Abstract
This chapter explores pedagogical and logistical aspects to teaching the game by walking the reader through different steps and ways to implement the game. Certain scenarios such as how to deal with “cheaters” and those resistant to “playing games” in school are discussed. This chapter stresses the importance of the role of the teacher in putting into place the structures around the game in order to leverage learning, including exploring teachers playing a role in the game story (Digital games and learning, Continuum, London, pp. 226–251, 2011). It also encourages teacher research, or systematically collecting data to answer questions and to use these answers to further develop the curricular game. Finally, it proposes the idea that students can learn by designing, creating, and teaching their own curricular games by drawing on Papert’s (Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas, Basic Books, New York, 1980) notion of constructionism.
In the most carefully constructed experiment under the most carefully controlled conditions, the organism will do whatever it damn well pleases.
—Morningstar & Randall, game designers of Habitat, the first large-scale virtual multiuser environment, quoting “some wag”
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Notes
- 1.
This was a lesson learned by the creators of Sesame Street who discovered that children learned a lot more from their show when they watched it with their parents.
- 2.
One of my students who is a science teacher reported that he had a lot of fun with this activity because he was able to make parallels with the content of his lesson: “After the activity, we talked about what traits were advantageous in this activity. Students decided that desirable traits included being observant, knowledgeable, and social. We compared this to organisms having specific desirable traits in various environments, depending on the type of environment it is, in order to survive and reproduce. They needed to be observant to see the directions posted in the room and answer some of the questions. They compared this to organisms finding/hunting food or avoiding predators. They needed to be knowledgeable in order to answer some of the content questions. They compared this to parents passing down prior knowledge to offspring so that they don’t make a fatal mistake in the wild. And they also needed to be social in order to form initial groups of three. In some classes where the student number was not a multiple of three, one or two students were eliminated at the start. Other students were held up by the random group making process. They compared this to organisms forming social groups for the betterment of the ‘pack.’ We compared the winning group to organisms in the environment that had the best balance of these traits that were able to obtain food, and survive, as opposed to other losing groups, that represented organisms that may not have survived. We also compared the actions of some students to competition for resources, since some students were bartering for answers or asking each other for paper, etc. This activity ended up going exceedingly well and I had the students hooked for the rest of the class—so thank you for the inspiration! One student even said, ‘Can we do something like this as the “Do Now” every class??’ :)”
- 3.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchy of learning goals that begins with the knowledge level, i.e., just recalling something from the text to comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and creativity. Angel Green, an instructional designer with Allen Interactions—a company who designs video games for business training—has created a “Taxonomy Alignment for Gaming” which describes a type of game that corresponds with each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy (recall, judgment, consequence, strategy, exploration, and simulation); however, I have found that good games incorporate many different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
- 4.
I was reminded of my distaste for the term “diagnostic assessment” recently when I was at a poster session and saw a poster that used the word “dosage” to refer to how often the educational “intervention” occurred.
- 5.
Hidden curriculum refers to all the implicit messages of school. For example, no one tells students that the subjects should be treated separately, yet they get that idea from the fact that they go to math for 50 min, then English, and so forth with little to no interdisciplinary connections.
- 6.
There is an urban teaching legend about a college student taking a timed essay exam who refused to turn in his essay at the end of class. Instead, he kept writing while the professor was telling him he would not accept his essay. When done, the student walks up to the professor’s desk and says, “Do you know who I am?” The professor says, “No, and quite frankly, I don’t care who you are.” The student replies, “Good,” lifts up half the stack of turned in essays, puts his essay in the middle, and walks away.
- 7.
By “tiered natural consequences,” I mean having consequences that are tied to the infraction and increase as the number of infractions increase with the exception, of course, of a major infraction which might have the most drastic consequence for a first-time offense.
- 8.
The New Games Movement, however, created cooperative games. But you could argue that these cooperative games still have conflict in terms of the players versus the game world, i.e. trying to achieve a goal within the constraints established by the game.
- 9.
I taught this particular teacher education class in an elementary school. We were watching the Color of Fear—a movie where a group of people discuss race and racism. Out of respect to the elementary students still in the building who might overhear, I turned down the volume before one of the people in the movie expressed his anger very loudly and with several obscenities. Unfortunately, I turned the volume down prematurely so it appeared as though I was trying silence one of the black members of the discussion in the movie.
- 10.
In a navigator/driver partnership, the navigator tells the driver, the person controlling the computer, what to do.
- 11.
Using “academic oral language” and “social written” language can act as bridges from “social oral” to “academic written” language for English Language Learners and other students (Brisk et al. 2008).
- 12.
In my head, I picture this much like Sorting Day in the Harry Potter book series.
- 13.
Bartle (2006) does emphasize that there may be other forms of stable MUDs out there as well.
- 14.
This refers to the practice of capitalizing every letter in an e-mail to indicate “shouting.”
- 15.
In one of my classes, I try to enlarge students’ concept of texts beyond the printed word. One of my students tried to stump me one time by throwing out boogers as something that could not possibly be a text. I countered by telling him about my visit to my ear, nose, and throat doctor who “read” my snot by analyzing the color, amount, and thickness.
- 16.
See Douglas Rushkoff’s (2011) book Program or Be Programmed for powerful arguments about the importance of learning to code.
Suggested Reading
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Koster, R. (2000/2006). Declaring the rights of players. In K. Salen & E. Zimmerman (Eds.), The game designer reader: A rules of play anthology (pp. 788–813). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pitaru, A. (2008). E is for everyone: The case for inclusive game design. In K. Salen (Ed.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 676–88). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Salen, K., Torres, R., Wolozin, L., Rufo-Tepper, R., & Shapiro, A. (2011). Quest to learn: Developing the school for digital kids. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sheldon, L. (2011b). The Multi-player classroom: Designing coursework as a game. Herndon, VA: Cengage Learning.
Shute, V., & Ventura, M. (2013). Stealth assessment: Measuring and supporting learning in video games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Appendix
Appendix
Suggested Teaching Plan Rubric
Criteria | “Wow! I mean, I think this might work” (3) | “Hmm, this might be acceptable” (2) | “I need more convincing” (1) | “Go back to the drawing board” (0) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Teacher role | Teacher plays an NPC or multiple NPCs as part of game play | Teacher serves as a mentor or guide but not as part of game play | Typical teacher role described | Teacher role not described |
Student role(s) | Students interact with each other in different roles | Students design their own avatar | Students take on the role of a character | Student role not described |
Connections with learning theories | Learning theories used to shape game | Multiple references to learning theories | References a learning theory | No connection to learning theories |
Logistics | Unique leveraging of available resources | Detailed description of implementation (e.g., how to group students) | General description of implementation | Little to no thought given to practical matters of implementation |
Revision cycle | Unique means of collection and analysis | Description of how feedback will be used to revise game | Description of how feedback will be collected | No mention of revision |
Techie (1 extra point) | ||||
Blends no-tech and low-tech versions | ||||
Tech Savvy (2 extra points) | ||||
Implementation involves students using game to teach others | ||||
Tech Guru (3 extra points) | ||||
Deigned so students can mod game | ||||
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Kellinger, J.J. (2017). Let the Games Begin! Teaching Your Game. In: A Guide to Designing Curricular Games. Advances in Game-Based Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42393-7_8
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