AERA Tuesday: Games and Learning: Theory, New Technology, and Assessment

Division C-Learning and Instruction; Section 5 - Learning Environments. Scheduled Time: Tue, Apr 12 - 2:15pm - 3:45pm Building/Room: Le Centre Sheraton Montreal / Jarry

- Robert Wisher, Wisher@ari.army.mil,
Army Research Institute, Chair

Abstract: The shift toward situating learning and assessment
in real-life situations has prompted the investigation of the potential of
games in education. By bringing together scholars and game developers from
backgrounds as distinct as education, design, and communication, this symposium
will promote an interdisciplinary discussion on how games and simulations might
be used to improve learning and assessment. In this symposium, presenters address
games in the context of three interrelated issues: the role of games within
the educational movement to provide more relevant experiences for students,
the ways games can be used to promote learning and to assess knowledge, and
finally, the implications of understanding the social aspects of games on game
design.

"Fostering Motivation, Learning, and Transfer in Multi-User Virtual
Environments" by Chris J. Dede, Jody E. Clarke, Diane Jass Ketelhut, Brian
C. Nelson, Catherine D. Bowman

• immersive situated learning: constellations of architectural, social, organizational,,
  and material vectors that aid in the


• What is a MUVE? (multi user virtual environment?) "MUVEES (Expirimental
  Simulations)


• "River City" video


• (can we just download this? Show us something different!)


• interested in reaching girls, but the avatar was a male...


• virtual micrroscope, and animations.


• Implementations: 2002 2004, use of Design-based research


• MUVEs generate lots of evidence


• capturing student curiosity, autonomy( choosing); active exploratin in
  3-d space, collaboraation with teammates; communicationg with RC residents;
  using tools and thinking as a scientist; more challenging than lectures,
  textbooks, canned labs, project-based.


• students care about the residents of RC


• remedial students, but not remedial learning -- challenging


• ability to learn vs. motivation to learn


• boys want to kill someone; girls want to find romance with someone.


• http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/muvees2003


• project-based learning (situated learning good for seeing stuff in it)


• data on transfer

"Gaming the Game: The Rules of Social Play" by Katie Salen,

• didn't make it; find her paper!

"Hybrid Reality Gaming: Using Mobile and Ubiquitous Interfaces to Measure
Learning" by Adriana Araujo de Souza e Silva, Girlie C. Delacruz, (and
Danielle Kaplan)

• cell phones as game interface,


• immersive in medieval Amsterdam


• gameboard = hybrid space running around the city with cell phones


• social learning through collaboration; interactive problem solving; concretize
  knowledge through experience; physical space


• social spaces, created by the constant mobility of users who carry portable
  devices connected to the internet


• mixed reality: Augmented Reality (AR) vs. Augmented Virtuality (AV)


• merge borders between physical and digital spaces


• good term "Hybrid Reality Games" (HRG)


• MMMORPG without the screen


• affordable, ubiquitous, used "in-between" as game devices


• technology, society, space (Venn diagram where overlap = games)


• fourth element added with "education"


• early computer games in education sucked. same content delivered.


• didactic instruction vs. Meaningful learning experiences


• distribution of information: physical digital, and mental (previous knowledge)


• augmented reality vs. hybrid reality


• Game "Uncle Roy all around you" (where is Uncle Roy?)


• AR = collaboration is not essential


• HRG- collaboration is essential


• "Frequency 1550" location-based media HR game


• http://freq1550


• individual must not be able to solve the problem by him/herself


• how to include assessment in HRG to inform teachers about learning processes


• I'm not sure what their role in this is...

"Game, Play, and Culture: When Video Games Enter the Classroom" by
Kurt D. Squire

• social studies is boring: kids say it; research says it


• man! he talks FAST!!


• he needs a clicker (remote).


• Civilization 3 as world history sandbox


• "Where are the women in the game?"


• engaged by 4th day


• make people happy in order to make an army (systems level thinking)


• failure was motivator for getting back in the game, to play again.


• learning to play was primary pleasure


• Civ is about money; SIMs is about money. What's not about money (acquiring?)


• http://glsconference.org

Megan Boler, mboler@oise.utoronto.ca,
OISE/University of Toronto, Discussant

- Eva L. Baker, baker@cse.ucla.edu,
University of California–Los Angeles, Discussant

• overview questions: systematic public spaces for kids to discuss


• what are the social significance of this? (play as learning, ability to
  break rule, situated and tacit learning)


• how can education be a player in game production?


• what do we learn about learning from games?


• HRG weds geography and gaming: what are the social implications of this?


• what's working and what's not working in games in ed? (failures are as
  compelling as successes)

Jim Gee, UW-Madison, discussant

• can't learn without feeling like whatever role you're taking on


• avatar represents affordances in the world (avatar is identity)


• language and representation is key in science


• games are good as placing representations at an intersection of perception,
  dialog and action


• mobile games put representations in that chain of dialog


• Wittgenstein: ultimate form of assessment: in the domain, do you know how
  to go on? To move in X-environment.


• Games are about getting to the next level.


• transfer should not be mapped to the domain of paper and pencil test, but
  to the actual domain of learning