Abstract

A growing body of literature attests to the fact that today's learners are changing. Television, video games and computers have created learners who “want to have fun.” This emphasis on "having fun" tends to make traditional or online workshops seem boring.

While this technology has created the problem, it also offers a potential solution. Our experience shows that game-based learning, ranging from puzzles and trivia games to role-playing and simulation, can enhance training for the new generation of faculty, staff and students along with the traditional learner. In addition, many course management system tools lend themselves to digital games-based learning.

In the book, Digital Games-based Learning, Parensky identifies six key elements of games. These six elements can be mapped to the six elements of learning. Our work shows that these related elements can be applied to training through the use of a variety of games. Possible games for use in a workshop range from email games to puzzles and trivia games.  Entire online workshops can be designed as a complex game by creating an appropriate role-playing, problem-based scenario with smaller individual and team-based games and puzzles throughout the larger game.

In our workshops, participants play in a scenario based on a situation applicable to a topic area. Recently, our focus is a "team contest" to save endangered animals from extinction. Along with the contest submission as a CMS (WebCT) student presentation, a mix of smaller games and puzzles are positioned throughout the workshop course to engage in short-term goals while working towards the long-term goal of the contest. This large “mixed” game encourages participants to explore the various CMS tools while having fun.

Introduction

For the past three years, we have been using a mix of focussed, individual digital games and extensive, team-based role-playing scenarios to increase the effectiveness of course management system (CMS) training.  From our experience, using games in this environment helps workshop participants become more comfortable with using individual tools and also enhances their ability to learn about the potential capabilities and effective uses of particular tools. Workshop evaluations have shown that using digital games in technology training sessions can definitely increase the "fun" quotient.  More importantly, this practice also enhances the learning that takes place within the workshop.

Training for Course Management Systems

Effective training of a course management system such as WebCT has two components.  The first is learning about the mechanics of the tool itself: what it does, how it works and, for designers and developers, how to add it to a course and configure it for students to use.  This mechanical element, which could be referred to as the "button clicking" or "how to" element, requires workshop participants to remember and repeat a number of steps in a specific pattern.  Achieving the learning objective is usually accomplished through rote learning and drill, which effective trainers attempt to enliven through creative use of "assignments".  Despite these laudable attempts to make this process engaging, post-workshop evaluations prove that this process remains largely tedious and boring for both "digital immigrants" and "digital natives". (Prensky, 2003).

The second element of successful training in a CMS is to have workshop participants explore the tool's potential use in a course and experience how the tool or multiple, related tools can be used to enhance active student learning in their particular discipline or course.  This component, which could be referred to as the "what/why" element, is in line with Piaget-based theory that conceives of learning as an active process based on exploration, experimentation and reflection.  We have found digital games effective for both these components.

Games and Learning

While games and learning may seem poles apart in both their structure and objectives, we propose that there is a marked correlation.  In his groundbreaking book Digital Games Based Learning, Mark Prensky identifies six key structural elements of games.  According to his analysis, all games contain:

·         Rules

·         Goals and objectives

·         Outcomes and Feedback

·         Conflict, competition, challenge and opposition

·         Interaction

·         Representation

The naming of these elements may be different in the educational/training sphere.  For example, we tend not to refer to "rules" in a university course or technology workshop.  However, the idea that adhering to certain rules will assist learners to achieve useful results is definitely present.  Although we don’t establish a direct relationship for each element, our mapping of the essential elements of games and learning shows this correlation:

We have found that there are at least two different types of games that incorporate these essential elements.  First are the focussed games that are played by individual workshop participants. These operate at the lower level of Bloom's Taxonomy and can be used to review and reinforce basic information about particular tools or elements within a CMS. These types of games can be played repeatedly until the desired results -- and learning -- takes place.  To encourage this repetition and introduce an element of competition, we award "gold coins" as points for successful completion of these games.

The second type of game that incorporates these elements are more extensive team-based, role-playing scenarios that involve the complex use of multiple tools that workshop participants have been learning.  These scenarios encourage participants to work at the upper levels of Bloom's Taxonomy since successful "playing" requires them to synthesize and evaluate information gleaned from the earlier instructions and games.  Here again, to keep the fun quotient high, we also award "gold coins" as points for teams that reach specific mid-term goals and report their progress to us as the "gamesmasters".

Criteria for online games

As a search of the Internet for "educational games" will attest, there is no shortage of games that could be used to cover the first component of training.  You can choose from email, card, tic-tac-toe and hangman games as well as crossword and jigsaw puzzles and web quests.  There are also numerous games based on popular TV quiz games such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?™, Jeopardy!™, Hollywood Squares™ and even one of The Weakest Link™.  To keep development costs low and encourage workshop attendees to use games in their own courses, we developed a set of selection criteria, which may be useful to others considering this approach. For us to use a game, it must:

·         Be free or very inexpensive

·         Run within the CMS (WebCT Single Page or Content Module)

·         Be easily modifiable to incorporate customized questions or information

·         Encourage the appropriate type of learning

Within those parameters, we found a number of games that worked effectively to reinforce the learning of basic information.  For example, a "concentration-type" or matching game can have workshop participants match characteristics of the various CMS tools to the appropriate tool. Another example of a first-level game is a crossword puzzle that focuses on potential uses of the tool rather than just its characteristics.  In the crossword, the clue identifies a task an instructor might want to accomplish and the answer identifies the appropriate tool. A search on the Web will bring up a number of other HTML, Macromedia Flash and Java games that fit our criteria for online games.

In addition to individual programmed games, there are many “games” or game playing activities that do not require any programming or development since they take advantage of the standard features of the course management system. Email games and Play by Mail/Play by E-Mail (PBM/PBEM) are two examples that can be used for games-based learning using email – a standard tool within CMS. Standard communication and collaboration tools such as email, discussions and chat, can also be used to facilitate an extensive, team-based, problem-solving scenario that follows role-playing concepts.  In this way, no programming is necessary to set up a games-based contest that can be used to encourage workshop participants to play at a higher level.

Our Set-up

For our workshop courses we set up several individual focussed games that could be played any number of times, and, when successfully completed, presented the player with a "key" which could be entered into a one-question quiz that selectively released further information or games.  Jigsaw puzzles, tic-tac-toe, hangman and crossword puzzles are some of the individual games we incorporate in the course.

In conjunction with these short focussed games, we also use an extensive, team-based, problem-solving scenario to encourage workshop participants to communicate, collaborate and creatively explore and experience various CMS functions.  For this extended game, we set up a contest and divide workshop participants into competing teams.  We establish a "crisis scenario" that invites intervention and provides the teams with the tools and strategies necessary to intervene and mitigate the impact of the crisis.  This scenario also requires participants to design activities – an approach that research has shown results in the “best learning activities” (Papert 1993, cited in Resnick “Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age”)

In this scenario, participants identify their fellow team members, meet, assign roles and plan research and reporting strategy, establish timelines and communications protocol - all online using standard CMS tools.  We reinforce the competitive element by amalgamating points won by individual team-members into the team's totals and posting the team standings periodically.  Teams can win additional points by reporting on pre-established organizational milestones.   This allows teams to "rack up points" by working towards a longer-term goal.  After compiling its resources, the team creates and posts a website that proposes a solution to the crisis using a CMS (WebCT) student presentation tool.  Finally, each team member, according to a group-defined rubric, evaluates all team websites and the winning team is declared to virtual “loud cheering and clinking of glasses”.  Once the contest is completed, participants are asked to create their own scenario – one that would work for their subject matter and student level.

As we've worked with this element, the scenario has changed.  Initially, it started with a "Mission Impossible" scenario which was used in a workshop at the 2001 WebCT Conference.  Now, post 9/11, it has morphed into a "Stop Extinction" theme we have used recently in several workshops.  From our experience almost any issue-oriented subject would work equally well.  Time frames, as well, can be flexible with offerings of three hours to two weeks proving successful.

Our Experiences

The enthusiasm and excitement the individual games and the scenario game generate is obvious in the workshop evaluations.  Comments range from "awesome" to "kick-ass fun" with one participant acknowledging that the "course has become addictive, it's the first thing I check every morning".  Reaction to the individual games that focused on the CMS tools was uniformly positive. Comments ranged from "stimulating" and "exciting fun" to "I learned more about these tools today than I thought possible since I've been using WebCT for two years".

Participant reaction to the scenario game proves to us that this is even more successful. Perhaps the most important evidence of the scenario game's educational legitimacy is the fact that many ‘alumni’ revisit the course long after the contest is completed.  In addition, on several occasions participants who train others, have referred faculty to the contest site to show them what can be accomplished by group work using various CMS tools.

While these and other comments are a clear testament to the high fun quotient, a number of indicators also affirm that using a problem-based scenario encourages effective learning about the capabilities and potential of several CMS tools. During the course, we found that a number of contest websites incorporated games explaining that they were included to “allow website visitors to learn while playing.”  Many workshop participants also reported that they had integrated games into their own practice, whether they were teaching or training.

Areas for Further Development

As we continue working with games, we have begun to identify types of games and CMS features that, if developed, could increase the use of games to enhance student learning in online courses.  First, we’d like to encourage the development of more digital board games.  These could be adapted so that students had to answer a question correctly to be allowed to roll the dice and move around the board.  Many “digital immigrants”, that is older students, are more comfortable with the pace provided by board games compared to the first person shooter “twitch” games enjoyed by the “digital natives”, our younger students.  This format would also allow for the development of multi-player board games.

The use of games could also be enhanced by creating more multi-player games that work with a Java server or the Macromedia Flash Communication Server technologies. This would allow students to play against each other and thus increase the competition element of the game.  Both of these technologies work within most course management systems and offer the ability to present multi-player games that cannot be accomplished through standard CMS tools.

Our final suggestion for future games development involves the use of different question types.  At the moment, the majority of questions used in games are multiple choice.  The creation of games that used short answer or ‘fill in the blank’ type questions would enhance student learning since research has shown that students learn more from completing questions that involve recall rather than recognition of the correct answer.  

Finally, although, as reported above,  most course management systems have numerous features that support the use of games, we would argue that the use of games would be enhanced with the creation of interfaces that allowed instructors to automatically transfer scores or results of a Java or Flash-based game into the CMS grade book or similar recording mechanism. While there are various ‘work-arounds’ such as having a quiz to capture results after each game or developing scripts or applications at the system level, these are either cumbersome – in the case of the subsequent quiz – or potentially-problematic – as in the case of developing scripts that require the assistance of systems people and programming resources.  Once results of a Java or Flash-based game can be automatically entered into the gradebook as soon as a student completes it, using games will become child’s play. 

Conclusion

Although much work remains to be done, our experience with using games has convinced us, beyond any doubt, that using games can both enliven technology training and make it more effective.  We have also found that the games do not have to be fancy multimedia applications requiring extensive programming or financial resources. By the feedback we have received, learning can be achieved using small configurable web-based games or the communication and collaboration tools contained in a course management system.

References:

Prensky, M. (2001).  Digital Game-Based Learning.  New York: McGraw-Hill.

Prensky, M. (2001). "Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives" in On the Horizon, NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001

Resnick, M. (2002). “Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age” in The Global Information Technology Report: Readiness for the Networked World, edited by G. Kirkman. Oxford University Press.