CSS: General | Presentation

April 19, 2005
Course: CEP 910 Motivation & Learning
Instructor: Jere Brophy, PhD
Michigan State University; East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Extrapolation & Adaptation: A Motivation Simulation

a dissertation proposal-in-progress

Kym Buchanan (Email: buchan56 AT msu.edu)
Home page: KymBuchanan.org

Agenda

• Proposition
• Areas of Inquiry
• Research Questions
• Population
• Methods & Measures
• Data Analysis & Expected Results
• (Significance of this Project)
• Next Steps
• Questions & Feedback
• References

Proposition

It's possible to design and develop a digital game for teaching introductory educational psychology, with limited resources. The game can be enjoyable to play, while helping students learn the content.

• Test by developing & integrating a digital game
• TE 150 Reflections on Learning
• Ed psych for pre-service teachers
• Pilot in TE 150 in Summer 2005
• Full study in Fall 2005

Areas of Inquiry

Educational Psychology

• Teaching using a digital game
• Curriculum is intro ed psych

Motivation

• Situational interest
• Games are a "catch" factor for intriguing learners (Mitchell, 1993; Prensky, 2001)
• May connect with personal interest
• May foster situational interest: "temporary interest that arises spontaneously due to environmental factors such as task instructions or an engaging text" (Schraw, Flowerday, & Lehman, 2001, p. 211)

"Texts" in the broad, post-structuralist sense

Games as "writerly" texts (cf. Gee, 2003; Spiro & Jehng, 1990)

But...!

• Find variables that empower students (Mitchell, 1993)
• Good game design as "a series of interesting choices" (Sid Meier, in Rolling and Adams, 2004, p. 200)

Authentic tasks

• Learners making thinking & making choices as if they were practitioners (Honebein, 1996, p. 20) (cf. Aldrich, 2004)
• Practicing teaching without real students

Educational Technology

• In general, design, development, & integration are hard
• Specifically, with games, few successful models (Gredler, 1996; Mitchell & Savill-Smith, 2004)
• A resurgence of interest (Gee, 2003; Gredler, 1996; Dede, 1996; Prensky, 2001; Aldrich, 2004; Elliot, Adams, & Bruckman, 2002)
• Great potential
• Design is the great obstacle

Game Design

Design must foreground & mitigate pressures

For any content, it's difficult to develop a game which:

• doesn't trivialize or significantly distort the content
• is enjoyable to play
• justifies the relative hassle of integrating it into course/classroom practice
• makes optimal use of limited resources

Research Questions

What are the effects of teaching using a digital game, in an introductory educational psychology course?

Experimental Questions

1. Does playing the game improve student learning?
2. Are the students engaged?
3. Are the students satisfied?
4. Is the instructor satisfied?

Conceptual Questions

5. How should a game be presented/packaged for teaching (e.g., instructor's guide)?
6. How can a game be both enjoyable and educational?
7. How can this tension be resolved: (a) design a compelling, educational game; and, (b) develop and test it in a relatively short time with limited resources?
8. Which algorithms and heuristics (e.g., models) are necessary and appropriate to design and develop optimal games for teaching?

(7 and 8 are complementary questions.)

Population

• Instructors & students in TE 150 courses
• Lecture-based course
• Curriculum is built around Jeanne E. Ormrod's Educational Psychology: Developing Learners (4th ed.) (2003)
• Focus of this project: Weeks 12 & 13, Motivation (Ch 11 & 12)
• One cumulative, multiple-choice final exam
  • Questions are cross-indexed to textbook chapters
• Digital study tools
  • Via ANGEL, students take required reading checks throughout semester, as self-diagnostics
• Via ANGEL, students have optional access to two practice exams (same format as the final exam)

Methods & Measures

Some givens...

• Study tool for students (analogous to reading checks & practice final exams)
  • Playable in a single, short session (~10 minutes)
  • Replayable
  • Helpful feedback for student
• Web-based
  • Played outside of class, possibly on university computers
  • Minimal system requirements

& some constraints...

• Small-scale development (no budget)
  • Any development has constraints
  • What matters is how the designer/process addresses such constraints
• Short development cycle
• Instructors must voluntarily adopt game
• UCRIHS issues

Timeline

*Game also automatically gathers usage data, indexed by student

See: Instruments

Data Analysis & Expected Results

• Descriptive statistics about population
• Correlations in descriptive statistics, e.g., gender v. "Do you like playing computer/video games?" (1-way ANOVA)
• Correlations in subjective responses, e.g., treatment v. "How do you feel about the course/curriculum of TE 150?" (1-way ANOVA)
• Interaction effects, e.g., differential satisfaction by gender, by previous game-playing, etc. (2-way ANOVA)

Next Steps

• Step back for a week or so
• Finish instruments (especially interview protocols)
• Finish & submit UCRIHS proposal
• Finish designing & developing the game
• Continue revising this proposal
  • Continue integrating literature
  • Continue finding new literature (e.g., backtracking citations)
• Pilot this summer
• Write short article based on pilot

Questions & Feedback

What else do you want to know?

Kym Buchanan (Email: buchan56 AT msu.edu)
Home page: KymBuchanan.org

References

• Aldrich, C. (2004). Simulations and the future of learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
• Barthes, R. (1968/1977). The death of the author. In S. H. (Trans.) (Ed.), Image music text (pp. 142-148). New York: Hill and Wang.
• Barthes, R. (1971/1977). From work to text. In S. H. (Trans.) (Ed.), Image music text (pp. 155-164). New York: Hill and Wang.
• Brophy, J. (2004). Motivating students to learn (2nd ed.). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Dede, C. (1996). The evolution of constructivist learning environments: Immersion in distributed, virtual worlds. In B. G. Wilson (Ed.), Constructivist learning environments: Case studies in instructional design (pp. 165-175). Edgewood Cliffs: Educational Technology Publications.
• Elliot, J., Adams, L., & Bruckman, A. (2002). No magic bullet: 3d video games in education. Paper presented at the ICLS 2002, Seattle, Washingon.
• Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Gredler, M. E. (1996). Educational games and simulations: A technology in search of a (research) paradigm. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology (pp. 521-540). New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan.
• Honebein, P. C. (1996). Seven goals for the design of constructivist learning environments. Constructivist learning environments: Case studies in instructional design. B. G. Wilson. Edgewood Cliffs, Educational Technology Publications: 11-24.
• Laurel, B. (2001). Utopian entrepreneur. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Mitchell, A., & Savill-Smith, C. (2004). The use of computer and video games for learning. London: The Learning and Skills Development Agency.
• Mitchell, M. (1993). Situational interest: Its multifaceted structure in the secondary school mathematics classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 424-436.
• Ormrod, J. E. (2003). Educational psychology: Developing learners (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
• Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Rollings, A., & Adams, E. (2003). Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on game design. Boston: New Riders.
• Schraw, G., Flowerday, T., & Lehman, S. (2001). Increasing situational interest in the classroom. Educational Psychology Review, 13(3), 211-224.
• Spiro, R. J., & Jehng, J.-C. (1990). Cognitive flexibility and hypertext: Theory and technology for the nonlinear and multidimensional traversal of complex subject matter. In D. N. a. R. S. (Eds.) (Ed.), Cognition, education, and multimedia: Exploring ideas in high technology (pp. 163-205). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.