H809: End of block 2

Well, everyone seems to have been busy with their second assignment so there's not been a massive amount of activity online for H809 the last couple of weeks. I did finally get around to reading the last few papers but have been pretty busy myself as I've been preparing for my upcoming probation report. And I'm probably going to be quite busy with this for a while, as it's essentially a test of whether I sound like I have a good enough grasp on what I want to do, why it's worth doing and how I'm going to do it, so I can prove I'm ready for my second year of PhD study. If it sounds straight forward, it's not as these are surprisingly difficult questions to answer but I'm sure that the whole process means I'm at least going to come up with a plan! But yes, I'm probably going to be a bit quiet over the next couple of weeks (at least until my report is due in on May 18th) though I will be keeping an eye on what's happening on the blogs at least.

Back to H809 though. In terms of the readings, Juliette has posted summaries and her own reflections for Weeks 8 and 9.Week 8 involved reading the Tolmie (2001) and Crook & Dymott (2005) papers to introduce students to different socio-cultural perspectives, while Week 9 looked at Activity theory (cultural-historical activity theory to be precise) and how it might be useful in practice via the Jonassen & Rohrer-Murphy (1999) paper. As part of the activities for week 8, students were asked to consider tools for social bookmarking. Some of the suggestions include:

Diigo (used to be Furl) which allows you to highlight web pages and use post-its
Delicious as it helps store relevant site links, including YouTube clips, and it allows you to tag and see other tags of urls into bundles. At the time of writing, there seems to be 90 delicious tags for H809...
Citeulike which comes across as more academic, though apparently didn't seem particulalry intuitive
Zotz for the Zotero plugin on Firefox, though the problem here is not knowing enough people who use it

With respect to the readings for Week 8, the issues that came up where the fact that maybe learning theories don't need to be mutually exclusive, that the word "context" doesn't always mean the same thing (does gender really count as context? c.f. Tolmie paper) and how the theory adopted by the researchers informs how the goals of the research are assessed. A link was posted to a paper available on ACM by Rousou and colleagues (1999) - you will need to be logged in to access it though - to illustrate how theoretically driven approaches have been used to analyse learning.

For Week 9, one of the key things identified concerning Activity Theory (AT) was how it emphasises that all meaningful activity is related to the environment in which it occurs. This entails the study of activity in authentic situations, rather than within a lab for example. However, this means there will probably be factors that will not be taken into account during the research process, as it is impossible to control for everything, so researchers need to be aware of this when interpreting the findings. Juliette also pointed out that while the approach outlined by Jonassen & Rohrer-Murphy to using AT to guide the design of learning environments might be quite useful, there might be problems applying to certain cases e.g. pure mathematics. Oh, and I really liked the findings the sentence that described AT as a "primarily descriptive tool rather than a prescriptive theory" (p. 68) because I think I said something along these lines in response to Juliette's posts and now I can back it up with a quote!

In terms of my own research, I can't say I found the last couple of weeks activities have been particularly inspiring. The main point I've taken from the readings and thinking about socio-cultural theories is the importance of context, and how you define it. The more I think about it, the stranger it seems to try and look at learning in isolation - so with respect to my own work, if I can't get access to "natural" settings where game play occurs, I would try and replicate those sort of conditions within a lab as much as possible. Plus, if I'm going to look at more than one player, it would be better to get them to play with (or against) friends or family members i.e. the people they would normally play with. Otherwise, I'm probably not going to be able to observe the sort of informal learning and engagement they would normally experience. I think the activity theory triangles help to visualise how the relationship between the subject and object is mediated by the tool(s) - and how one can affect the other and vice-versa. It's also useful for considering what constitutes context in terms of division of labour, community and rules. So, it might be helpful for thinking about what aspects to pay attention too. I'm not sure at this point if I'm going to be using AT for my own analysis but it's definitely helped me to consider the broader picture.

Tangential Learning

You can also find the article the video blog is based on here.

"Tangential learning is not what you learn by being taught rather it's what you learn by being exposed to things in a context with which you're already engaged in". This seems to fit in with something I've been thinking about for a while, namely that games seem to engage people who like games, and if that's the case then we do need more ways to get people 'tangentially' involved in other things. I guess what I'd like to know is, what is it that motivates that 0.1% of Final Fantasy fans to look up what a sephiroth is? Are they just more motivated than the rest of the players? Why? And doesn't this seem a little, well, shallow, in terms of learning? I mean I've played a lot of Civilization in my time but unless I really get stuck, I tend to ignore the Civilopedia and when I have looked at it, I usually just feel like I'm just skimming the articles as quickly as possible so I can get back to playing. Much in the same way I skim wikipedia articles I look up after being curious about references in films or even songs. Yes, I'm motivated by curiosity to look things up but I'm just not sure how much of it sticks....

So there are two things I want to take from this. The first is to do with the fact there seems little distinction between 'surface' and 'deep' learning when it comes to learning from games (to borrow terms from research on approaches to study). And the second is that there appears to be two sides to motivation: getting people interested in the first place and then keeping them interested. Again, I'm not sure that's something much of the literature of gaming has taken into account, and it's looking increasingly likely that I'm going to make a point of this in my own work.

H809: Week 7 roundup

Ok, I think I've always been about a week behind with the posts but it also looks like people on the course are trying to play catch up too, and I've been pretty busy with PhD work, so I am probably a bit more behind than usual. And yeah, I haven't caught up on the reading for weeks 8 and 9 either...

But anyway. Week 7 has been interesting, but before I go on to that I wanted to post a couple of interesting links that have popped up on the forums since last week. The first is to a blog post called "How Online Communities and Flawed Reasoning Sound a Death Knell for Qualitative Methods". The second is related to last weeks discussions on audiences, and is a link to a New Scientist article on how the media can distort research findings. There was a little more talk about audiences and ethics as well, with it being pointed out that often a researchers write for themselves in order to clarify and work through ideas (i.e. you are your own audience) and that the notion of "informed consent" can be a tricky one when dealing with minors and those whose first language isn't English.

As for week 7 though, the main theme (and for the rest of this block) is learning theories. The discussions in the forums and on the blogs definitely suggest there is a fair amount of confusion going on here in terms of just what constitutes of learning theory and which ones go under what headings. One of the tutors posted a link to a summary of learning theories by Helen Beetham that fits in closest to my own thinking, which I hope helps clarify some of the confusion.

As for the readings, there were two papers this week. The first was by Conole et al. (2004) called ‘Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design’. The paper attempted to provide e-learning practitioners with a framework to relate learning theory to practice. At least some of the debate in the forums related to how the criteria used to classify different learning theories (individual - social, reflection - non-reflection, information - experience) could be applied differently, and so perhaps the framework proposed would be better for enabling practitioners to see how their perceptions of different learning activities vary from each other. For a brief summary and interesting reflection on the paper see Juliette's post on Learning Theories (Part 2), where she also raises the question of just what is a learning theory exactly. Part of the weeks activities included trying to put the previous blocks (weeks 1 to 5) readings into the summary headings provided by Conole and colleagues such as behaviourism, constructivist. systems theory etc. Sonja had a go on her blog at Mapping papers onto theories. She also considered her own teaching in terms of learning theories.

The second paper by Jones and Preece (2006) is called ‘Online communities for teachers and lifelong learners: a framework for comparing similarities and identifying differences in communities of practice and communities of interest’. I think one of the most interesting points made in connection to this paper within the forums was about how the researchers developed a framework based on theory to inform their research but it still isn't clear from the paper alone how they came up with the factors included in the model. In relation to using theory to inform practice, I'd like to think these factors have come up as significant in previous research., especially as a lot of them (e.g. common ground, trust) are familiar from when I studied Human Computer Interaction at Bath. However, without having a copy of the previous publications referred to in front of me, it's difficult to know for sure. For an example of how the framework Jones and Preece present could prove useful for other research purposes, check out JM's post here. Juliette has also posted her reflections on the paper in Learning Theories (Part 3), including a consideration of the difference between theories and frameworks, echoing some of the discussions occurring in the forums.

Finally, all this talk about learning theories has gotten me thinking about how they relate to game-based learning. If I am going to use the categories used by Helen Beetham above, then I need to start with behaviourism. At the most basic level, I reckon that you could safely use a behaviourist perspective to discuss how players learn game controls - it's a simple case of pairing the right buttons (stimulus) with the right actions occurring in the game (response). As you move further into the game though, the constructivist learning principles start to come through - you are an active participant in this process, you have to try things out and regulate your performance while the game attempts to scaffold your activities by starting the game out easy and then making it progressively more difficult. If you are playing with other people, co-located or otherwise, social constructivism kicks in as your peers help you out, and/or you start engaging in collaborative activities. Finally, maybe you now start to see yourself as a "gamer", so apart from playing the game, you start to engage in other activities around it - talking about it with friends and online, reading magazines/blogs, contributing to walkthroughs etc essentially participating in a community of practice - or what James Paul Gee is talking about when he talks about "semiotic domains" and "affinity groups" of players.

For a really interesting take on how video games embody different learning theories see Ian Bogost's "Persuasive games" chapter 8. He mentions the three perspectives I used in the previous paragraph but what I find most interesting is how he explains the media effects argument as a behaviourist perspective. The idea is that violence in game-play will be reinforced and thus more likely to occur in real life, implying a direct transfer between the two environments. I doubt that the real story is as simplistic as this - otherwise I really would have beaten up an awful lot of people up by now, and probably stolen a couple of cars - but I guess you could argue that this is essentially what simulations are trying to achieve: a realistic a mapping as possible between the virtual and the real so that behaviour learnt within the simulation will directly transfer to real world situations. And I could see how that could be useful for certain kinds of training, but I always thought this was a situated learning approach, where you are essentially simulating how you would behave in a community of practice. Now I'm thinking,that you would still be doing that but through a process of reinforcement... But if I don't agree with the media effect argument, how can I defend using this same approach for educational purposes? And is this really how we learn from video games? I do know I am interested in games based learning, not simulation based learning or even serious games (which often seem quite similar to simulations), as I think they can provide with a very different sort of learning experience but I need to do a bit more reading and thinking before I can verbalise that.... Hmm, now I'm confused. But it's late and I think that's enough for today so maybe I'll come back to it later.

H809: Week 6 update

I had thought about combining this post with a week 7 entry, as it is a little overdue, but the forums have been a bit quiet so I thought I'd focus on week 6 and wait a little longer to give people a chance to discuss the relevant activities.

The theme of week 6 was audiences and ethics, and while there was no set reading to discuss, students were asked to listen to a podcast - which anyone can listen to from here (thanks to Juliette for posting the link). The podcast was discussion between James Aczel, Eileen Scanlon, Cindy Kerawalla, and Chris Jones about the impact of different audiences on the process of research and how it is reported. Discussions in the forums highlighted the importance of pitching proposals to funders in such a way as to justify the research planned (including a consideration of any ethical issues), the need to be cautious of distorting the findings by oversimplifying the message (e.g. when reporting to a non-technical audience), and how there can often be a tension between what the funders and the researchers want. The latter point is especially true of dissemination activities, as funders will often want publicity straight away, while researchers will tend to want to mull things over a bit and consider the implications. If anyone is interested, this link was posted in the forum cafe to a Guardian discussing the government's interest in "evidence based research". Another point that came up, was how it is common to disseminate the same research findings to different audiences. This reminded of conversations I had when working as a research assistant on the Racing Academy project, where we talked about dissemination in terms of both academic audiences and practitioners, because we also wanted the findings to be useful to teachers who wanted to use game-based learning in practice. In general, the discussions within H809 seemed to suggest that thinking about your target audience should happen quite early on in the research process, because it helps you address the issue who is likely to benefit from your research. This doesn't mean that you should tell funders or other audiences what they expect, but by considering what they might find most useful from the start, you won't have carried out a piece of research that no one wants to hear about! Meanwhile, Juliette and Sonja have both used their blogs to consider how the issues of audiences affect their own research.

In terms of ethics, a lot of the forum discussions focused on the ethics of carrying out research online. Part of this was about the "racial ravine" e.g. only 5% of Internet users are African-American and so a researcher has a duty to note that results may be influenced by inequalities in power relations (be they due to race, class, gender, sexuality etc) or cultural issues. Other issues raised were how to go about getting informed consent from participants (see Juliette's post on ethics for some examples of consent forms and information sheets) and how you can know whether someone online is who they say they are. Linked to the latter point was a suggestion that the Exploring online research methods website might be a little out of date, as there is little consideration of Web 2.0 technologies in terms of ethics. An article was also linked to about the failure of Captcha systems (which I seem to have to deal with everytime I buy gig tickets or post a blog comment) to distinguish between computers and humans. Students have also begun to think about how to address ethics in their own research by posting case studies to the wiki (which you can access here if you are logged into the course website) including JM who has posted her case study online. Finally, there was also some talk about the difficulty of maintaining the anonymity of participants. Changing someone's name is not always enough, as they can be identified by other information. For example, it was pointed out in the forums that while Hiltz and Meinke (1989) did not refer to participants by their real names, they did make a potential breach of privacy by informing us that not only did the Upsala college's ice hockey team take part in the project but also hat some of them failed to show up on-line on a regular basis. It is worth noting however, that even if care is taken to anonymise identifiable information about participants, they may still find it somewhat uncomfortable to read about how their behaviour is interpreted by the researcher(s). One way to avoid this is to make sure your participants get to read your interpretations before you publish them, but this also runs the risk of them withdrawing their consent during the final stages of your research...

As usual, I've been trying to think about my own take on the topics being addressed in H809. In terms of audiences, I think I'm probably focusing on an academic audience at the moment as I'm not looking at anything that directly relates to educational practice just yet. However, studying games and learning means there are a variety of academic audiences I can address as I seem to be some sort of psychology, computer science, education type crossroads which I can also talk about in terms of HCI (Human Computer Interaction) user experience evaluation. I think this will be especially obvious when it comes to writing up my findings, and is something I have already become aware by submitting papers to different types of conferences. In terms of ethics, I don't think I'm going to have any major problems as it looks like I'm going to be using adults (keep in mind that when children are being used in research projects, there will be even more ethical issues to consider and processes to complete such as a Criminal Records Bureau check), and won't be asking them to do anything that could cause them serious harm. That said, if I do end up using these gaming vests, there may be some potential for physical injury that I will need to take into account and justify my reasons for wanting to look into. I should also say that even though I didn't need to get ethical approval for the studies I carried out last year during my masters, filling in the OU ethics proforma was still quite a useful exercise as if helped set out what I intended to and made me think about all sorts of issues that need to be considered if you want to carry out an ethically sound piece of research that your particpants won't regret taking part in.

H809: End of block 1

This is just a quick post to wrap up the last of block 1 so we can all start afresh for the next part of the course.

I can imagine that everyone has been very busy getting the first assignment in (due today) so things have been a little quieter. In week four, there was some discussion about referencing tools and bibliographic software. It's something I have to keep reminding myself to do - keep track of what I'm reading and where to find it - but I have to admit I don't always stay on top of. But, once you get to grips with the tool you are using, it's one of those things that will actually save you time in the long run and well worth it. The main tools that have come up in the discussions include Refworks, Endnote and Zotero (which is the one I actually use). I did have a go at Endnote but Zotero just seems easier - I love the fact I can add references just straight from my browser, though you do need to be using Firefox to do so). Plus, if you use it in combination with something like Dropbox (suggested in one of the forums) you don't have to worry about only having access to it on one PC. Oh, and Zotero is also free, unlike the other two. In general, while using any of this kind of software does have a bit of a learning curve, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages since they allow you to keep a record of what you've been reading, attach notes about this, create bibliographies in specific styles and avoid having to repeatedly search for the same document. Another link posted on the forum is to a review paper on blended learning, which shows how powerful things like using the keyword function can be (see appendix 1).

The last paper to be read in Block one was "Learning by Collaborating: Convergent Conceptual Change" by Jeremy Roschelle (1992). Unfortunately there wasn't a whole lot of discussion going on about this one, but it is rather heavy going and in combination with the upcoming TMA1, I suspect people had less time to get into it. Mike Protts did post his own reflections on the paper though, and relates them to "extreme programming". One of my supervisors gave me the paper to read last year, and I remember thinking at the time that it was an incredibly detailed account of a single case. While this obviously imposes limit on the generalisabilty of the claims made, the claims are often supported by referencing other studies, and the paper does provide a really interesting account of the processes that occur when trying to come to a shared understanding about scientific concepts - which are notoriously difficult to get right (see this link from the forums about how it can all go very wrong). I liked how the author discussed the findings in terms of theories of learning including constructivism and situated action. If pairs are learning through convergent conceptual change then it illustrates that collaborative learning can occur without the need for asymmetrical pairs (Vygotsky) and/or without cognitive conflict (Piaget) in order for the participants to achieve mutual understanding. By referring to situated action as well, there is a further emphasis on the context within which the interactions take place, because the environment is seen as an integral part of our cognitive processes. The reference also reminded of when I did my Human Communication and Computing MSc at the University of Bath, where we did an awful lot of talking about how technology can be used to support the process of achieving common ground during collaborative activities.

How does this relate to my current research? I'm not really sure it does to be honest, as even though I may be using a case-study approach I'm not sure I want one this detailed! While learning through collaborating is something I definitely want to keep in mind, I'm not focusing on formal learning of scientific concepts and I'm not sure I'd be comfortable enough to use a discourse analytic approach (in the form of conversational analysis) to analyse co-located game play interactions. But I guess it's an option! At the very least, it's given me something to think about in terms of methods and theories that concern collaborative learning.

So that's it for block one. I hope everyone got their TMAs in ok and that you're all looking forward to block two. It starts this week with a focus on audiences (something Sonja Tack has already been thinking about) and ethics.

User-generated content

So, what is user generated content then? I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a while now I think I first mentioned it when I was writing about Spore. In relation to games, it means you not only get to play them but you get to have some input into the game, by designing your own levels, for instance. This is beyond being able to customise your avatar in an RPG, as it influences the gameplay itself. The concept is quite similar to modding, which has been around for ages, with whole communities built around it e.g. for Counter-Strike (which is itself a mod of Half -Life). But though modding tools are sometimes made available for certain games, the process was usually quite technical. There has been a more recent move though, towards encouraging this sort of user-generated content by making it easier to do, with games like Little Big Planet (LBP) allowing players to design, build and share their own levels. The video below is an example of a player created LBP level, based on Takeshi's Castle:



The reason I'm interested in all this, is because I think it says a lot about different player motivations. There seems to be a certain type of player who is not content with the experience of playing but wants to create as well. Things is, I'm just not sure I'm one of them. And as much as stuff like Sporn and my mate creating a phallic shaped rocket ship in Little Big Planet can amuse me, it's just not what I want to be spending my time doing. Don't get me wrong, I know people can come up with some pretty impressive creations (as the video above illustrates) and I actually really enjoy games like SimCity where you get to build your own city. I'm just not that fussed about being able to design the landscape I'm going to build the city on. In Spore, I felt like I had to push myself through the creature design stages in order to get to the good bit (and I was so relieved when I realised I could just use the games own designs and other peoples for stuff like planes and buildings in the later stages). In Little Big Planet, I watched my sister sit through boring tutorials to get to grips with the level editor controls so she could start producing her own - as an artist I think this really appealed to her, though I have a suspicion she was more interested in creating a novel visual experience, rather than in thinking about it in terms of 'good' game design. It's all really fascinating from a research perspective - I can ask what drives these players to create, something Bartle's 4 types of gamer categories do not account for (I guess it would need some sort of creator/designer category), or I could ask what sort of other skills they develop while they are creating whatever they are creating. But on a personal level, I think just want to play already!

This also relates to how games can be used within education. Teachers can get their students to play games (be they designed to be explicitly educational or not) and try an integrate this into some part of the curriculum or they could get them to build their own games. This isn't that new an approach, Llyod Rieber and colleagues carried out Project KidDesigner back in the late 90s, and you can probably trace it's constructivist roots back to Seymour Papert and LOGO in the 70s. The basic idea is that kids will learn more effectively and acquire a wider range of skills if they are actively constructing something. And with the development of free software tools such as GameMaker, that make designing your own game a relatively simple matter, its become a lot more common than it used to be. If anyone is interested in this sort of thing, Jake Habgood carried out some relatively recent research that looked at the kinds of games children made in after school clubs, while his website contains a whole host of information about the resources out there that teachers and children can use.

I'm doubt a specific approach is better than another, as usual it will depend on the context and how well integrated the approach and context are (if anyone from H809 is reading this post, what I just said definitely relates to the Laurillard (1994) paper from Week 3!). I do find it interesting though that in terms of learning theories you can label this approach as constructivist, while you could talk about massively multi-player online games tends under some sort of communities of practice heading. Plus, it's made me think about what I want from my gaming experiences - and it seems that I don't want to actively engage in an online community, I just want to get on with some actual game play when the mood strikes. But is something I want because it requires less effort? What does that mean for the learning that results from the experience? Is it somehow shallower or less likely to transfer? Maybe I'm just impatient, but I have to admit I don't want to design parts of a game myself as it feels like a lot of work (and even though I am studying games, I still see playing them as a break from 'proper' work). And also, if I've just spent x amount of money on a game, I definitely want to be rewarded by an experience that has been designed for me to play. But that's just me, and I'm beginning to realise that there is a whole range of reasons why people play, and create, games. If we're ever going to be able to truly tap into the educational potential, of using games, I think we're going to have to recognise that and understand these motivations a whole lot better than we do now.

H809: Week Three reflections

I had been meaning to get this post out earlier but have been busy this week trying to submit a conference paper. But it's all in now, so will have to wait and see how it goes.

Students were asked to use academic search engines such as Google Scholar and ISI Web of Science (which you need to access through the OU library page, under databases but remember to sign in first) to find papers and evaluate their impact by checking how many times the papers had been cited. It seems that while this turned out to be a rather time consuming task and that not everyone got the same results, most people concluded that the last two readings didn't seem to have a huge impact and some students started to question whether number of citations was the only way to measure impact - surely having to read them for the course means they have an impact, despite not adding to how many times they have been cited?

There were two readings for this week; the first of which was "How can learning technologies improve learning?" (Laurillard, 1994). The main point that came out of the discussions about this was how important it was to consider the relationship between the context in which learning takes place and the outcomes which result from this learning. It isn't enough to simply ask whether technology x improves learning, but under what conditions does technology x improve learning, something H809 tutor Rhona highlights in her post and links to how to approach TMA1. JM has also posted on how the paper relates to the use of wikis. Another issue that came out of the forums is that technology can sometimes be an obstacle to learning, as students could end up spending too much time getting to grips with the software and not enough on the content they are supposed to be learning. This is actually quite relevant to my topic of research, because there does seem to be a distinction between learning how to play a game i.e. in terms of controls, and other skills that develop as a result of continued play e.g. problem solving, decisions making etc. Another interesting point raised about the paper was how the arguments within it are still valid today with respect to newer technologies (e.g. Web 2.0, virtual worlds), with a link being posted to a New Scientist article about the impact of podcast lectures.

Less was said about the second paper "Knowledge, society and perspectives on learning technology" by Oliver and colleagues (2007). I suspect part of the reason for this is that it continued the epistemological debate over positivism and other social perspectives, and also because we are getting closer to the first assignment deadline. Juliette Culver has posted quite a nice summary of both the papers, and her thoughts on them - from this and the forums it seems students appreciated how the paper outlined different perspectives and gave actual examples of how these would influence research in practice. There was also the suggestion that while quantitative approaches might be good for examining whether an effect takes place, qualitative approaches are probably more useful for explaining why the effect occurs (or not). The discussions on frameworks also link to the final activities for this week concerning the podcast about the impact of ICTs in education (you will need to be signed in to access this link). The podcast seemed to get people thinking about how important it is to consider philosophical perspectives, in addition to the other questions suggested in Week 1, when reading about research, as the approach adopted is quite likely to affect the methods and conclusions of the paper.

I think that covers the main events of the last week or so. If anyone has anything to add though, do please let me know. I'd also be happy to receive any feedback about how useful (or not!) these posts are, what I should be including in them, and about the timing of them.