So now youʼre ready to play - but with what? A system to encourage playful exploration (original) (raw)
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Play and flow: Implications for online learning
2007
Many of the diverse pleasures that people experience during recreational computing activities can be synthesised into a single concept known as flow. Flow is a state of intense mental focus that occurs when a person's perceptual and cognitive systems are challenged at near capacity without being exceeded. It typically results in feelings of enjoyment and reduced awareness of factors that are irrelevant to the task at hand. For example, sometimes while surfing the Web or playing computer games, people become so immersed in what they are doing that they lose track of time and temporarily forget about their physical surroundings, their sense of self and their usual concerns. Flow experiences are not limited to computing activities. People report experiencing flow while working, participating in sport, performing music, engaging in hobbies, and doing many other things. This paper suggests some instructional design principles that could potentially make online learning more conducive to flow experiences, and hence more enjoyable and intrinsically motivating. These suggestions have arisen from the findings of a qualitative study of the flow experiences of Web users and computer game players. This article has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in SLEID, an international journal of scholarship and research that supports emerging scholars and the development of evidence-based practice in education. © Copyright of articles is retained by authors. As an open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.
Design Better Games: Flow, Motivation, and Fun in Learning Games
Just a few years ago, the industry was abuzz, demanding statistical proof of what was generally accepted as truth: games could be great teaching tools. Video games obviously created very engaging experiences where many players can play for hours on end. Games could put players 'in the zone' in an experience known as 'flow'. Even still, we needed proof to validate that they could actually teach something. Fortunately, those days are past. In recent years, there have been many great examples of learning games and a variety of studies have shown that fantastic results are possible. Unfortunately, they also show that wonderful results are not always guaranteed and that designing an effective learning game is hard. So, now the question shifts from 'can it work', to 'how do we make it work?' This chapter explores how to design effective learning games by looking at three critical areas: flow, motivation, and fun. For each area, we present important theoreti...
Seriously considering play: Designing interactive learning environments based on …
Educational technology research and development
Little attention has been given to the psycho- logical and sociological value of play despite its many advantages to guiding the design of interactive multimedia learning environ- ments for children and adults. This paper provides a brief overview of the history, research, and ...
Digital games represent the next evolution in teaching tool for parents, students and teachers. These games, unique in their capacity to evoke and follow rules, control content, ensure mastery, and provide a way for schools to utilize engaging content while simultaneously engaging students across multiple cognitive processes either alone or with other students in highly controlled and contained social situations both inside and outside of the game space. By engaging students through play, itself a fundamental cultural artifact, teachers can more easily engage in a heightened sense of awareness and focus known as flow. As a former AAA game designer, I will review the current state of literature covering elements of play as it has evolved and how the elements of play are used and subverted by the existing cultural practices to the detriment of school, students and instructors. I will also review how the psychological concept of flow, from its broader definition within human activity and review how this concept has been distilled by professional game designers for use within an educational context. I will also discuss how games represent a product that both reinforces and contradicts the currently implemented methods of accountability and instruction in the United States education system. Games, thoughtfully designed, can track progress, reinforce their achievement and serve as a method of constantly testing and retesting student capabilities. They can also create unique social environments for students, encouraging a form of distributed cognition where solving complex problems encourages communication, creative application of learned content, and the social skills needed beyond the confines of the school house.
CREATING FLOW, MOTIVATION, & FUN IN LEARNING GAMES
goodgamesbydesign.com
Just a few years ago, the industry was abuzz, demanding statistical proof of what was generally accepted as truth: games could be great teaching tools. Video games obviously created very engaging experiences where many players can play for hours on end. Games could put players 'in the zone' in an experience known as 'flow'. Even still, we needed proof to validate that they could actually teach something.
Playful Learning: An Integrated Design Framework
The design of, and research on, digital games for learning has been hampered by the lack of a comprehensive design framework of game-based learning that incorporates essential elements unique to learning from this genre. Broadening the scope to playful learning, we therefore propose an integrated approach to the design of these learning environments that brings together cognitive, affective, and socio-cultural perspectives to form a comprehensive learning sciences perspective. We first define playful learning and its characteristics as well as the different forms of learner engagement it entails. We then discuss each of the three perspectives, which aspects of playful learning they emphasize, and which they de-emphasize. We then describe key theoretical contributions to the design of playful learning from the three approaches. Finally, we draw conclusions from the emerging model, including suggestions for future research on the design of games for learning.
Investigating fun and learning in educational games
Fun is a key ingredient that gives enormous power to digital games. Recently, there has been renewed interest to harness this power of games for instructional purposes. However, merging fun and educational content may not necessarily mean a better learning outcome. Analysis of Flow theory for fun and Kolb’s learning model suggest fun may subvert, instead of helping, the learning objectives within a game. This paper describes research and a study with tertiary-level students to firstly, identify attributes of educational games that make them fun and secondly, to investigate the effectiveness of fun for better learning in educational games. Fun was measured using a modified version of George Kelly’s Repertory Grid Technique (RGT). Findings suggest that learning not only can occur via educational games, but also that fun and learning are positively related, implying that educational games, if well designed, may be valid learning tools. In addition, it was found that while the RGT is bo...
Designing learning environments that excite serious play
annual meeting of the Australasian Society for …, 2001
The phenomenon of play is proposed as a legitimate goal for interactive multimedia learning environments. Play offers a means for understanding motivation and learning in a holistic way. Serious play is not easy to achieve, but the reward is an intense and satisfying experience for both students and teachers. Technology offers many routes to serious play. Some are aligned with the design of interactive multimedia, such as simulations and games. Others are aligned with design activities where students themselves take charge of multimedia tools. Three collaborative projects are offered as examples of this proposal and the issues that frame it involving elementary and middle school students, graduate students, and students with intellectual and behavioral disabilities.
Designing for Learning and Play - The Smiley Model as a Framework
When seeking to create ideal learning environments for students and teachers, it can be a challenge to find a balance between facilitating learning processes at high levels of cognitive complexity [1] and creating playful and engaging experiences for students and teachers [2]. This challenge is relevant to the professional creation of small digital learning games as well as the big Game [3], that is, the learning and play situations that exist surrounding the use of small learning games, when students discuss, negotiate, develop, and decide what to do next inside the learning games. The desired balance is lost if the learning processes become shallow – at a low level of cognitive complexity – though it may be great fun [4]. Conversely, a game may facilitate good learning processes and many learning activities but result in low motivation among students because it is considered boring. The difficulty in aligning learning situations with playful situations can be viewed as the typical difference in focus points between learning designers and game designers [5]. For learning designers, learning goals and learning processes are very important and are given a high priority. For game designers, learning goals may become secondary to the gameplay itself –game designers traditionally prioritize engaging gameplay [6, 7]. This represents two systems with different aims – learning and play. However, it is well-known that play and learning are deeply interconnected [8]. As game designer Raph Koster stated, “Fun in games arises out of mastery, it arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun. With games, learning is the drug.” [9, p. 40]. The research question that we investigated was whether it is possible to create frameworks that intertwine learning and play in a meaningful and successful way. Furthermore, we wished to determine whether it is possible to implement these frameworks in learning situations in a way that creates meaningful and cognitive complex learning processes. This paper gives a brief description of a framework for designing engaging learning games. This overview is followed by an outline describing how this framework was used to build a Design-Based Research (DBR) project focused on teaching adult students through their design of curriculum-based digital learning games [10]. The students included in this study were engaged in the pursued of a full-time upper secondary general education at VUC Storstrøm, an adult education centre in Denmark.
Julkaisu 571 Publication 571 On Educational Game Design: Building Blocks of Flow Experience
The main objective of this research is to study how game design aspects can be integrated with relevant learning theories in educational games in order to develop games that are both engaging and educative. The design-science framework was employed to construct an experiential gaming model answering to this problem. This research is based on reviews of literature, the design of educational materials, as well as empirical studies. The empirical studies, including both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods, were conducted in controlled situations during the years 2002-2005. All the materials described in this thesis were developed especially for research purposes in order to ensure that attention could be focused on certain aspects of the phenomenon studied.