Using NWN for basic learning skills
Blog reader Dragon sends in this note:
Raph, Haven’t seen anything about this on your blog yet – if you’ve already written about it then I missed it. Thought you might be interested in this article on the BBC tech news about a company adapting Neverwinter Nights to use it to encourage learning in schools. The company website is http://www.alteredlearning.com/ (and no, I’m not connected in any way shape or form) Cheers!
It is indeed interesting. The achievement scores have literally tripled. Most interesting, however, is that the mod replaced typical RPG challenges with, well, typical RPG challenges:
“For example, before they set off in their galleon they have to fill it with the things they are going to need. This requires them to work out the area of the ship and how much they can manage to bring.
“Some students managed it, others sank on the way and never progressed to the next level.
“They would come knocking on the staff room door and wouldn’t let us go until we had taught them how to calculate area.”
It’s interesting to see that for all the many efforts in using virtual worlds for learning, few of them approach matters from this very gamey perspective. Instead, we tend to see virtual classrooms and lectures. There’s also what you might call the interactive museum approach, which is educational in a somewhat more passive way — not about exercising skills, but instead providing immersion into a setting or mindset, like the schizophrenia example in Second Life.
I think these have value, but there’s little doubt, in the wake of titles like Brain Age, that game structures can really incentivize learning. And the most thorough learning comes, as we know, from practice. Games work best at teaching when the challenges are organic to the experience, rather than out of left field. This is why so many educational games suck — just strapping an incentive structure on rote practice doesn’t work very well, compared to instead building a long-term goal structure, and then presenting challenges on the way. The “fill the hold” example works because the students have a goal that isn’t learning.
I think this is the fundamental error many educators make — they think that everyone finds learning for learning’s sake to be engaging. The article notes that the kids had chosen to blow off basic literacy and numeracy skills because they didn’t see them as directly applicable to their main goal — kind of like I have rarely needed to use the quadratic equation in my daily life. This is exemplified by the classic word problem they give you in math class: who gives a damn when exactly two cars driving opposite directions will cross paths on the highway? Why would one care?
The path for educational games is to start with something that users care about, and just take care to select a goal that naturally offers up the sorts of challenges that we want to teach.
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Op een of andere manier heb ik de afgelopen dagen veel discussies gehad over het inzetten van games (en games technieken) in leeromgevingen. Serious gaming. Via Raph Koster stuitte ik op een interessant BBC artikel met daarin een voorbeeld waar velen nog iets van kunnen leren;-) “For example, before they set off in their galleon they have to fill it with the things they are going to need. This requires them
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part, giving us snippets of text and reviews gleaned from allmusic.com and other sites, but still suffers from the occasional untimely outage (like as we were writing this). [IMG] So would we change our recommendation of the iPod over the Zune? No. All the reasons we had to pick one or the other still stands. If you want movies, TV, a larger music library, a touch sensitive scroll wheel and more accessories, you should still go with the iPod. If you want an FM tuner, music rentals, and a larger screen, there’s the Zune.
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In any event, in the future, I’ll try to post links to Raph’s writing only when I have a full reaction to log (and not just a “wow, cool”). This should keep me from posting a link to everything. On using NWN for learning On consumer content (as opposed to user created content) On Viva Piniata On rich community tools for MMOs
Some students managed it, others sank on the way and never progressed to the next level. They would come knocking on the staff room door and wouldn’t let us go until we had taught them how to calculate area. Some analysis by Raph Koster: “Games work best at teaching when the challenges are organic to the experience, rather than out of left field. This is why so many educational games suck — just strapping an incentive structure on rote practice doesn’t work very well, compared
Raph’s Website » Using NWN for basic learning skills
The bastards stole my idea! 😛
Seriously though, this is almost exactly the sort of project I had in mind when I went back to grad school for Instructional Design & Technology. Now that I’m a semester into my studies I’m more convinced than ever that well-designed games can be a great boon to education, or at least to learning. And I agree with you about the game working because learning isn’t the player’s goal; they learn because it helps them achieve their goal. The real challenge here is twofold I think: we need to study what good games teach their players and figure out how they teach that information. Then we can go about crafting games that effectively teach what we want the players to learn. Right now the “educational games” field is loaded with crap that is essentially a set of flashcards with fancy graphics. We can do better, and it’s promising to see some people making progress.
[…] Bloggers January 17, 2007 20:21 Using NWN for basic learning skills Blog reader Dragon sends in this note: Raph, Haven’t seen anything about this on your blog yet – if you’ve already written about it then I missed it. Thought you might be interested in this article on the BBC tech news about a company adapting Neverwinter Nights to use it to encourage learning in schools. The […] Source: Raph's Koster Website Categories: Bloggers 19:53 Burning Crusade Update The French’s luck with the Burning Crusade has proven better than their luck with the actual Crusades. OK, lame setup, but it still merits mention that a French player has already hit level 70 in WoW, a scant 28 hours after the expansion launched. This is after many players posited it would take […] Source: Zen of Design – Ubiq Categories: Bloggers 19:40 Pro Roleplaying It went past on The Forge’s blog early this month with little commentary outside the post, but it made my eyebrows go up. 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[…] Raph’s Website » Using NWN for basic learning skills I think this is the fundamental error many educators make — they think that everyone finds learning for learning’s sake to be engaging. The article notes that the kids had chosen to blow off basic literacy and numeracy skills because they didn’t see them as directly applicable to their main goal — kind of like I have rarely needed to use the quadratic equation in my daily life. This is exemplified by the classic word problem they give you in math class: who gives a damn when exactly two cars driving opposite directions will cross paths on the highway? Why would one care? […]
Structured RPG are important format for learning in the way Raph describe it: natural learning and problem solving towards a long-term objective.
Parents and educators use “play & pretend” all the time to teach, but usually they are not structured or serial. CRPGs and MMORPGs do a good job of giving players tougher challenges sequentially. For example, I recall an article stating that a group of student playing a space shuttle simulation program discovered a novel way of emergency landing that NASA found to be useful.
What I would like to see (directing this to Vargen) is more educator’s reference to existing game. For example, an educator’s reference on using existing ATITD quests as a teaching aid. Or an reference on using flight simulators (two planes coming head-on on a collision course toward each other is a real issue).
Like Raph said: “Most interesting, however, is that the mod replaced typical RPG challenges with, well, typical RPG challenges”.
Frank
I agree with your conclusion: students learn from games when they are trying to achieve a goal that isn’t learning.
Even menus and other on-screen text helped my own son learn to read. He certainly wasn’t playing Mario Sunshine or Zelda in order to hone his phonics. . . . but if he feared he was missing a hint that could help him win, he would struggle to read it.
(Liberal arts majors in video games should form a guild.)
[…] Op een of andere manier heb ik de afgelopen dagen veel discussies gehad over het inzetten van games (en games technieken) in leeromgevingen. Serious gaming. Via Raph Koster stuitte ik op een interessant BBC artikel waarin een voorbeeld beschreven is waar velen nog iets van kunnen leren;-) […]
[…] Raph Koster puts it like this: Games work best at teaching when the challenges are organic to the experience, rather than out of left field. This is why so many educational games suck — just strapping an incentive structure on rote practice doesn’t work very well, compared to instead building a long-term goal structure, and then presenting challenges on the way. The “fill the hold” example works because the students have a goal that isn’t learning. I think this is the fundamental error many educators make — they think that everyone finds learning for learning’s sake to be engaging. […] The path for educational games is to start with something that users care about, and just take care to select a goal that naturally offers up the sorts of challenges that we want to teach. […]
[…] to … building a long-term goal structure, and then presenting challenges on the way,” Koster writes on his personal blog. The perfect embodiment of this idea is Sid Meier’s Civilization series. In […]
[…] many ways, the article restates what I said about games that try to teach a long time ago. (Actually, it even quotes from that). In short, that games that make education the […]
[…] survey of the ongoing discussion right now, especially since it pointed to Koster’s key point from some time ago that adding an artificial incentive to perform an educational activity isn’t very effective […]
[…] building a long-term goal structure, and then presenting challenges on the way,” Koster on his personal blog.” Read the full article for […]
[…] to … building a long-term goal structure, and then presenting challenges on the way," Koster writes on his personal blog. The perfect embodiment of this idea is Sid Meier’s Civilization series. In […]
[…] survey of the ongoing discussion right now, especially since it pointed to Koster’s key point from some time ago that adding an artificial incentive to perform an educational activity isn’t very effective […]
[…] BBC article, Raph’s blog post […]
[…] Raph’s Website » Using NWN for basic learning skills Koster on how to design serious games: “… start with something that users care about, and just take care to select a goal that naturally offers up the sorts of challenges that we want to teach.” (tags: seriousgames learning teaching education gamedesign play games gaming) […]
[…] the author has not done any research; Using NWN for basic learning skills or try the company’s website. A LEVER TO MOVE THE MIND On the Southern coast of Sedig, a […]
[…] the author has not done any research; Using NWN for basic learning skills or try the company’s website. A LEVER TO MOVE THE MIND On the Southern coast of Sedig, a […]