Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 16.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 20:18:55 +0100
From: Roger Blumberg <rbb@cs.brown.edu>
Subject: Re: 13.0554 come out to play?
Dear Willard,
I have been meaning to respond to your posting of the 25th (Subject:
games?), and the discussion that followed, but each reply has become
a rather long essay. I teach the Educational Software Seminar at
Brown University, a rather unique example of university-community
collaboration in the area of technology because we begin not with
university-designed products and priorities, but with proposals for
classroom software from local (Providence, RI) teachers in K-12,
the University, and other institutions concerned with education
(e.g. the Providence Children's Museum).
Each spring, the undergraduates in the Seminar choose projects
from a pool of teacher proposals and, in teams of 3 or 4, work
closely with the teacher and her/his students to create the proposed
program. The Seminar is cross-listed in Computer Science and Education
Departments at Brown, where it has been offered for nearly a decade
(the brainchild of Andries van Dam you'll be pleased if hardly
surprised to learn); but only recently have the number of computers
in schools and the power of the authoring tools made diversity in
proposed projects and versatility in program designs and strategies
a reality. You can read about all the projects, and download many
of the programs, at our web site: www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/
In the past three years we've taken on and completed nearly two
dozen projects for K-16 classrooms, and about half of these programs
have been designed as games. You ask:
> (1) Can we reach the Sega-generation effectively through games?
> If so, what is to be considered?
The second is certainly the critical question, and we have found
that the answers are not especially short! First, it is useful to
note that in addition to games, the "Sega-generation" is an
audience that makes simulations and multi-linear computer-based
narratives educationally promising as well. But sticking to games
for the moment, and taking just this semester's class as an example,
the Seminar students have just completed games:
-- to teach kindergarteners the concepts of area and perimeter
(something recently mandated by the local Board of Ed.);
-- to give a 3rd grade teacher a computer-based equivalent of
a "Mad Math Minute" exercise, formerly done with pen and paper,
that tests multiplication and division skills;
-- to let 4th graders build 2D shapes and calculate their
areas and perimeters; and
-- to let ESL and Special Education high school students
practice their punctuation, capitalization and verb
conjugation skills.
The Seminar students did not choose the game format for programs:
-- to provide decision-making scenarios concerning drug use for
9th grade Health students;
-- to give undergraduates enrolled in a Visual Perception course
interactive exercises for learning about depth cues, color
perception and the perception of human motion; and,
-- to give undergraduates enrolled in a political science
course an opportunity to see annotated versions of political
ads and to write annotations of their own.
So what are some of the things we consider when deciding on a
game format? Here are just three:
1) Can the material covered, the skills being acquired and/or the
exercises necessary to master the material/skills be made more
engaging by introducing a game structure? This is a basic question
but it leads one to see games as a useful tool not just in settings
where a set of skills and facts can be given narrative cohesion
and motivation (e.g. the Mad Math Minute), but in cases when the
exercises that best help students learn these skills and facts
are tainted by remedial or simply boring associations (e.g. the
ESL and Special Education case, where rather elementary grammar
exercises can be embedded in sophisticated multimedia narratives).
2) Can the material covered stand up to the seductions of the game
format, so that what is learned is the relevant material/skill
rather than simply skills of game-playing (e.g. competition
between students is usually both a motivation and a distraction).
3) Can intrinsic motivation for learning the material/skills be
created either in game characters and/or activities?
Once one decides to create a game, there are of course questions
about design and design "principles" (about which so much is written).
Here we find (with Emerson) that "there is no virtue which is
final; all are initial." Indeed, my students find that by designing
effective programs for a particular teacher of a particular group
of students in a particular school in a particular year: a) they
become critical of any but the most grave and trivial ideas of
universal usability principles; b) they appreciate the value of a
learning curve in the engagement of users, and think twice before
speaking of "intuitive" interfaces; and c) they see in practice the
difference between using the computer to expand and enrich the
experiences in classrooms and using it to (merely) replace or
simulate traditional experiences.
Clearly, there is much more to say, but the reason I bother you
with any of it is the answer to your second question:
> (2) Who is doing this already and doing it well?
The answer is: not many and certainly too few. With the recent news
that Mattel is selling off The Learning Company, having acquired it
less than a year ago (after the Learning Company itself acquired
a good number of promising educational software companies), we find
remarkably little innovation in the field of educational software,
and the fact that it is a marginalized area within university-level
computer science doesn't help. But, now that powerful authoring tools
(e.g. Macromedia's Director) and multimedia labs are becoming more
common at colleges and universities, and are used as often by
humanities as science students and faculties, I would suggest that
there is a tremendous and perhaps unique opportunity now for
humanities computing people and humanists generally to become
involved in the production and study of educational software. I
hope there will be opportunities to continue discussions, such as
those provoked by your questions, in the Humanist community.
Thanks,
Roger
_______________________________________________________________
Roger B. Blumberg
Roger_Blumberg@Brown.edu
phone:(401) 863-7619 fax:(401) 863-7657
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/rbb/
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Visiting Lecturer, Department of Computer Science (Box 1910)
Senior Fellow, Sheridan Center for Teaching & Learning (Box 1912)
Visiting Scholar, Inst. for Brain & Neural Systems (Box 1843)
Brown University, Providence RI 02912
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MendelWeb http://www.netspace.org/MendelWeb/
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