Educational Technology

Dede, C. (2011). Developing a research agenda for educational games and simulations. Computer games and instruction, pp. 233-250. Information Age Publishing.

The author offers five fundamental assumptions about a research agenda for educational games and simulations. The format of the original article was a blog. He emphasizes the importance of these assumptions because the beliefs and values that underlie a research agenda often are the most important decisions made in its formulation. These five assumptions include usable knowledge; collective research; “what works, when, and for whom,” treatment effects, and scalability.  Beyond a straightforward comparison of the innovation to standard practice; and a focus on innovations that can be implemented at scale (innovators can adapt research products for effective usage across a wide range of contexts).

One of the article’s strengths is the description of his five assumptions and its supporting literature. The author’s passionate belief in defining research agendas so that scholars not only build sophisticated theories and applied understandings but also disseminate this knowledge in a manner that helps stakeholders access, interpret, and apply these insights. Furthermore, he emphasizes that usable knowledge begins with persistent problems in practice and policy rather than with intellectual curiosity. Moreover, he stresses that most of the research agenda must focus on how games and simulations can aid in resolving perennial educational problems and issues (Carlson & Wilmot, 2006). Regarding collective research, practitioners must fully understand that a complex educational intervention involving gaming and simulation and effective across a wide range of contexts may require multiple studies along its various dimensions, each scholarly endeavor led by a group that specializes in the methods best suited to answering research questions along that dimension. Lastly, the author highlights that once an intervention’s efficacy is determined via exploratory research, a single large study with a complex treatment is of greater value for research than multiple small studies of individual simple interventions.

Next, a research agenda should center on what works, when, and for whom, going beyond whether or not some educational game or simulation “is effective” in some universal manner (Means, 2006). The author suggests there is not one solution or a “one size fits all approach.” However, various theoretical perspectives (e.g., cognitive science, social constructivism, instructional systems design) can provide insights on how to configure these interactive media to aid various aspects of learning, such as visual representation, student engagement, and the collection of assessment data. Identifying the conditions necessary for success regarding the effects of the curriculum, the context, and students and teachers is essential. Regarding treatment effects, the author notes that further evaluating the efficacy of a treatment before conducting elaborate research studies of its relative effectiveness across multiple types of contexts is important in making wise allocations of resources.

Achieving scale in education requires designs that can flexibly adapt to effective use in various contexts across a spectrum of learners and teachers. Another strength is the application of a five-dimensional framework for scaling up to implementing a multi-user virtual environment, including depth, sustainability, spread, shift, and evolution. Depth is the evaluation and design-based research to understand and enhance causes of effectiveness. Sustainability refers to the “robust design” to adapt to inhospitable contexts. Spread is the act of modifying to retain effectiveness while reducing the resources and expertise required without compromising scalability integrity. Whereas “shift” refers to moving beyond “brand” to support users as co-evaluators, co-designers, and co-scalers. Finally, evolution is learning from users’ adaptations to rethink the innovation’s design model.

Notable at the time, blogs were a fairly new way of communicating to the masses that did not require being peer-reviewed before posting to the internet. This article provides a neat spin on the design and development of educational games and simulations. Much less formal than many other peer-reviewed articles, it nevertheless provides the educational field with considerations for practitioners to contemplate when creating such educational media and environments.

Gee, J. (2008). Learning and Games. The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. Edited by Katie Salen. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. The MIT Press. 21–40.

The author of this article argues that video games offer players experiences and recruit learning as a form of pleasure and mastery and that these conditions are properties of a well-designed game. Furthermore, he argues several points regarding conditional experiences that must be met to be truly useful in achieving deep learning. These conditions go beyond the individual to include the individual’s participation in social groups that supply meaning and purpose to goals, interpretations, practice, explanations, debriefing, and feedback, conditions necessary for deep learning from experience. Ultimately, he suggests that learning theory and game design may enhance each other in the future. Game examples used to illustrate these points include SWAT4, World of Warcraft, and Civilization.

The author provides five essential conditions which enable an individual to experience learning as they navigate through a video game. First, experiences are most useful for future problem-solving if specific goals structure the experience. Humans store their experiences best regarding goals and how these goals did or did not work out. Second, for experiences to be useful for future problem-solving, they must be interpreted. Interpreting experience means thinking during and after an action and about how their goals relate to their reasoning in the situation. It means, as well, extracting lessons learned and anticipating when and where those lessons might be useful. Third, people learn best from their experiences when they get immediate feedback during those experiences so that they can recognize and assess their errors and see where their expectations have failed. It is important, too, that they are encouraged to explain their errors and why their expectations failed, along with what they could have done differently.

Fourth, learners need ample opportunities to apply their previous experiences, as interpreted, to similar new situations, so they can “debug” and improve their interpretations of these experiences, gradually generalizing them beyond specific contexts. Finally, learners need to learn from other people’s interpreted experiences and explanations, including peers and more expert people. Social interaction, discussion, and sharing with peers, as well as mentoring from more advanced others, are important. Debriefing after an experience, talking about why and how things worked in accomplishing goals, is important. Mentoring is best done through dialogue, modeling, worked examples, and certain forms of overt instruction, often “just in time” (when the learner can use it) or “on demand” (when the learner is ready).

This article was very insightful about how to optimize deep learning through gaming. Even though I will not be designing a game anytime soon, I can appreciate the author’s message that I will look at a game differently. As a lifelong gamer, one of the aspects of gaming that I enjoy the most is strategery and looking for alternative courses of action to accomplish a goal. Recently comes to mind is when I played Witcher III, where you navigate through the open world during the main storyline, there are opportunities to play Gwent, a fast-past card game that is about the clash of two armies locked in a mortal struggle on a battlefield where the players are the leaders and the cards their forces. This additional embedded game was a refreshing break from primary missions and was just as challenging.