How do you or might you use language to change the way that your students think about learning in the classroom?

Language can definitely change the tenor of a comment or a lesson. I do like the idea of calling a miss a first attempt, though I am not so optimistic of the rest of the acronym (FAIL – first attempt in learning), partly because the acronym makes it obvious you are playing with the word failure, and students are smart. They long ago figured out the Blue Bird reading group was the fast readers, and the Yellow Birds were the slow readers who needed extra help, and the Red Birds the rest, no matter that the theory was then students wouldn't be able to grade or judge other students by . The renaming of the groups didn't change how the students thought about the groups or the students in the group. Without the full acronym for FAIL, I suspect 'first attempt' would be more positive for students, even more so if there was a discussion not of failure being a first attempt, but rather talking about many times for many folks/students multiple tries are needed for mastery, just like when learning to do a new skill in baseball, for instance, most need a lot of practice and tries to be a successful hitter. That I think would give students a positive connection for practice and attempts, rather than trying to re-purpose the word fail.

Week 7 reflections - Gamer Types and Education Gaming

 

As I read the other blogs, what strikes me more is Kiang’s focus on pulling all his students into the education game building on their gamer type’s strengths.  One gets the sense that not only are their strengths used, but that others are shown the strengths of each type and how to work with the that gamer type in a joint project (or game).  That must be a great gift to the students involved, to see positives in all their classmates, including themselves, and to see how they can work together with some one whose strengths are very different from their own.  Also, must be a great lesson in its own right.

This week’s question is about how gamer types might impact educational gamification.  First let me predicate my answer on it being filter through my particular style as a gamer. Bartle’s quiz identified me as equal parts (and pretty strong in both) an ‘explorer’ and ‘socializer’, with ‘achiever’ being a bit more than half of those, and ‘Killer’ almost non-existent.  That last seems to be pretty accurate, after all I went into nursing to help people and descriptions of the ‘killer’ style of gamer seem to be fairly diametrically opposed.  Not as sure about the other groupings, but seems reasonable type-casting.(Bartle, n.d.)  For classroom gaming, it seems to me using the four styles of gamers would be more about matching either the gamification to the current group of students, or to the topic of the class.  With a required game to play for a time limited to the class, there is less worry about balancing the game to keep it going.  But to effectively engage students you might want to match style to the students preferences.  Or conversely, you might want to match the style more to students less intrinsically interested in the topic, assuming students more interested in topic at hand will need less external prompting to engage with the materials.  With the types ranging on the two spectrums from people centered to world centered, and from acting on to acting with centeredness, Matera’s (Entering the Realm of Nobles: Michael Matera, n.d.) focus on competition (achiever and killer styles) might be an offset or way to engage those students that find history and social sciences too much about people and touchy-feely things like social interaction over time, thus engaging those students who aren’t easily engaged by the topic itself.  

 Kiang’s usage of gamer types in the classroom seems to focus less on the game and engaging students in the topic or the game, but rather in classroom dynamics and team building.(Kiang, 2018)  His suggestions remind me a lot of similar ideas around using a Myers-Briggs personality tests in building teams and monitoring and guiding classroom dynamics.  Which leads me to wonder if gamer types have been match to the Myers-Briggs (or similar) personality typing, the typing scales seem to share a lot with the personality scales.  Even more so when seen through lens Kiang uses to monitor his class room and student development, especially looking at how to play to the strengths of each gamer type and how to build their abilities to work together.  This would seem to be a third way to make use of gamer typing in the classroom – using it to build positive dynamics and developing skills in working in teams by purposefully playing to each type’s strengths.

Bartle. (n.d.). Richard A. Bartle: Players Who Suit MUDs. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

Entering the Realm of Nobles: Michael Matera. (n.d.). [Google + Hangouts]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/FFG3Vk-MCf8

Kiang, D. (2018, October 11). EdTechTeacher Use the Four Gamer Types to Help Your Students Collaborate - from Douglas Kiang on Edudemic - EdTechTeacher. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from https://edtechteacher.org/use-the-four-gamer-types-to-help-your-students-collaborate-from-douglas-kiang-on-edudemic/

Image from http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/personality-test/, listed by Google images as free for re-use, accessed October 11, 2018.

This week’s question is whether we agree or disagree with Matera’s proposition in Chapter 3 of Explore Like a Pirate: Engage, Enrich and Elevate your Learners with Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design (2015).  Matera proposes that the ‘digital native’ students of today need a different way to learn and be engaged, that we literally have ‘ move away from the monolithic structures of education’ (paragraph 2, Chapter 3, Kindle version) and ‘require(ing) us to look past the old ways and create more dynamic learning environments and methods of teaching” (next paragraph, same edition).  In our response we are to cite literature and research supporting our pro or con disagreement.  As I was unable to get good internet access for side things like this class search while I was away for work.  I did read the suggested books and do a lot of thinking.  Instead of a deep research of the literature, I would propose several ‘case studies’: pastor’s college class, science ‘wunderkin’,  5^th grade, and Helen Keller .  

 But first my response to Matera, I believe he is right that you need to engage and interest in students in the topic and connect the topic somehow to that engagement or interest.  I disagree with his take that today’s students are so different from those of previous days, or even that the engagement has to be different.  That being said, I see no reason the engagement has to be the same, or even the same for every teacher, kid or topic.  Without all the hyperbole, I do think that gamification can be one more tool for engagement, and possibly even the preferred tool for some topics (maybe especially teaching digital skills like those suggested by Palfrey and Gasser (Born Digital, 2008) as being needed by every ‘digital native’ to live their digitized life with some privacy, sense of identity and safety.)  Of course maybe some of that is because Matera’s take on gamification emphasizes the competitive, and in the process of trying to catch up I am mixing up weeks and lessons, but having taken the quiz about what type of gamer I am I will note that I score so low on the competitive, kill the other guy type that I might qualify as the anti-killer, so maybe I am mostly reacting to Matera’s style of gamification. 

So yielding the side bar and getting back to the main topic, the case studies that support my take on all students responding to teaching and learning better when engaged,  that is not unique to the current ‘digital natives’.  Nor do the tools used previously to engage students fail to engage the current crop of students.  Recently (Sunday, Oct 7, 2018) during the sermon Paster Phil Campell (Northern Light United Church, Juneau) used a story about his undergraduate school to illustrate a point that is not relevant to this argument, but the story does show even college professors have long worked on various ways to engage students in learning.  There was a required class, that many students considered a dry required course.  The professors used various ways to engage and enrich the learning environment of the students, by coming to class dressed and acting as the historic characters being studied and then re-enacting the big moments in philosophical discussions.  A STAT article about the 2018 Wunderkind of Science (https://www.statnews.com/wunderkinds/, accessed October 11, 2018) explains that what captured Alan Williams attention in his 7^th grade science class was a teacher who “helped students memorize the multisyllabic names for biological organisms with songs”.  Further the article notes this was culturally appropriate as it was New Orleans and the music was ‘in their blood’.  Williams notes that got his attention enough that he paid attention to the rest of the class.  In fifth grade, my teacher caught the attention of the ‘fast’ readers group by reading a story to us when we had finished the regular assignment and hadn’t disturbed the rest of the class if we got done early and were bored.  She picked books specifically for our group and would sit with us and read out loud about lands far away and full of adventure.  I still read the genre and even had read all of that author’s books I could find.  (Tolkien, The Hobbit, in case you are wondering)  More importantly for this essay, the ‘fast’ reading group would quietly read extra chapters or  do other extra credit class work, so we could get the teachers time with us reading something extra.  And while I still read that genre, even more I remember the teacher taking time with the ‘fast’ reader group even when most of time had to go groups that were slower and needed more help.  Boy did she get my group’s attention and our commitment to do more in the class.  Helen Keller, who Matera later quotes in Explore Like a Pirate, is another example of how teachers have long worked in different ways to engage students, Anne Sullivan her teacher initially found the way to engage and lead Helen in exploring was through touch, but they soon moved on to books, with both ladies attending Ratcliffe College.  Digital games and gamification are more tools in engagement, but I don’t think they are radical changes from the past history of teaching and learning, rather a new adaptation of some very old methods.  Watching youngsters I know engage (or not) in learning, it seems the tool and method that catches their attention doesn’t have to be new or digital, just fit to the topic and the kid.

So this post is late, as I was on deployment from Alaska to North Carolina to provide more nursing hands in Red Cross Shelters after Hurricane Florence. I was reading the class readings on immersion virtual reality on the plane(s) on the way back. As I was reading found myself wondering a lot of things, but mostly would something like the immersion virtual reality help in training new shelter managers as we had found out Red Cross had had to use some folks who had never assisted in running a shelter as lead managers. Maybe something like immersion virtual reality would help in training, as books don't convey for many very well the chaos and non-ideal spaces that often need to be used to house folks after a disaster. But as I read Yap's article 'Google Cardboard for a K-12 Social Studies Module”, his mention of the View Master slide viewer as a precursor to the current immersive virtual reality devices, I wondered about other things. I grew up with a View Master, it is still the only way I have 'seen' Yellow Stone's Old Faithful going spouting. It set me to wondering, the new version of virtual reality being described allow the viewer to choose the angle and distance for viewing, and block out viewing of things in the 'real' reality. But like the View Master, don't immerse one in the virtual reality, in that sound, smell, touch and taste are still not included in the virtual reality. However they do give more depth to the visual part of the virtual reality. I can definitely see how they could help in the visual examples of exploring a zoo of animals or relational physics. Or visiting the La Lourve or Le Hermitage museums. Though having been to the last, missing out on sound would be missing part of the experience. On the other hand, visiting the caves in South Africa where the oldest hominid skeletons have been found, might be more profound in the new immersive virtual reality, as the program developer might be able to get permission to watch and actual dig or go back into the closed off parts of the cave where current work is being done and filming the skeletons in situ as they are being found, which a regular visitor couldn't do. All of which lead me to believe that for now immersive virtual reality is useful mostly for visual places that students can't get to, and probably not for training shelter managers, as a lot of the that learning would require the other five senses to 'see' the reality that you are trying to impart to the students as part of their learning.

Image – from https://www.flickr.com/photos/afagen/7127074889, accessed Oct 08, 2018, tagged in Google images as 'free to use or share'.

So doing post from cell phone this week, will see how it works.  Suspect shortens posts as thumb typing is not conductive to long posts ( Or apperently grammar and spelling. Apologizing right now for any missed edits on my part).  😉
To me the take home from the three readings, is really gamifcation less about the ovious 'game'  parts, and more about allowing multiple paths to engagement with the goal.  Admittedly, a possibly  biased take, but my take on most games  available (that are supposed to help me learn) is the belief is a fictional world  competition  will engage me by focusing me on  desiring to be top player as dominant, if not only thing, that will get me to pay attention to the content.  Maybe another way to put that is better, most gamified learning courses I  have come across seem to think my biggest goal in life is to get the most, and best way to gete to pay attention to the content is to sete  up in a competition for getting the most points/levels/rewards. Maybe that games that I seen have been poorly build, and are hack jobs.  Be that what it may, what I found intriguing in this week's readings was the suggestion that really good gamification is more about building a structure that allows and guides learners through the content, building skills and linkages while they go, while helping focus on a goal that is similar across learners (to use, understand, practice, learn about the gamified content material) while personalizing the path and specific focus of the learner. For instance, Berkling (Gamification of a Software Engineering Course, ICL 2013) found that students needed both guidance in linking game content to their particular project.  The student also felt the need for more obvious structure or pathway through game content to their goal of being able to complete final project.  This focus for gamifcation( assisting learners to engage in a variety of ways building own path to goal) might be way to address the rather circular focus in some gamifcation on competition and leader boards.  (Logic for competition as main way to engage learners seems to be those engaged in gamified content liked and were engaged by competition so competition is way to engage all, ignoring many didn't get engaged by the gamified content.  So maybe the competition in gamified content engaged those were most driven by completion, not that competition engages most.  Enough of the side bar.). If that focus for gamification holds, then there is a already a wide range of activities and theories in use in education that can be deployed with gamification helping develop a structured set of learner-centered paths for educators to use in guiding learners to engage effectively with the content.

The more I think about the idea of gamification and the apparent focus of the gamifying world. I have to admit to being bothered on two levels. First, I personally have always loved to learn, school in general has always been something I like – witness back in class, despite having enough academic credentials to owe Miss Sallie Mae the equivalent of a house. :) So much of the focus in gamifying seems to be on the mechanics and coolness of competition, and not one the actual learning or learning that learning can in and of itself be interesting and fun. A certain practical side of me says well it does matter that the students learn the materials and even if they don't learn about learning, at least they get the knowledge they need for the class or test, but still if life-long learning is an appropriate goal for education (and I very much think it is), then maybe the focus of gamifiying on the mechanics and competition is off-kilter. More seriously in many ways, I worry about the Nevilles of the gamified class. (Yes, I was reading and thinking while listening to my movie music soundtrack which includes a lot of Harry Potter music, can you tell.) But there are a lot of Nevilles in the world, we all have met them, or maybe are them. Never the smart one, or the point earner, or the cool kid, but a good kid muddling along fairly decently, and always being made fun of for not being good enough or being harangued for not doing the job and getting points, grades, catching the ball. Two of the examples of gamification (Dominquez et al and Matera) explicitly talked about how to make sure every student could see every other students contribution in points to the game as a way to increase engagement and competition, but from the Nevilles of the world perspective, I suspect it those systems are one more way to point out they are not enough and should just leave, especially if those systems allow other students to blame, shame and bully them. I know that is not what the theory is competition mechanisms like those should do, but when they are setup explicitly like both of those were to allow students to track other individual students contribution to the competition seems like they might very well lead there. Interestingly, the Harry Potter story has at least two ways that might combat that – one of which probably not so easy to deal with in electronic gamification, so leaving that aside (for those curious, I am thinking of revealing that low point players points last so they make an obvious and real contribution, not buried in the middle (Sorcerer's Stone, Neville gets the last five points for courage in confronting friends that breaks the tie between Gryffindor and Slytherin). The other one is very easy and actually part of the game mechanics advocated for competition, LeaderBoards, but only by group. Through out individual students get and loose points for their House, but only the full house points are posted for other students to see. Yes, folks will remember to some extent who won and lost points, but the schools teachers are not publicly blaming and shaming students by posting that information for all to pour over repeatedly, increasing its negative effects. Rather the focus is on posting the group steering students back to another positive effect touted for gamification, team building. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iGTlfmjtQU (YouTube link - Neville Longbottom winning House cup points, hope it is legit, I am not sure how to tell that on YouTube.)

Two ends of a spectrum are presented in this week's reading. Matera and Dominquez et al seem to represent the more 'practical' or maybe straight-forward end of the spectrum. Representing gamification largely as a way to increase engagement in education for a particular topic by adding game elements and mechanics to the lesson or class. Probably because of educations link with grading and levels, the most straight forward elements to add are grading, levels and leader boards, increasing the external motivation to learn, at least for those who find competition engaging. Dominquez et al's experiment, while underpowered with only 27 students who actively participated in the gamification activities, 31 who tried them out and didn't proceed, and (if I counted right) well over 100 who didn't participate in gamified activities. They did find intriguing results in students who went 'all in' in gamification activities showed increased skill, but less participation in class and lower results in written assignments. The same group in general found the competition in the game elements used drew them in and engaged them in the activities. Given the size and methods for the experiment it is an intriguing exploratory look at gamification in higher education. Though one wonders if those who gravitated to the gamification activities were already those more focused on competition and less engaged by classes and writing. Overall, though the grades across the groups were the same, so gamification in this case was possibly a useful adjunct for a particular subset of students. Matrea's description of his game appears to draw on this same set of preferred gaming elements, adding physical activity and reenactment type 'adventures'. The focus again is making points and in competing with others, with both gamification projects using Leader Boards, and lists of competitors shared publicly within the game. That last feels very close to the 'name and shame' tactics used in activism sometimes to 'coerce' businesses or people to 'do the right thing', and doesn't feel particularly appropriate in educating and engaging students with learning. I do understand that it often does get behavioral results, but they typically seem to be results that only happen when you are looking and don't really stick. Maybe, that is part of the 'externalization' problem that several writers allude to where, players engaging in gamification activities when there is external motivation and may loose what internal motivation they had to begin with, especially in the context where the external motivation is perceived as forced or coercive. Nicholson is at the other end of the spectrum for gamification focusing on making the gamified activity 'person-centered' increasing engagement through making the game responsive and to some extent generated by the players, focusing much more on the player engaging in setting their own goals and building their own content. This version of gamifiation is more responsive to the players context both in interests and skills, but also is more responsive to the social and organizational context of the gamified project. Dealing more directly with things tenuous internet connectivity or students of different skills and backgrounds, than the competitive end of gamification did. However, the 'person-centered' end of the spectrum seemed like it might focus more on the feelings and concerns of the player possibly leaving the content in a lesser position. That leads me back to the spectrum and the consideration that probably need to balance both ends of the spectrum. In health care, we now have 'person-centered (or patient-centered) medical homes' where the idea is that health care decisions are jointly shared by the provider and the patient/client/person with the provider not taking the lead, but rather following the patient/client/person. Outcomes are mixed with clients reporting feeling better about their health care, but concrete measures of health are about the same, possibly as behavior change is much harder than experiments lead one to believe. With dictating working for some, hand-holding working for some, but neither working for all, nor to they combined work for all. Sounds to me gamification is the same, balancing act, played out across multiple student gamers at once, probably a bit like working with a whole community.

Dominquez, Adrian, Joseba Saenz-de-Navarrete, Luis de-Marcos, Luis Ferrnandez-Sanz, Carmen Pages, and Jose-Javier Martinez-Herraiz. “Gamifying Learning Experiences: Practical Implications and Outcomes.” Computers & Education 63, no. 2013 (2013): 380–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.12.020. Entering the Realm of Nobles: Michael Matera. Google + Hangouts, n.d. https://youtu.be/FFG3Vk-MCf8. Groh, Fabian. “Gamification: State of the Art Definition and Utilization.” RTMI 2012, n.d., 39–46. Nicholson, S. “A User0Centered Theoretical Framework for Meaningful Gamification.” Madison, Wisconsin, 2012.

Reading the class blog posts and thinking about the week's reading, I find my self circling back around to what is the purpose of engaging students in games. Obviously for those selling games for the market the purpose is to sell more games or game-time or game associated stuff. But for education games, I am wondering if maybe differing types of engagement work best or lead to different types of outcomes related to the materials. Maybe some types of engagement work not only best with with certain ages or personalities, but also with different types of material and different types of outcomes. Maybe memorized materials or skills work best with certain types of engagement, say the sensory or audio-visual engagement mentioned by Emir and Mayra, while learning from materials about the why's of history might require a different type or method of engagement. Or in my own field it might take a different type of engagement to teach skills of handwashing while different type of engagement might be needed to learn about types of bacteria and their positive, negative or indifferent impact on humans, and yet a different type of engagement to learn about how tobacco (or soda or...) advertising works to increase your desire to buy the product and how to think about the other consequences of buying the product. For the last one, I am not sure how Flow would work, or if might actually block one getting to the learning of the game, if one 'leaves' the real world for the game, how does one then figure out to use any skills the game may teach in the real world. On the other hand, maybe being in the Flow of the game world may buy the learner enough space to learn without real world obstacles. But the gamer would still have to deal with the real world obstacles outside the game to have learned skills and ideas that could be of use out in the real world. So back to the beginning of this post, I find myself circling around, and around, a bit like a dog trying to settle down. We will see where I settle.

What Common Characteristics do engaging games have? The simple answer seems to be, an engaging game takes you away into another place where your skills are tested, but you can sense you can master the skill or situation. Chen speaks of 'flow' or the 'zone' where focus is so much on the game situation that the gamer looses track of the non-game world, and is so engaged by feedback and immediacy of obtainable goals that awareness is narrowed to that goal and the environment of the goal. Chen goes on to note that Flow can happen in many things other than games, for instance sports or music. Flow in this context seems to be synonymous with immersion, which Emri and Mayra develop noting multiple types of immersion that interact to yield the gameplay experience. More intriguingly, they also note that many factors of the game and the player also interact and it is the whole set of interactions that makes the gameplay experience, not just the three types of immersion they found in their gamers. They parse immersion in three realms – senses, imagination and challenge, noting that while the sensory immersion is most visible to others outside of the gamer such as parents, it may be the least engaging, while the challenge may be most engaging. All useful information when building or vetting games for education, more intriguing to me though is how the traits or skills built in gaming largely based on those immersion characteristics might be used to solve world size problems and build skills outside of the game that are applicable to things like social entrepreneurship which is part of McGonigal's point. Her research finds that gamers share a set of characteristics that could be useful in solving real world problems. Gamers have an urgent optimism, actively build social fabric, have a sense of blissful productivity and have epic meaning. Looking at the trait building within the contextual model that Emri and Mayra find that puts gameplay immersion in the context of the game and the gamer, would seem to lead to considering whether part of immersion and engagement in gaming is also affected by the social structures and societal issues that surround the gameplay, thus linking back to how can the traits developed in engagement in gaming be used to inform and develop social structures in the real world.

Chen, J. (2007). Flow in Games (and Everything Else). Communications of the ACM, 50(4), 31–34. Ermi, L., & Mayra, F. (2005). Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experrience: Analysing Immersion. In Proceesing of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views - Worlds in Play. McGonigal, J. (n.d.). Gaming can make a better world. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world Diagram from http://www.texample.net/tikz/(examples/venn-diagram-blended/ accessed September 06, 2018. (Tagged free to share, use and change, noncommercial)

Many things are accredited to gamification or using games in education. For instance learning interpersonal skills and patience, or evening out the competitiveness in a group (I have to admit my inner Spock wonders at the logic of evening out competitiveness among a group of students by using a competitive game, which sounds a bit like requiring the one game to increase the competitiveness of some students and decrease the competitiveness of other students, which my inner Spock declares is illogical, at least on its face value.) I suspect as gamification of education is studied we will find like many things, you need the right tool (method or type of game), the right materials (lessons to be learned and student learning style) and the right technique (style of gamification) to get to the outcome desired.

Like when I make lace, I need the right tool, material and desired outcome. Each lace uses a different tool (lace hook, knitting needles, tatting shuttle) with a different material (fine lace thread, crochet cotton, or a mixed bamboo/merino wool/cashmere yarn) to make a different item (lace jabbot, baclava, lace insert). Many the time I have wound up with unusable messes when I have mixed and matched the wrong material, tool and desired outcome. But also many the time have I come out with something new, useful and very cool by mixing and matching in new ways.

This weeks blog post is to be about 'why games in education'. I have to admit given I am not a school teacher, this question is easier for me, if I twist it around a bit, and answer why am I, a public health, nurse interested in finding about gamification in education. As this class is about gamification and K-12 education, I will focus on that part of why a public health nurse wants to use games in education. I will note however, that games and ideas used in gaming could also be applied by public health nurses in other types of education we engage in, for instance working with communities, or other professionals, nursing students, or even other public health nurses. For gaming in K-12 education my interest as a public health nurse lies in public health nurses often being invited to teach about health in either schools or youth settings. As the topics are not chosen by the students, bringing a game or other activity to the teaching can help draw the kids in even to boring things like eating what's good for your health or exercising more, or hand hygiene, or any other of a number of topics that public health nurses get invited to deal with. On the other end of the spectrum public health nurses also get invited to deal with topics that others would prefer to leave outside the classroom learning experience – like puberty, or healthy relationships or substance misuse or... For either group of topics, games may provide a way to gain entry to the students and to gain attention for the boring or de-stigmatize and de-personalize the more risque topics to allow students to learn about health and how to be healthier. Also for both types of topics, games may be able to engage students and get them out of their chairs so-to-speak and involved in learning the how-to skills for health. Games may also allow them to practice the boring and the 'too' personal skills of health in a safe setting where boredom and scary situations are left outside the door, so those useful health skills can be learned and taken back outside the classroom to real life.