How to design games for education? Step 1: Problem identification

Today, my student asked how to design a courseware for learning integer at Form 1. To me courseware is a form of games for education. So I share my answer to her here: "You should begin with problem identification, by answering the following questions:

1. Why do students need to use your courseware (read as game here) to learn Integer? 
2. What are the intended learning outcomes under this topic?
3. Who will use this courseware (students or teacher)?
4. When and where will they use the courseware (in classroom or at home)?
5. How teachers normally teach integer in the classroom?
6. How would teachers teach if they choose to use courseware?
7. How do you want the users (teachers and learners) to feel when using the courseware?
8. What are the learning contents and design materials you need to deliver the contents and the feeling they expected?

I adviced her to work with an actual Math school teacher, or at least a trainee teacher. Let's wait and see what are her answers...

Two types of multimedia elements in GBL

I had a chat over FB with a student under my supervision this morning:

She asked me, "Dr, the format and multimedia element mean the storyboard content??"

Herewith my answer:

There are two types of multimedia elements: learning content that should be provided by subject matter expert, in which you need to work with a Math expert, or at least of BEd Maths student; and design elements which are text, audio, video, animation and still graphics that you need to DESIGN for you to author (means deliver the learning content for effective and efficient learning).

The storyboard is a series of visual documents you create to demonstrate how you have designed (using multimedia elements to deliver learning content) the course ware. 

Having answered her question, I think she did not memorize what she was taught in the class. Or, worse, she forgot what she had memorized for exam right after the exam. I think for mastery of knowledge and skills, we should memorize enough basic concepts in our field of study, to the extent that we can construct our own definitions if not revising existing definitions of key concepts. When we realise we can actually define concepts in our field of expertise, we are becoming a Master in the field.

How to be a top scientist in games related R&D?

I received a forwarded letter from Top Research Scientist Malaysia. The letter invites scientists in Malaysia to register themselves in a database for search by relevant agencies or bodies. Herewith the criteria of selection which I taken from TRSM website. Now I start to think how games related scientists can become top scientists:

Section A - Knowledge Generation

1. Leadership in research
   1. Total number of research projects as Principal Investigator (PI)
      • International
      • National
   2. Cumulative value of grants received as PI (RM)
      • International
      • National

Section B - Knowledge Dissemination

1. Publications
   1. Publications in indexed journals/ books/ chapter in  books/ monographs/ articles in professional or scientific magazines as corresponding author
2. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
   1. International
   • Patent granted
   • Patent pending
   2. National
   • Patent granted
   • Patent pending
   3. Industrial design/ Copyright/ Trademark
3. Scientific Presentations
   1. International
   • Keynote speaker
   • Plenary speaker
   2. National
   • Keynote speaker
   • Plenary speaker
   3. Number of appearances as invited Guest speaker/ Panelist in mass media in the area of expertise
4. Human Resource Development
   1. Graduated PhD students supervised (for IHLs staff only main supervision will be considered)
   2. Graduated Master students supervised (for IHLs only main supervision will be considered)
   3. Graduated Research Trainees/ Research Officers supervised

Section C - Impact of Research Outputs

1. Cumulative citations received and Hirsch-index in either Thomson Reuters WOS or Scopus database.
2. Commercialisation attained
   1. Technologies commercialised with sales and/or royalties
   2. Spin-off/ joint venture companies resulting from commercialisation of IPR
   3. Cumulative gross sales  and/or royalties from commercialisation of R&D products (RM)
3. Academic Awards from Government, Professional and Learned Bodies
   1. International
   2. National
4. Recognition, Professional Leadership (Including Appointments to a Chair, Visiting Professorship, Editors of Books/ Journals/ Citation-Indexed Conference Proceedings/ Technical Guidelines)
   1. Number of recognitions and membership in international bodies or professional associations
   2. Number of recognitions and membership in national bodies or professional associations
5. Lead Consultant in Projects with Monetary Rewards
   1. Number of consultancy projects
   • International
   • National
   2. Cumulative value of consultancy projects (RM)
6. Impact of Research Towards  Wealth Creation and Societal Well-being (highlight the significance of the contribution)

The Vision of Game-based University

I have a vision. The vision indicates that in 17 years from now, the nature and characteristics of universities would evolve to become game-based learning entities. There would be a need to redefine the concept of “university”, in order to reflect its roles and responsibilities to human society.

In 2050, university would become a place to learn universal knowledge and skills in any subject matters. Its backbone has been set up—the Internet. The issue with the status quo of Internet now is that there is an absence of content evaluation, at least to most of the contents posted online. Self-regulation is not sufficient because those who practice it might not have the authority and / or capability in determining the level of reliability or trustworthiness of the contents.  To establish such capability would take time, effort and financial resources, but I believe this is achievable in 17 years. Once this is done, the issue would become a non-issue. I began 

University should be a place of learning for everybody, or in extreme scenario, for certain animals. My mother has never studied in school in her life, but she is an intelligent woman who knows a lot about Malaysian Chinese children’s learning—better than me who has a PhD in education; and she is very skillful in handling household matters—better than my wife who is a medical doctor. To me, she deserves at least a diploma in household management, but there is no way the current formal educational system in Malaysia could accept her for an academic course or programme. However, with the advancement of Web 2.0 technology and game-based learning technology, my mother could learn a lot through internet and games. Talking about games, I still remember that when my sister and I bought our first game console using our angpow in 1990, the Famicom, my mother played along with us and always beat us in certain games like Tetris, Snooker etc. Today, after my sister bought her a Samsung Galaxy Tablet, she continues to beat me in mobile games like Candy Crush Saga. Indeed, I am proud of her in-game achievement. In the case of animals, I have been viewing YouTube videos featuring how animals "play" games on iPhone, iPad, etc.

YouTube video: Reptile Playing Ant Crusher

YouTube video: Cat's painting on iPad

I remember reading a science fiction, titled Ready Player One by Ernest Cline last year when I stayed in San Francisco. The fictional world depicted in the book highlights that the Internet and gaming culture have evolved into a creation known as OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation), a massively multiplayer online simulation game. Whoever has access to the OASIS can receive free education, discarding the barriers of social and economical background.

To preview how a primitive version of OASIS as of now, I am taking courses offered by Open Learning. The first course that I take is Gamification, conducted by Dr. Tom Benjamin from University of NSW. Why not you all have a try yourself too?

Appointment as a fellow at Education Research Lab

According to a memo I received, I has been appointed as a fellow at the Education Research Lab (EduLab @ UPSI) or Makmal Penyelidikan Pendidikan, UPSI since June 2013. From what I understand, a fellow appointed in the Lab is a member who work together with other fellows in the pursuit of mutual knowledge or practice in educational research. However, as fellows are not paid to work in the lab, the contribution is solely voluntarily.

I have been proposing the establishment of an educational creative content design and development unit in UPSI. While the idea is welcomed and supported mentally by colleagues in UPSI, multiple challenges await me ahead to realise the proposal. Eventually, I found an ideal canopy that suits the unit, that is the Education Research Lab. And because of this, I had been appointed as a fellow to put the proposal into practice.

Then I began to think about the issues of the Lab in UPSI:

1. The need of branding EduLab @ UPSI as a vivid and tangible vision.
2. The need of a role model of EduLab @ UPSI that we can refer to in achieving success.
3. The need of measurable strategies to leverage the profile of EduLab @ UPSI in Public Service, in private sectors, and at international level.

The EduLab @ UPSI should have raised its national and international profile rapidly--making the whole world know our presence, and more importantly, spare their hands to bring EduLab @ UPSI up for the benefit of Malaysia and Asia. To achieve this, we need to initiate traditional media (slow and costly) and social media promotion (free of charge and effective proven) of our presence and what we offer.

I came across the Education Innovation Lab at Harvard University (http://www.edlabs.harvard.edu/) a simple but straight forward role model which I think UPSI can replicate. I really like to idea of "teaching in the future classroom" advocated by the newly appointed Director, Assoc Prof Dr. Nurulhuda Abd Rahman. I am thinking of making people I am connected to as partners of the Lab, particularly in visualising and realising classroom for the future. Example of activities that they can sponsor is organisation design and/ or essay writing contest at school, university and open levels on "my dream classroom" or "classroom for the future".

The need for a virtual consultation provision platform

After returning to Malaysia, my former colleagues in the oversea intend to keep in touch with me, particularly when they need advice on game-based learning and learn-based gaming practices. I personally see this as an opportunity to raise the profile of UPSI at global R&D arena while at the same time offer me chances to provide oversea consultation service. 

Ideally, distance consultation services could be offered through tele- or video-conferencing mechanism, such as Skype or Facebook. The problem of using existing online communication tools like Skype or Facebook is that the tools do not link to service invoicing and paying mechanism, i.e. charging clients systematically at a predetermined price. The payment of consultation fee would have to direct into UPSI account, and this mechanism is absent in the current consultation system. 

Besides, when academics like me try to offer consultation services to oversea clients, particularly those who physically stay in different time zones, I usually face the following information and communication technology (ICT) and management challenges:

• the need for flexible consultation modes (synchronous and asynchronous); 
• the requirement of a slot booking and scheduling mechanism;
• the collection of consultation fee from clients in oversea;
• the fluctuation of conversion rate; and 
• the reliability of online security and cross-national confidentiality. 

I propose to design a business model for the above mentioned consultation service provision. Once the model is ready, a prototype of the consultation service provision and management system will be developed to tackle the challenged stated above.

As UPSI has been sponsoring academics to oversea to pursue master's and PhD, I believe UPSI scholars might encounter similar needs to offer consultation services to their former colleagues in foreign countries. Therefore the proposed system could benefit other academics in UPSI as well.

Exposure to PBL and Thinking-based Learning (TBL) - how to practice PBL and TBL in GBL?

What I knew about PBL prior the exposure:

I see problem as a form of challenge, that is one of the structural elements of game. The nature of learning outcome (LO) in PBL would be problem solved. Learning occurs in the problem solving process.

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Traditional approach:
Teachers + Contents + Learners = Teacher-centred

PBL approach:
Problem-solver + Problem + Facilitator = Student-centred

-------------------------

The nature of problem in PBL

- ill-structured
- require making assumptions
- includes a hook

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When I flashed back, I actually had practised PBL in MRE3014 Design Aesthetics course recently. I browsed through the web and found a journal (http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ijpbl/) which I can report my practice of PBL.

-----------------------

Teaching of thinking: explaining the nature, types and characteristics of thinking
- emphasize on thinking skills.
Teaching for thinking: teaching content and the approach supports students to think
- emphasize learning contents.
Thinking in thinking: infuse teaching contents in thinking. (TBL)
- emphasize both thinking skills and the learning content.

Three components: skilful thinking, meta-cognition, habits of mind

Positive habits of mind: mental habits or disposition that enhance thinking thus making it more effective and therefore more skilful.

Scientific reasoning skills: STEM (Science, technology, Engineering, Mathematics)
------------------------
Thinking strategy maps for classifying deductively.
1. What are the categories that you want to classify the given items under?
2. What are the defining characteristics of these categories?
3. What are the characteristics of the items?
4. Based on their characteristics, what categories do the items fall under?
5.

Training Teachers for the Future - workshop conducted by Assoc Prof Dr. Nurulhuda

I was attracted by a workshop titled "Training Teachers for the Future" two weeks ago. I started to think about how teachers for the future would be like when I did my PhD in Warwick Institute of Education. I self-brainstormed to conceptualize the characteristics of technology-enabled teachers (see Tan, Johnston-Wilder & Neill). Herewith the characteristics that I conceptualised:

With these mindset, I enrolled myself into the course. The course is conducted by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nurulhuda. 

TBD...

How to prepare interactive lecture notes?

This morning, during my invigilation of exam, I received an invitation from HRD to run a workshop on “Interactive Lecture Notes”. I am grateful for this invitation because I have been thinking about how to prepare an interactive lecture recently. At the end of the current semester, I gave my MRE3014 Design Aesthetic students an opportunity to criticize and improve my lecture notes. These students did not do well in their mid-term test and they requested to “make-good” of their score, hence the idea of challenging them to criticize and revise my lecture notes. Herewith the selected feedback, suggestion and revision I received from them:

• Survey the language competency and expectation of students at the beginning of semester 
• Dual-language notes 
• Colourful slides 
• Background music and appropriate sound effects 
• In-lecture reflexion plus Q&A session 
• Include physical activity as intermission, e.g. debate, discussion in small groups 
• Enrich the lecture notes with relevant or provocative graphics or images as examples 
• Include relevant animation or video 
• Insert hyperlink to every slide for self-pace learning after class 

Their suggestion and views are genuine because they went through the lesson and sufferred from the use of non-interactive lecture notes—although all of them enjoyed my lecture which filled with a lot of interesting stories. In a word, they need an interactive lecture note, at least for after class revision.

To me, Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction is still applicable, and I am going to revise all my lecture notes to make them interactive using Gagne’s approach and ADDIE instructional design model.

Before diving into revising the notes, I need to study the nature of “interactive lecture notes”. I believe that in the context of student-centred learning, lecture notes are interactive if they are embedded with educational technology or media that empowers students:

• to engage with the lecture in classroom or in e-learning environment; 
• to retain memory of events happened during lecture (interaction between lecturer and students or between lecturer and lecture note); 
• to conduct post-lesson self-pace learning or revision (remedial of learning); 
• to initiate post-lesson discovery learning (enhancement of learning); 
• to prepare for upcoming lesson. 

In other words, the interactivity of lecture notes can be grouped into three phases of a lesson, i.e. pre-lesson, during the lesson, and post-lesson. Both pre- and post-lesson are off-class or beyond class period; while during the lesson is in-class or during the conduct of lecture, which could be conducted in a physical classroom or in e-learning environment.

After clarifying my thought, now I have set the learning outcomes for the two-day workshop, that is “upon the completion of the workshop, the participants should be able to make interactive lecture notes”. And the lecture notes should enable students to:

• engage with the lecture when it is being delivered either in a classroom or through e-learning environment; 
• recall events happened during lecture that can become memory cues of learning content; 
• conduct revision of the lesson at their own pace; 
• explore materials beyond the given learning contents; and 
• prepare for upcoming lesson or lecture. 

Having thought through the intended learning outcomes of the workshop, I need to prepare the contents of the workshop. Since an interactive lecture note should achieve five learning outcomes, I decided to break the contents of the workshop into five parts.

Part 1: How to prepare an interactive lecture note that engages students in the lesson? 

To answer this question (the title), I decided to use Prezi. First of all, I registered myself for a Edu Account, and then downloaded Prezi Desktop for Windows.

The use of Prezi resolved the issues highlighted by my students as I turned one of my PowerPoint slides, titled "Effective Presentation" from a monotonous colour scheme slide into a colourful presentation with animated transitions. Herewith the Prezi:

Effective Presentation

Apart from Prezi, I also used Socrative to conduct in-class quizzes and survey. As the answers given by individual students can be recorded in Excel file, I can keep track of students' performance over time.

Part 2: How to prepare an interactive lecture note using mnemonics?

I came across the Supermemo Model developed by Dr. Piotr Wozniak, SuperMemo Research, Poland. Herewith an interesting chart called "forgetting index".



Source: http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1605/ff_wozniak_graph_f.jpg

I also tried his Supermemo 2004 software and discovered the 20 rules of formulating knowledge:

1. Do not learn if you do not understand 
2. Learn before you memorize 
3. Build upon the basics 
4. Stick to the minimum information principle: (simple is easy & repetitions of simple items are easier to schedule) 
5. Cloze deletion is simple and effective 
6. Use imagery 
7. Use mnemonic techniques 
8. Graphic deletion is as good as cloze deletion 
9. Avoid sets 
10. Avoid enumerations (列举；细目) 
11. Combat interference 
12. Optimize wording 
13. Refer to other memories 
14. Personalize and provide other examples 
15. Rely on emotional states 
16. Context cues simplify wording 
17. Redundancy does not contradict minimum information principle 
18. Provide sources 
19. Provide date stamping 
20. Prioritize 

Herewith the website if you intend to discover more about the supermemo model.

http://www.supermemo.com/


Part 3: How to prepare an interactive lecture note that facilitates self-pace revision?

Part 4: How to prepare an interactive lecture note that encourages discovery learning?

Part 5: How to prepare an interactive lecture note that motivates preparation for upcoming lesson?

Why digital GBL is not practical in Malaysia yet

I conducted a training in UPSI today. The theme of the training course is "Aplikasi Teknologi Inovatif Dalam P&P" or "Application of Innovative Technologies in Teaching and Learning". I knew the participants would be my colleagues in UPSI, whom I believe should have been well-verse in conventional technologies in teaching and learning activities. Towards the end of the course, one of the colleagues questioned me the relevance of the content I delivered with the theme set by BSM.

Saya nampak tajuk training ni, ingat ia berkaitan dengan pendedahan pelbagai teknologi pendidikan, bukan guna games sahaja..."

At heart, I was stunned by this question. And then I had a long chat with a senior colleague after the training session, herewith the comments and questions (not actual quotes):

"Guna komputer tu kira advanced la..."

"Apakah ciri-ciri utama GBL berbanding dengan lain-lain kaedah P&P?"

"UPSI perlu ada guideline dan teori-teori GBL yang tersendiri."

"Kursus macam ni perlukan dua hari: hari pertama tu mula dengan Game Design for GBL; hari kedua kena ada hands on, di mana perserta diminta untuk bawa RI atau lesson plan sendiri, dan cuba jadikan ia GBL. Lepas tu ada presentation, yang mana you comment samada peserta buat dengan betul ke tidak."

"Kebanyakan sekolah di Malaysia, komputer pun tak de, so nak guna kaedah digital GBL tu susah. So kita perlukan GBL yang bukan digital. Contohnya, macam guna board game..."

"Saya masih tercari-cari keunikan GBL berbanding dengan kaedah lain."

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I am a proponent of digital GBL, in UK and US. And I am trying to promote digital GBL in Malaysia now. It seems like digital GBL has been perceived as something "very advanced" to all the participants, and they wish to practice non-digital GBL.

I asked the colleague what would be seen advanced? She said anything that requires computer is considered as advanced; and digital GBL can only be practiced successfully in universities or colleges, instead of schools. Most of the schools have limited computers that is available for teaching and learning--this view was conflicting with another colleague whom I  spoke to after lunch break. Perhaps they were talking about different school types.

Now I am in a dilemma: should I continue focusing on digital GBL or moving backward to establish non-digital GBL here in UPSI? The ideal scenario would be covering both in one shot. Like what the senior colleague suggested, that is to start with designing games for GBL practice, and then specializing in two sub-types: non-digital GBL and then digital GBL. The scope of coverage should be comprehensive, i.e. starting from induction setting and informing LOs, and ending with various forms of GBL assessments.

It would be great if there are case studies of how non-digital and digital GBL were practiced in Malaysia, and guidelines for teachers or educators to follow in designing and developing their own games for their own GBL practices. From these case studies, UPSI would be able to establish teaching and learning principles and theories for use in Malaysia, using Robert Yin's (2009) analytical generalization theory development approach.

To achieve this ideal scenario, I need to first come out with some guidelines for GBL practice, probably in the form of module or a book. Next, the guidelines must be implemented and tested in actual classrooms across different subject matters, and each practice would be documented and studied as a case. And the end of the studies, cross-case analysis would be carried out to develop theories and principles, as opposed to the initial guidelines, for non-digital and digital GBL practice in Malaysia. Hence UPSI's theories and principles for GBL.