School Library Journal» The Gaming Life

Quest to Learn: A collaborative effort to design engaging game-like learning environments | Gaming Life

SLJ — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:00:14 +0000

If you’ve played enough well-designed games, you know that they provide immediate feedback, are constantly challenging, promote learning by doing, and reframe failure as iteration. As most teachers already know, these are core principles of good teaching. This is a powerful relationship. When we make it explicit, and design from it, we see students engaged in playful, studious, and deep learning.

In 2009, the Institute of Play, a not-for-profit design studio founded by a group of game designers, collaborated with the New York City Department of Education and New Visions for Public Schools to design and realize Quest to Learn (Q2L). A game-like public school in New York City, Quest to Learn opened its doors in 2009 with a sixth grade class of 78 students. It currently has 370 students in grades six through nine, and will add a grade each subsequent year until it graduates its first class in 2015. Teachers are licensed by the Department of Education and students take required standardized tests. But at Q2L, a team of game designers, curriculum specialists, and after school mentors work with teachers to design rigorous, engaging, game-like learning environments, including the design of classroom games.

At Quest to Learn, students face tasks that are challenging but approachable. Teachers assess student learning based on these tasks. Students receive meaningful feedback about their progress. Sound familiar? Of course it does. It’s good teaching, grounded in over 30 years of learning research.

Part of this process is the design of classroom games. So not only are the learning environments explicitly game-like, but students and teachers play games in these spaces, reflect on games, mod (modify) them, and design their own. We are designing a library of irresistible experiences for learning. It’s an illuminating collaborative process.

The Why

The game integration process begins in our weekly curriculum meetings attended by a teacher, a game designer, a curriculum specialist, and a learning strategist. The process springs from carefully considered learning goals that are based on New York State and Common Core Standards. The decision to integrate a game is usually sparked by one of two situations:

1. Sometimes it’s just a tough topic. For example, during a curriculum meeting, a teacher notes that arithmetic with negative integers is a troublesome topic. Games are excellent for tough topics, so we begin the process.

2. Sometimes content just feels game-like. Perhaps the space of the topic feels game-like (like circles, triangles, and rulers), or perhaps the mechanics/actions of the content feel game-like (like how citing sources can be similar to trusting players in a bluffing game). We try to brainstorm a prototype. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and that’s fine. We don’t push what’s not working just because we like games.

Our first response to these two potential sparks is always: “Is there a tool that already does this?” Our goal is learning, not game design. If the tool already exists, we use it. Some of the fine tools that we use include Algodoo, Minecraft, SimCity, Vernier and Pasco Probeware, LEGO robotics, MangaHigh, Brainpop, Prezi, Pixlr, Wikispaces, Comic Life, iMovie, Keynote, and these things called pencils. If a great tool does not already exist, then perhaps the game design process begins.

A note on leadership: the curriculum team follows the teachers, not the other way around. Teachers know what they want to teach, know their students, and know what will work best for the context. This is extremely important, and is not just a principle of our game design process but of our curriculum design process as a whole. The team supports with their skills, is a sounding board, and offers advice—but the teacher is the teacher is the teacher.

Prototype and playtest

After zooming in on learning goals and deciding to move forward, we brainstorm relevant game mechanics or actions, playtest prototypes, and plan strategies for the classroom.

In the case of teaching arithmetic with negative integers, our game designer brainstormed and came back to our next meeting with an idea. She had us play a game that already existed, called Gloom. It had a mechanic where players could add or subtract points from another player’s stack of cards, so players were already adding and subtracting integers. It seemed like a good place to start, but its rules were too complex for the classroom and it didn’t focus in on operations with negatives. We focused on the learning goal, kept the basic card-covering and card-stealing mechanics, varied the numbers used (-5 to +5), and designed some additional arithmetic operations and actions. Each of these decisions had consequences that needed to be worked out through playtesting.

During subsequent meetings, we went through several iterations. We asked ourselves questions like: “Is this fun?” “Do I feel confused?” “Are the rules complicated?” “Do I feel active?” “Are we collaborating/competing?” “Do my choices matter?” And then we asked the overarching question: “Are we hitting the learning goals?”

Of course, as adults with arithmetic fluency, we can’t necessarily predict how students will react to the mathematics or the gameplay. We tackle this through playtesting. The teacher invites students with various strengths and weaknesses to play and provide honest and critical feedback. They complete a playtest reflection form that’s used as a springboard for the feedback session.

When students playtested our Gloom mods (modifications), which became a game called Absolute Blast, they reported that they would like to have more opportunities to “mess” with other players. We immediately worked to incorporate a stronger “stealing” element to the game. One student reported a feeling of “too many things going on in her head to make a good choice”—cognitive overload. We took steps to reduce this by constraining player choice and available information. These modifications improved students’ ability to competitively and strategically perform arithmetic with negative integers. Students sometimes come up with ideas that are so good that we immediately incorporate them. In this way, students engage in our collaborative design process and take on designer identities.

Exploding the Game

It’s important to note that our games are not one-and-done’s. They work best when the teacher “explodes the game.” This can mean a number of things. It can be something as simple as choosing the best time to introduce the game. For example, our game Shortcuts motivates students to wish that they had something like the Pythagorean Theorem. So, students might play it right before they are introduced to the theorem.

Perhaps the teacher wants to play the same game, but increase the levels of difficulty over time. If we use a game with a more open/fill-in framework, students can play with the same space, rules, and mechanics, but at varying teacher-created difficulty levels, which can be a differentiation strategy as well. Another great possibility is for students to create strategy guides for games. This works better with some games than others, depending on how close a relationship there is between strategy and content understanding.

Perhaps the students create the new game levels. Cast them into the role of game designers so that they can learn and display their content understanding as they work on new difficulty levels, or more interestingly, as they introduce fundamental modifications that require them to struggle with the content. For example, in our game Caterpillar, which is a heavy mod of Settlers of Catan, the learning goal is about understanding the probabilities of rolling two dice. After playing for a while, some students chose to mod only the game space, while others modded both the game space and the number of rolled dice.

If we don’t have the time to mod or design from scratch (or even if we do), we may explode games that we didn’t design. Why not take Scrabble and ask students why certain letters have their point values? How would they design a game like Scrabble if they were making it? Would they do it differently? How would their modifications affect player strategy? What would they have to understand in order to make informed decisions for a fun game?

What game will you take apart or mod for learning? It’s wide open. Explode the game.

Dan O’Keefe (Daniel@instituteofplay.org) designs learning spaces for the Institute of Play for Quest to Learn in New York City.

This is School Library Journal’s final Gaming Life column. Our thanks to Kelly Czarnecki who has done an outstanding job as column editor over the past six years.

International Games Day @ your library

SLJ — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 23:52:51 +0000

Got your game face on? Well, you’re going to need it. On Saturday, November 3, the American Library Association (ALA) will be hosting the fifth annual “International Games Day @ your library” (IGD12)—and more than 1,000 libraries worldwide are expected to join in the fun. Last year, the event attracted over 27,700 people, who played games at more than 1,400 libraries across the U.S. and in other countries.

ALA also plans to offer some special IGD activities, including a national video game tournament, which will once again use the Ann Arbor District Library’s GT software. Here’s how it works: participating libraries organize a local tournament in which their players compete against players at other libraries for national bragging rights. And if your library doesn’t have enough games, don’t worry: ALA has teamed up with donors to provide free copies of games for libraries nationwide. This year Ravensburger, PopCap, and GameTable Online will be sponsoring the tournament. If your library would like to get in on the action, receive donated games, and appear on an international map of participating locations, it needs to register online by November 2.

Get Kids Designing with Student-Created Games | The Gaming Life

SLJ — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 05:05:03 +0000

In this Article

The Parsley Game System

Over the last five years, as the gaming and library technology specialist for the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership, an educational services agency that supports the libraries of 22 small, rural districts in western New York state, I’ve helped develop a gaming program that enables teachers, in collaboration with myself and the school librarian, to integrate non-digital game resources into their classroom curriculum.

While this aspect of the program continues to thrive, over the past two years there has been a strong shift from simply using games to having students create them. This change in perspective—viewing games as products—has opened up a rewarding and worthwhile approach to the program that gives students a new avenue to display mastery-level understanding of the curriculum while incorporating 21st-century skills as well as the Common Core Standards.

Although much attention has been given to digital design, non-digital game design is extremely valuable as an educational endeavor. These projects offer students the opportunity for deep, rich exploration of a topic without being limited by the digital toolsets provided by the software or the learning curve inherent in the more dynamic, robust sandbox tools. Instead, non-digital design allows students to focus their efforts on the application of content and skills in the design process and in the finished product.

Game Design Programs

Over the last two years, the game program has developed two distinct design projects. In the first, which is more open and flexible, students are free to explore and construct their own designs, demonstrating their understanding through application of content. While the flexibility of this model easily fits into most curricular areas, the challenge for students is the development of a game space and mechanisms that reflect the curriculum in a thoughtful and meaningful way. This process helps students build and display mastery of the content being covered in the project because of the deeper understanding needed to create playable spaces capable of engaging the audience with the content.

For example, students in a math class can demonstrate mastery through the application of concepts during the design process as they work out the proper distribution of resources or refine the play experience by controlling the probability of events. Economics classes can create games that incorporate or recreate certain economic models and principles. Science concepts can be explored through dexterity games that rely on laws that govern the interaction of the components or through developing games that require a deductive or scientific approach to solving problems. World history classes can design games that immerse players in key historical settings, researching important figures and events and then developing how they influence the game in a way that reflects their effect on history.

The second project follows a more structured model in which students design their own playable, interactive texts. These can be fiction or nonfiction texts that create a playable story space that users need to explore through a simple language set of commands, such as “go west” or “examine the room.” One person facilitates the story, presenting the information and processing the reactions of the players and the story elements. The other players collectively work through the story, building off each other’s choices as they problem solve their way through the story. Examples include designing a nonfiction game based around Lincoln’s assassination in which the players must follow the clues and track down John Wilkes Booth, or developing a sequel interactive fiction game for a book being read in class.

While this design project has stricter expectations on format, using the Parsley gaming model (see sidebar) for the project’s structure, it also allows for a more focused exploration of writing elements in a causal, logic-based environment. Also, students need to have a much more heightened understanding of the audience during the writing process in order to be successful. In fact, they will have two audiences for their completed work: the facilitator who will be running the game and the players. So students need to balance creating an engaging, playable story space against the more procedural presentation of those elements to the facilitator. This is a wonderful example of a project that marries more traditional English language arts skills with the shift in language expectations of the Common Core Standards.

Get Kids Designing

Each project begins by introducing students to games that serve as reference material for the course of the project. In the case of the interactive text designs, students play through one or more Parsley games to help them understand the format of the game and the way the audience interacts with the story. For the board and card design projects, I work with the librarian and classroom teachers to select the best resources that demonstrate different ways the curriculum can be represented in the game space, either through theme or game play mechanisms.

After exploring the games used as examples, students are assigned to groups and begin brainstorming ideas. They work together to come up with the nugget of a game and begin to flesh out some of the elements needed to bring it to life. The teacher, the librarian, and I meet with each group as they present their initial ideas. We listen to their plans and give them suggestions for additional ways to incorporate curriculum or interesting game design elements. The students then return to their groups and develop their games based on their initial ideas and the feedback they received.

The Parsley Game System

The Parsley Game System is an interactive fiction model based on the old computer text adventures like Zork. One person acts as the facilitator and runs the game for the rest of the group. The game is a story that gets played through and the players take turns giving commands to the facilitator, attempting to move the story forward by solving problems or triggering plot devices. The game itself is a map with all of the rooms or places in the story. The text for each area describes what the players see when they enter it and any items or people that may be there, and provides notes for the facilitator that describe what happens when players interact in the environment. A free sample game can be downloaded at http://ow.ly/bCR9J.

As the project progresses, we meet with the groups periodically to offer guidance and suggestions to help them overcome any creative or design obstacles they encounter. The students continue to refine and improve their designs based on our feedback and opportunities to test their games by playing them in class. The project culminates with each group giving a presentation about their game and providing a playable copy, with rules, for the rest of the class to play. The groups play each other’s games and provide peer feedback on the design of each game and how it has incorporated aspects of the curriculum.

Evaluating the Designs

At the end of the project, the grading is a collaborative process between me, the librarian, and the classroom teacher. Points are not awarded for how good a game looks or even if it is fully playable. In fact, at the beginning of this whole process we explain that well-designed games often take a long time to develop and perfect. Instead, our expectations are based on the effort of students to apply and incorporate the classroom curriculum into their designs. We also look at the students’ growth over the course of the project and their ability to problem solve and incorporate feedback. Other evaluative factors include the group’s presentation skills as well as their ability to write a clear and concise rules set .

This program has been incredibly rewarding. Analog game design gives kids an opportunity to create tangible, engaging representations of the curricular concepts and skills they are exploring in the classroom. More importantly, they are engaged in a process that initiates inquiry, problem solving, team building, collaboration, cross-curricular connections, informative and procedural language, and content mastery. So, in this time of educational flux, as teachers look for new opportunities to challenge their students, consider showing them a game.

Brian Mayer is a gaming and library technology specialist for Genesee Valley Educational Partnership, an educational services agency that supports the libraries of 22 rural districts in western New York. He is the author of Libraries Got Game (ALA, 2009) and is busy working on another book. His game on the Underground Railroad will be published by Academy Games in early 2013.