Want to help me with my scientific research on educational games?

[King of Asgaard]

I think any game can be educational, in the right circumstances.
Case in point, I learned to read and right correctly, as well as pronouncing certain words properly, through video games.

Misspelling the word write in a sentence proclaiming how you can read and write correctly. Thanks, I haven't been this amused about an error since someone told me I need to watch out for those "speeling errors".

I think any game can be educational, in the right circumstances.
Case in point, I learned to read and right correctly, as well as pronouncing certain words properly, through video games.

I'm glad we share a common viewpoint, but ehmm... Did you mean "read and write correctly"? If so (or not), go play my game. It's educational.

I meant it as a joke, but I didn't deliver it very well.
Meh, not all my jokes are winners.

 

[MasochisticAvenger]

I think any game can be educational, in the right circumstances.
Case in point, I learned to read and right correctly, as well as pronouncing certain words properly, through video games.

Misspelling the word write in a sentence proclaiming how you can read and write correctly. Thanks, I haven't been this amused about an error since someone told me I need to watch out for those "speeling errors".

I think any game can be educational, in the right circumstances.
Case in point, I learned to read and right correctly, as well as pronouncing certain words properly, through video games.

I'm glad we share a common viewpoint, but ehmm... Did you mean "read and write correctly"? If so (or not), go play my game. It's educational.

I meant it as a joke, but I didn't deliver it very well.
Meh, not all my jokes are winners.

I kind of had a feeling you meant to as a joke, but I wasn't entirely sure. Intention is a very difficult thing to express in text.

 

[snakeakaossi]

I meant it as a joke, but I didn't deliver it very well.
Meh, not all my jokes are winners.

We love you all the same and you made is laugh, so the end result is the same, write?

It's a shame sarcasm and the like is not so clear in a forum, since you can't use intonation.

Go play my game, it's good for you!

 

[King of Asgaard]

I think any game can be educational, in the right circumstances.
Case in point, I learned to read and right correctly, as well as pronouncing certain words properly, through video games.

Misspelling the word write in a sentence proclaiming how you can read and write correctly. Thanks, I haven't been this amused about an error since someone told me I need to watch out for those "speeling errors".

I think any game can be educational, in the right circumstances.
Case in point, I learned to read and right correctly, as well as pronouncing certain words properly, through video games.

I'm glad we share a common viewpoint, but ehmm... Did you mean "read and write correctly"? If so (or not), go play my game. It's educational.

I meant it as a joke, but I didn't deliver it very well.
Meh, not all my jokes are winners.

I kind of had a feeling you meant to as a joke, but I wasn't entirely sure. Intention is a very difficult thing to express in text.

That is an issue when trying to be funny in a forum; unless the joke is obvious, it's hard to interpret, and /joke or /sarcasm kind of ruins it, for me at least.

I meant it as a joke, but I didn't deliver it very well.
Meh, not all my jokes are winners.

We love you all the same and you made is laugh, so the end result is the same, write?

I see what you did there.

 

[lord Claincy Ffnord]

done, done and done. Best of luck to you, will be interested to see the results if enough people do it.

 

[CrazyJew]

snip

Thanks for the Error report

I was hindered in the pregame survey by the language barrier. I said no on a couple of terms I knew in Hebrew, but the difference isn't too smashing.

I really enjoyed it, and it really helped me out with a school project of mine from last year which I was just reviewing.

Glad I could help. Could you elaborate about what you mean by 'language barrier'? I'm pretty sure everything is in English, but I might have left some Dutch in it.

That's my own. I learned CS in high school in Hebrew, so on the pre-game test I didn't recognize several terms I should've.

 

[Jordi]

I did the surveys and played the "game". I thought it was very bad. Sorry. I gave extensive feedback in the post-game survey, so I won't get into all my criticisms here.

One thing I think might be interesting to discuss here however is how you think gamification works or should work. Because to me, this really wasn't a game. It is software for presenting and solving software design assignments that have been assigned for decades.

When I think of gamification, I think of constructs like creating competition, giving "rewards" like levels/titles/imaginary items, or having an actual game. For instance, light-Bot and Chronotron are two games that require a certain logic to solve that is also really important for programming. They don't really teach you programming itself, but they teach a skill that is relevant for it.

I'm wondering what you (and others) think makes this piece of educational software a game, and how that will facilitate learning.

 

[SonicWaffle]

snip

Thanks for the Error report

I was hindered in the pregame survey by the language barrier. I said no on a couple of terms I knew in Hebrew, but the difference isn't too smashing.

I really enjoyed it, and it really helped me out with a school project of mine from last year which I was just reviewing.

Glad I could help. Could you elaborate about what you mean by 'language barrier'? I'm pretty sure everything is in English, but I might have left some Dutch in it.

That's my own. I learned CS in high school in Hebrew, so on the pre-game test I didn't recognize several terms I should've.

It said I was quoted in this post, but then I looked, and I was not quoted. Why don't you love me? Why does nobody love me?!

 

[snakeakaossi]

done, done and done. Best of luck to you, will be interested to see the results if enough people do it.

Thanks for participating. The response is big enough here. Even if the amount of applicants stays under 5, I will post a non-scientist friendly version of the research here. I mostly see people getting interested but losing interest before they get to the post-game survey. The number was just to give a sense of urgency, it's not a solid measurement.

In other news: I already have 17 escapees in the pre-game survey and 5 in the post-game survey, so the research will be published here either way, if only because you have the highest start/finish ratio.

I did the surveys and played the "game". I thought it was very bad. Sorry. I gave extensive feedback in the post-game survey, so I won't get into all my criticisms here.

One thing I think might be interesting to discuss here however is how you think gamification works or should work. Because to me, this really wasn't a game. It is software for presenting and solving software design assignments that have been assigned for decades.

When I think of gamification, I think of constructs like creating competition, giving "rewards" like levels/titles/imaginary items, or having an actual game. For instance, light-Bot and Chronotron are two games that require a certain logic to solve that is also really important for programming. They don't really teach you programming itself, but they teach a skill that is relevant for it.

I'm wondering what you (and others) think makes this piece of educational software a game, and how that will facilitate learning.

I get this reaction a lot and I feel I need to elaborate a little. You can gamify in different ways, one is learning through a game, like you describe, another is to make a game around a subject, like I did. This research is not about finding the best game to teach software design. This would be very hard since this is the first game (to my knowledge) that actually tries to teach software design. Making an educational game with unknown mechanics and a subject in a relatively young field takes a lot of time and to really find the answer, it needs to be a way bigger research than I currently do. Excluding your statistics, the report is already over 50 pages and I've taken 8 months for the whole ordeal.

To summarize: What you get to see is only the tip of the iceberg. Even if the game fails, I will have a lot of data and the research is a success per definition.

I love being a scientist.

 

[Tilted_Logic]

I don't get the memes until a few years after everyone else

I apologize for giggling at this, but I couldn't help but picture it as some sort of illness that you had proficiently avoided for years.

I had a bad case of the memes as a child, and ever since I've been a little worried about catching it again. It turns you into an awful person, while you're suffering from it all you do is post image macros and old, stale jokes. I advise you get yourself inoculated ASAP!

Spoiler

Don't... Don't judge me! *flees*

 

[Jordi]

done, done and done. Best of luck to you, will be interested to see the results if enough people do it.

Thanks for participating. The response is big enough here. Even if the amount of applicants stays under 5, I will post a non-scientist friendly version of the research here. I mostly see people getting interested but losing interest before they get to the post-game survey. The number was just to give a sense of urgency, it's not a solid measurement.

In other news: I already have 17 escapees in the pre-game survey and 5 in the post-game survey, so the research will be published here either way, if only because you have the highest start/finish ratio.

I did the surveys and played the "game". I thought it was very bad. Sorry. I gave extensive feedback in the post-game survey, so I won't get into all my criticisms here.

One thing I think might be interesting to discuss here however is how you think gamification works or should work. Because to me, this really wasn't a game. It is software for presenting and solving software design assignments that have been assigned for decades.

When I think of gamification, I think of constructs like creating competition, giving "rewards" like levels/titles/imaginary items, or having an actual game. For instance, light-Bot and Chronotron are two games that require a certain logic to solve that is also really important for programming. They don't really teach you programming itself, but they teach a skill that is relevant for it.

I'm wondering what you (and others) think makes this piece of educational software a game, and how that will facilitate learning.

I get this reaction a lot and I feel I need to elaborate a little. You can gamify in different ways, one is learning through a game, like you describe, another is to make a game around a subject, like I did. This research is not about finding the best game to teach software design. This would be very hard since this is the first game (to my knowledge) that actually tries to teach software design. Making an educational game with unknown mechanics and a subject in a relatively young field takes a lot of time and to really find the answer, it needs to be a way bigger research than I currently do. Excluding your statistics, the report is already over 50 pages and I've taken 8 months for the whole ordeal.

To summarize: What you get to see is only the tip of the iceberg. Even if the game fails, I will have a lot of data and the research is a success per definition.

I love being a scientist.

Well, I'm glad to hear your research is going to be a success either way. However, I still don't understand exactly what is gamified about this. The normal/old situation is that students would get these assignments and explanations on a piece of paper. You have automized this in a piece of software and added automatic "grading", but that in itself doesn't make it a game (right?). Something similar could likely be done by adding a tutorial part to some UML editor.

So what game elements does your software contain, and how are they (supposed to be) helping with education compared to a non-game alternative? I can make a couple of guesses (graphics, "rewards" like the lightbulb, "level progression"), but I'm really not sure and I would like to know, because I think it's interesting.

I understand that gamification doesn't need to be like the games I suggested. But the other way in which I see it used usually has to do with giving out rewards for completion of a task that are in a sense meaningless, but gain value in a group (e.g. badges and accomplishments gain some value if you can show them off). I'm also not seeing any of that in your "game", so I'm wondering what other ways of gamification there are and how they work.

 

[snakeakaossi]

Well, I'm glad to hear your research is going to be a success either way. However, I still don't understand exactly what is gamified about this. The normal/old situation is that students would get these assignments and explanations on a piece of paper. You have automized this in a piece of software and added automatic "grading", but that in itself doesn't make it a game (right?). Something similar could likely be done by adding a tutorial part to some UML editor.

So what game elements does your software contain, and how are they (supposed to be) helping with education compared to a non-game alternative? I can make a couple of guesses (graphics, "rewards" like the lightbulb, "level progression"), but I'm really not sure and I would like to know, because I think it's interesting.

I understand that gamification doesn't need to be like the games I suggested. But the other way in which I see it used usually has to do with giving out rewards for completion of a task that are in a sense meaningless, but gain value in a group (e.g. badges and accomplishments gain some value if you can show them off). I'm also not seeing any of that in your "game", so I'm wondering what other ways of gamification there are and how they work.

As you might notice, you've mostly answered your own question. The environment is a game, because it is a controlled environment with rules. The elements are not just boxes and lines, they've become items with meaning to the program. Also, there is a giant back-end the user does not get to see.

Gamification lies in subtle differences. A simple game, like "the floor is lava" only adds 1 rule to the living room. Saying this would be not enough gamification to make it an actual game misses the whole point of gamification.

Giving out rewards does not mean gamification, it's quite the opposite in fact. I like to call it "Skinner-boxification", since most people know then immediately what I am talking about. Giving people rewards is a way of engagement, but not 'fun'. I wanted to focus more on the fun than on the engagement in my game.

If you want to know more, google the Skinner box and "Bloom's taxonomy". The former is about engagement and conditioning, the latter about how people learn. Compare the two and you get most of the theory behind gamification without ever reading about gamification.

I hope I've answered your questions with this. If you have more, ask away.

 

[Jordi]

snip

As you might notice, you've mostly answered your own question. The environment is a game, because it is a controlled environment with rules. The elements are not just boxes and lines, they've become items with meaning to the program. Also, there is a giant back-end the user does not get to see.

Gamification lies in subtle differences. A simple game, like "the floor is lava" only adds 1 rule to the living room. Saying this would be not enough gamification to make it an actual game misses the whole point of gamification.

In your opinion, is every "controlled environment with rules" a game? I don't really have a satisfactory definition myself, but it seems like the above one is a little too inclusive. In a way a prison is a controlled environment with rules, but you wouldn't call it a game would you. Also, isn't most software a controlled environment with rules?

I guess my point is that while there is no lower limit to the amount of rules you need to add to a non-game in order to make it a game, you cannot add just any rule and always be done with it. Sure, adding the rule that you cannot touch the floor in your living room will give you "the floor is lava", which is a game. But adding the rule that you can never leave is more like "prison" which isn't a game.

Giving out rewards does not mean gamification, it's quite the opposite in fact. I like to call it "Skinner-boxification", since most people know then immediately what I am talking about. Giving people rewards is a way of engagement, but not 'fun'. I wanted to focus more on the fun than on the engagement in my game.

If you want to know more, google the Skinner box and "Bloom's taxonomy". The former is about engagement and conditioning, the latter about how people learn. Compare the two and you get most of the theory behind gamification without ever reading about gamification.

I hope I've answered your questions with this. If you have more, ask away.

First of all, thanks for taking my criticisms so well. Second, you are right: I was talking about "Skinner-boxification", because I thought that that was actually what (most of) gamification was about. My mistake, I guess.

I looked up "Bloom's taxonomy" on Wikipedia, but I'm not sure how to apply it to gamification. The meat of it seems to be that it advocates engaging the head, the heart and the hands/body. But that just talks about education itself. So what is gamification? Is it looking at an existing educational[footnote]in this case[/footnote] setting that fails to engage one of the three and then adding that? For instance, in your case maybe you tried adding "heart" (in the form of fun) to some "boring" exercises (and maybe also some extra "hands" by allowing direct manipulation). But is just making a task more fun (always) gamification?

 

[snakeakaossi]

In your opinion, is every "controlled environment with rules" a game? I don't really have a satisfactory definition myself, but it seems like the above one is a little too inclusive. In a way a prison is a controlled environment with rules, but you wouldn't call it a game would you. Also, isn't most software a controlled environment with rules?

I guess my point is that while there is no lower limit to the amount of rules you need to add to a non-game in order to make it a game, you cannot add just any rule and always be done with it. Sure, adding the rule that you cannot touch the floor in your living room will give you "the floor is lava", which is a game. But adding the rule that you can never leave is more like "prison" which isn't a game.

To answer this, I need to go REALLY deep and nitpicky. First of all, the word "environment" can mean several things. I don't have dictionary right now, but the difference between the prison and a game is that the prison terms of 'environment' is a perked part of our real world while the game's 'environment' is perked within a certain thinking space. A basic thing about a game is that you can walk away from it without consequences outside the game environment. To the contrary to the prison, where you can't.

We might need to get more philosophical where we even question the very fabric of our existence (no kidding), but this already made my point.

First of all, thanks for taking my criticisms so well. Second, you are right: I was talking about "Skinner-boxification", because I thought that that was actually what (most of) gamification was about. My mistake, I guess.

First: It might have something to do with your Streetfighter avatar. I might feel subconciously intimidated, which makes think twice about what I type.

Second: It's not your mistake, I'm sure. I went to a conference to promote my preliminary research in a seperate workshop and EVEN THERE they did not even think about a difference between gamification and skinner-boxification.

As an example: At the workshop, there was this project where people got achievements when they submitted new versions to a git repository. People got achievements for 20, 50, 75 and 200 submits, but not at 100. The test subjects got terribly mad at that fact. That right there is the anger you see when the Skinner box is over-used.

I looked up "Bloom's taxonomy" on Wikipedia, but I'm not sure how to apply it to gamification. The meat of it seems to be that it advocates engaging the head, the heart and the hands/body. But that just talks about education itself. So what is gamification? Is it looking at an existing educational setting that fails to engage one of the three and then adding that? For instance, in your case maybe you tried adding "heart" (in the form of fun) to some "boring" exercises (and maybe also some extra "hands" by allowing direct manipulation). But is just making a task more fun (always) gamification?

That wikipedia article is infested with new-age (fill in profanities here). Never use the head/heart/body definitions, since the separate domains are not limited to those body parts. You better read this one and its footnotes: http://www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/hrd/bloom.html

Bloom's taxonomy does not explain gamification, but more why education thrives with gamifying. Gamification heavily leans on the affective domain of Bloom's taxonomy and is a great addition to the psychomotor domain. The cognitive domain is a bit under-represented in a game, so that's why you get those long introductions at every puzzle in mine.

I think I get in undefined territory of my research, so I'll have to finish it before I can answer more of your questions. It will be done in a couple of weeks. I'll pm you when I post the full thing here.