Tag Archives: games

Making another game #disrupticon

 Making another game #disrupticon

At the Rethinking Research: Disrupting and Challenging Research Practices conference where I was presenting a mapping session, one of the sessions I attended as a delegate was “Hacking the University Game” led by Luca Morin from Coventry University.

I hadn’t intended to attend this session, however as the presenter of the session I was in hadn’t turned up, I had to make another choice so came in late to this one.

In a previous blog post I talked about the design process for a vice-chancellors game we created as a group.

In another part of the session we were asked to reflect on a different kind of game, choosing a different subject to focus on. This time though we were asked not to think about the mechanics of the game, but focus on what the game was trying to enabler the players to learn. After chatting with the other person on my table we decided to do a game for students that demonstrated to them the difference between employability and education.

Many students sometimes focus on the skills they need for a job and think “education” isn’t as important as gaining employability skills.

The student's game

What we wanted the game to demonstrate to students was that undertaking a degree wasn’t (just) about gaining the skills for a future job, but that by undertaking the degree you would learn stuff in the subject, but by doing so would also gain the skills that would be transferable and useful in a future job. In addition that focusing on employability would be a false economy and learning those skills discretely independently from the degree subject takes longer than gaining those skills by learning in the subject area.

We used a simple example to explain this, learning how to use Excel is an useful employability skills. It takes time to learn how to use Excel effectively and gain skills that are transferable to the workplace. Without context though, the transfer and application of these skills can be challenging, especially if you’ve not done it before.

However using Excel to understand a series of data from the subject area and learning how to manipulate it within Excel not only means using Excel, but also learning how to use Excel in context. This makes it easier to understand how to use Excel, but you can apply it to different situations. As a result, using Excel within a subject context can make it quicker and easier to gain Excel skills, than learning to use Excel outside the context.

The game was about engaging learners in the process that though employability skills are important for a future job or career, these skills will be more transferable and enhanced by gaining them through learning in the subject context, then trying to do the bare minimum.

There were less steps using the employability route, but each step would take longer. The education route had more steps, but they could be completed more quickly. There were also connections between both routes.

Of course spending ten minutes thinking and designing a game that covers this doesn’t mean that this is a finished game and there are major flaws with the concept and design. However the exercise of creating a game does make you think about the problem and the core issues, that in itself is an useful exercise.

Making a game #disrupticon

dice

At the Rethinking Research: Disrupting and Challenging Research Practices conference where I was presenting a mapping session, one of the sessions I attended as a delegate was “Hacking the University Game” led by Luca Morin from Coventry University.

I hadn’t intended to attend this session, however as the presenter of the session I was in hadn’t turned up, I had to make another choice so came in late to this one.

When I arrived Luca was taking about the Landlord Game and Monopoly and on the table was a selection of dice, playing cards, blocks, pen, blank cards, pieces and other stuff.

creating games

A bit unsure of the aim of the session I listened carefully and tried to get up to speed.

The first activity (for me) in the workshop was for our table to design a “Vice-Chancellor’s Game”.

When it comes to game design you need to reflect on the aim of the game, what do the players need to do to “win”, is this a competitive or a collaborative game.

My thinking was that there were two approaches to this game, one was to focus on a single university or to go for a UK wide game where universities compete against each other.

In the UK wide game, players would be vice-chancellors competing against each other to make their university the best and win the game.

In a single university game you could have a competitive game where the players play characters who are senior managers competing with each others to become Vice-Chancellor. Another game could have the players collaborating together to make their university the most successful.

On our table we took the choice of a single university competitive game with the vice-chancellor “competing” with the academic staff, students and professional services.

The Vice Chancellor's Game

Each player has a unique table with attributes that reflect their role’s objectives. We used blocks to RAG (red, amber green) rate each attribute. Then using some kind of process, players play cards against each other or themselves. These would then improve or deprecate their RAG ratings. These cards can be offset by dice rolls (and or money).The aim of the game is for the players to ensure all their attributes green.

It was an interesting exercise in thinking about the game idea and start to reflect on the mechanics about how this game would work. As with any game the mechanics and algorithms would reflect the bias of the game designer, so that would need to be taken into account.

For me the process of designing a game is probably more useful than playing the game itself for participants. I enjoyed this aspect of the session.

Active Play – ocTEL

Lost in the City

Have found a little time this week to look at ocTEL.

Over recent decades, game-based learning has grown as a form of TEL. It encapsulates many principles of active learning, such as engagement in an authentic context, learning by mistake-making and reflection, experiential learning, collaborative learning and learning by problem-solving. As such, it is worth considering the techniques that games use to engage learners and what can be learned from them. Four game genres with obvious learning potential are adventure games, puzzle games, role playing games and strategy games.

Playing “Lost in the City” reminded me of how much I hate these kinds of adventure games and how frustrating I find them. Now I did give it a fair go and spent over 15 minutes playing the game, of which the majority of time was spent trying to find a single small object on the screen. This was very un-engaging and very demotivating.

Personally I don’t think I could learn anything from this specific game. I also think the frustrations acted as a disincentive to learning.

This is not an “adventure” game, this is a game with puzzles that appears to be an adventure, but isn’t. These are not even “useful” puzzles as far as I am concerned, they are logic puzzles that have to be solved in a particular way or in a specific order, the “challenge” is to find that order out to solve it. The problem with this is that there is no real logic to the process and it’s much more trial and error then actual logic. Also with only one specific solution, you can’t be creative or find alternative ways of solving the problem. This does not reflect the real world.

The other aspect is that too often you spend a long time trying to find (as in the case of “Lost in the City”) that final key, that elusive number. This is not learning, unless you’re learning to be patient! It’s merely frustrating and annoying, as far as I am concerned it’s not even a game.

For me a true adventure game should allow for freedom and flexibility. Then it can be more of a learning experience.

I can see how some people may “enjoy” this kind of game, but also can see how some people think such games “could” be used to teach subjects like Health & Safety, as in spot the danger. However such games would annoy many learners for the reasons I outlined above, and therefore could be a choice, but allow other ways of learning.