brags Trent Begin, a TTA at ASSETT.

"Well I was playing Flight Simulator", says TTA Casey Zahorik, pausing dramatically as he leans back in his swivel chair, when I was three years old.

Grant Matheny, ASSETT's technical director, laughs and then confesses. "I didn't play games until I was a teenager. I started late. But my wife," he counters, in a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to regain credibility, "my wife was playing Doom at age three."

At CU �鶹ӰԺ, games are serious business. Games and Education is a growing research field and many educators are beginning to recognize the potential of games as educational tools. There are several initiatives at CU �鶹ӰԺ that focus on this new experiment in education. Scalable Game Design is a National Science Foundation-funded project aimed at introducing Middle School Students to computer science through game design. Another group experimenting with games is The ATLAS Institute, which offers undergraduate courses named after gaming platforms like "Second Life" and "Unity 3D".

"I think these initiatives are only the first step for the future of games and education,"says Kara Behnke, Ph.D. student at the ATLAS Institute. "Games are structured systems of rules that give us a very specific goal to reach. This helps us learn because the game is very effective at illustrating our progress." Also, she explains: "In a game you usually know exactly what you did wrong and are given the support you need to progress forward. Games encourage us to learn from our failures."

Here at ASSETT, the Teaching With Technology staff is testing the idea that games can help students learn by working with departments on specific projects. Matheny, Begin and Zahorik are currently collaborating with the Anthropology Department to create a game that is tailored to their class needs. Using Adventure Maker software as a foundation to build on, the team is creating a virtual Russian town that anthropology students will be able to explore virtually. The game is designed so that students can travel back in time to learn how Russian society was structured in different historical periods.

Another recent commission is from the communications school. Their task, explains Grant Matheny, is very open-ended: "we want to help [students] think in more complex ways about how people collaborate." Although the design work hasn't started yet, they plan to share their initial ideas with students in the communications school so that they can jump-start a dialogue with future users that will be maintained during every stage of the design process.

Matheny, Begin, and Zahorik all experienced the educational benefits of gaming at young ages. "Eve online taught me basic and advanced economics," said Grant Matheny, referring to a complex trade agreement with an Italian player that involved negotiations across language barriers. "And I've learned more about world history through that game than from any history class I've taken." The Teaching with Technology Assistants both agree. Casey Zahorik explains that games helped him to"learn by doing," which increases information retention. Also, Trent Begin explains, "gaming is fun" and the learning that happens is "subtle." Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of learning through games is that gamers often don't realize that they're having an educational experience until after they've learned the material.

Of course, gaming in the classroom is still controversial. Educators worry about bringing games into a class where not all students are tech-savvy. Others are concerned that game elements distract students from real learning. Yet many departments seem willing to experiment and the ASSETT Teaching with Tech staff is confident that once educators hear the success stories, they will be less skeptical. At the recent COLTT conference at CU, the number of presentations focused on gaming and education doubled when compared to last year's conference. It's clear that interest in games is growing and many believe that the concept of games as educational tools will eventually be embraced by the education community at large.

I think it is inevitable that games will be used in the classrooms of the future, says Kara Behnke. In fact, according to Behnke, the real question is not whether teachers will start using games; rather, she wonders, “when will games become the new norm for education?” In her view, this shift might happen sooner than anyone ever anticipated. And why not? In an age where educators are scrambling for better ways to reach their students, any new venture is worth a try. If games have the potential to foster a learning environment that is both fun and challenging, this new experiment in pedagogy may have the potential to enrich the learning experience of students at all levels of education in classrooms across the globe.

Article written by: Ashley E Williams, ASSETT reporter

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Teaching With Technology: Sarah Hug

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Teaching With Technology: Sarah Hug Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/23/2012 - 00:00

Can technology be effectively used as a teaching tool without knowing the benefits of its use in the learning process? On Friday, February 23, 2012 Dr. Sarah Hug joined the Teaching with Technology seminar to answer just that question. As a research associate at ATLAS and a learning scientist specializing in mixed methods research and evaluation in technology fields, Dr. Hug offered valuable insight into the world of technology and learning. Dr. Hug began the seminar by discussing with participants “what learning looks like.” Dr. Hug noted that “… this may feel a little like backing up from our goal… but it may be helpful to take a step back and look at what you hope students can say and do after they are in class … to get a sense of what technology can help do…”. She explained that understanding theories of learning can help build a framework for efficiently incorporating technology into a learning environment. Dr. Hug continued by saying “We might ask ourselves: ‘Am I using this tool because it is a cool new software package or because I think my students will be more engaged, or because I think they will learn better?’ Considering learning theory can help us form those hypotheses about learning inside and outside of the classroom.”

A good learning theory, according to Hug, is broken into three parts: the concepts of direction of movement (where is the student going and where did the student start), of where knowledge exists (is learning just in one’s head, or is learning also in notes, computers, etc.), and of how learning happens (is it through memorization, hands on activity, etc.), all of which she cited from Popper and Lave. When considering which type of technology to use in a classroom, having a foundation in learning theory can help an instructor most efficiently implement technology resources to optimize student learning and engagement. Here are a few learning theories to consider when determining technology use in your classroom, as outlined by Dr. Hug:

Behavioral/Empirical Learning Theory:

This group of theories focuses on rewarding external behaviors that are evidence of internal learning (of concepts or skills) in order to cause the desired behavior to become habit. Instructors often need to involve incentives for the learner to respond appropriately. It focuses heavily on empirically observable aspects of learning. An example of applying this theory is through the use of a reward system in which positive actions are clearly reinforced. This theory largely takes the environment into consideration when learning is being evaluated and follows an operant conditioning model.

Cognitivism:

This theory focuses on an individual learner building new knowledge on a scaffold of prerequisite knowledge by taking advantage of how the brain actually processes information. Instructors do not need to provide learning incentives with this type of learning model. An ideal activity to incorporate this theory is one in which new ideas are slowly added to expand the student’s sense of the subject. This theory directly takes into consideration a student’s propensity to intellectually and actively construct one’s own understanding of a subject. The application of this theory requires the instructor to give up the illusion of control, and instead adapt to the needs of individual learners.

Sociocultural/Situative Learning Theory:

This theory focuses on groups of learners developing a shared understanding of concepts and how they fit into the collective knowledge of the group. Instructors do not need to provide learning incentives with this type of activity as learners engage in learning activities in ways that confirm to the function and goals of their group. According to Dr. Hug, “An example of using socio-cultural learning theory in thinking about technology use [is] if we as instructors believe people learn concepts through interaction with others, if we consider student-student dialogue as well as student-teacher dialogue as important for learning, we might design online learning to allow for rich student to student to professor collaboration and interaction.”

These three theories, along with other learning theories, can be helpful to consider when deciding what technologies best align with your teaching objectives and how to assess the efficacies of the technologies you employ in the classroom.

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Teaching With Technology: John Bennett

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Teaching With Technology: John Bennett Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/07/2012 - 00:00

With the advancement of massive multiplayer online games and simulation technology, entire classrooms and even campuses can now be found in a digitized state, existing within the online realm of gaming. But actually teaching in a virtual world? Such ideas seem fit only for the pages of science fiction and a far off future. However, for Professor John Bennett, the advantages of utilizing virtual worlds and gaming as a tool for teaching are too numerous to ignore. Reality and the virtual world conjoin to recreate the traditional classroom in John Bennett’s class, Virtual Worlds: An Introduction to Computer Science, at the University of Colorado at �鶹ӰԺ. Dr. John Bennett, a Computer Science professor and Institute Director of ATLAS, recently discussed the benefits of utilizing simulated worlds as an educational tool during his Teaching with Technology seminar.

Utilizing a virtual world known as Second Life, Dr. Bennett introduces the basics of computer science in a form easily understandable to all students. In his course, Second Life acts as the “Laboratory”, teaching students how to program by creating “artifacts of interest” in the cybernetic world. Dr. Bennett takes full advantage of both the student's curiosity for creation within Second Life and the innately human interest in gaming. The student’s desire to create imposes a need to learn LSL (Linden Scripting Language), the native programming language within Second Life. LSL, as Bennett elaborated, “looks and feels like a host of programming languages” and imbeds the notion of state (the idea that things move from one condition to another based upon the current condition and a set of inputs). He noted that this notion “typically isn’t learned until more upper division course work.” Bennett explained he endorses the concept of “language neutrality”, in which the particular programming language first learned by students (in this case LSL) is “less important than developing the ability to learn how to learn others”.

In order to implement Second Life in his classroom, Dr. Bennett developed FS2LSL (Flash Scratch to Linden Scripting Language) as a way to effectively teach students the key principles of programming within the virtual world. It was created to assist students in developing programs for Second Life or OpenSim variants using a visual and interactive “puzzle”. By dragging blocks from the palette onto the stage, one can create a fully functioning program by simply pressing a button to translate the block-defined language into LSL. Dr. Bennett describes FS2LSL as a way “to bridge the sometimes substantial gap between ‘I understand how to think computationally’ and ‘I am able to express that understanding using a computational language’”. As Bennett’s presentation points out, this form of experiential learning is highly encouraged by platforms such as Second Life, effectively aiding students in grasping difficult concepts. This educational approach, Bennett explained, “[creates] task centered, self-directed, and independent students.”

By integrating a virtual world into the reality of his classroom, Dr. Bennett discovered that students naturally engage in the material and ultimately, understand the key concepts more proficiently. Yet, not just any simulation will do. The educational reward, Bennett clarified, is in the gaming, but why? “A game is a voluntary repetitive activity, intended to be entertainment… and millions of people voluntarily choose to [engage in gaming]. Colleagues who study such things tell us that when humans engage in pleasurable repetitive activity, [people] remember things.” Bennett then continued, stating that “[games are] often complex, difficult, and involve thought provoking, interactive graphical interfaces”, which assist in solidifying key concepts.

Towards the end of his presentation, Dr. Bennett made clear that platforms such as Second Life can offer educational benefits beyond that of learning how to program. With a few tweaks, the experiential learning afforded within virtual worlds can be applied in many classroom environments. One example Bennett mentioned was the benefit it could hold for language courses. In language learning courses, the ability of online simulations (such as Second Life) to connect with nations across the world, offers a unique opportunity for students to practice both speaking and writing of certain languages with native speakers. Online virtual worlds similar to Second Life, Bennett explained, can be used to supplement almost any need whether it is meeting with online classes and distance learners, exploring virtual historical landscapes, experimenting with the physics of reality, or even holding online office hours – almost anything is possible.

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