Game-based Immersive Learning: Engaging Learning through Tactical, Strategic and Narrative Immersion

When I reflected on Prof Emeritus Dato' Dr Aminah Ayob's talk on Monday (1 April), the following tagline pop-up in my mine:

Game-based Immersive Learning: Engaging Learning through Tactical, Strategic and Narrative Immersion

I remembered in 2009, I wrote an article that gave me a stance in the field of GBL in Europe--GBL with a Dialogic Teaching Approach: Deep Learning and the Use of Spore in A-Level Biology Lessons. I proposed the practice of "GBL with a dialogic teaching approach". 

Now, I would regard this approach as an instance of game-based strategic immersion.




When I was invited by UNIMAS as a discussion panel, a Sarawakian teacher asked the panel to explain why her students did not actually perform well even though they were highly motivated in a gamified lesson. I related her scenario to two psychological effects: the Hawthorne effect and the Dunning-Kruger effect. 

Hawthorne effect (aka the observer effect) a type of reactivity in which learners modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. 

3. Don Norman's three levels of emotional design

4. George A. Merill's Magical Number Seven plus minus two

Slash Career that involve gamification

A school teacher who writes textbook approached me through WhatsApp, asking me about the career prospect in the field of gamification.

To explain, I created the spectrum between GBL and gamification in education. 

Those who said that they practice gamification, they should have aligned at least one component of learning to one component of gamification. As explained in my book, herewith six structural elements of a game:

1) game goal

2) game rules

3) game challenge

4) game interaction

5) game feedback

6) game narrative 

7) game space  

However, if a completed game was used instead of specific game elements, then it is no longer a form gamification. Instead, such use of game in education is called "game-based learning" or GBL. However, there are two prongs of GBL, one is teaching and learning (T&L) through game playing; while another is T&S through making game. In this sense, gamification can be seen as a form of learning through game making. 

Gamification was originally used in marketing commercial products. But now the idea and practice of gamification have been spread to other fields, including education, healthcare, military and business.

To me, the opportunity afforded by the gamification trend now is actually motivating young generation to venture into the game industry (not the field of gamification). Thus, the career prospect in the game industry now can be used in working on gamification tasks, including game designers, programmers, game graphic artists, game testers, etc. 

For teachers who are interested to make the T&L in the classroom game-like, they may:

1) gamify the T&L themselves by aligning learning standards with game components

2) hire game designers and other experts in the game industry to produce serious game for their T&L practice

3) cooperate with game designers and other experts to practice gamification together. 

Whatever the case, both parties should professionally communicate to each other to avoid misunderstanding, particularly in matters related to content knowledge and pedagogy.

Nowadays, career in the 21st century is rather uncertain. For example, the rise of gamification was not planned in the education blueprint that was set a few years ago. Thus we should educate our students to think flexible, i.e. not only venturing into existing career in the job market, but also be ready for new and emerging fields, or be creative in creating new career path for themselves. 

One recent phenomena is the emergence of slash lifestyle, in which we no longer focus on one job in our life. Like me, apart from being an associate professor in UPSI, I am also: 2017/2018 Humphrey Fellow | Game-based Learning Specialist | Educationalist | Columnist | IJGBL Assoc Editor, as shown in my LinkedIn Profile.  

In this sense, teacher is no longer limited to teaching in school alone. A teacher who are well-verse in using games in teaching and like to write books can be: Teacher | Game-based Learning Specialist | Author. 

Reading notes on “Assessment in Game-based Learning: Foundations, Innovations, and Perspectives”

Pre-reading questions:

1.       Apart from criterion-referenced, norm-referenced and ipsative assessment which are associated to objectivism, subjectivism, emotivism and relativism, what other assessment methods or approaches can be applied in GBL?

Favorable learning environment:

-          Learner-centered

-          Knowledge-centered

-          Assessment-centered

Key question to be addressed by authors in this book:

-          how do we know if students have learned in games? (cognitive, affective and psychomotor changes)

-          What do we assess? (pre-playing preparation, in-game performance, off-game reflection, four levels of evaluation)

-          How do we assess students’ learning outcomes in a GBL environment? (3 methods)

Three parts of the book:

Part 1: Foundations of GBA

-          Chapter 2: Three frameworks for assessing learning from, with, and in games

-          Chapter 3: Formative assessment – role, theory, construct generation & refinement, test item development

-          Chapter 4: how to embed assessments within games to provide a way to monitor player’s current level on valued competencies, in order to provide learning support

-          Chapter 5: Three things game designers need to know about assessment

Part 2: Technological and methodological innovations for assessing GBL

-          Chapter 6: Patterns of game playing behavior as indicators of mastery

-          Chapter 7: How to build an automated assessment prototype within an open-ended 3D environment

-          Chapter 8: Information-trails approach

-          Chapter 9: Timed report tool  

-          Chapter 10: computer-adaptive testing and hidden Markov modeling – assessing learning dialog

-          Chapter 11: TPACK-PCARD framework and methodology

-          Chapter 12: MAPLET

-          Chapter 13: assessment technologies in educational games for young students

Part 3: Realizing assessment in GBL

-          Chapter 14: interactivity design and assessment framework for educational games to promote motivation and complex problem-solving skills

-          Chapter 15: Measurement principles

-          Chapter 16: how to use institutional data to evaluate game-based instructional designs

-          Chapter 17: incongruous use of 2D media-avatar drawings and 3D media-math-based digital gameplay

-          Chapter 18: Trends in assessing learner motivation

-          Chapter 19: Trends in assessing emotion

-          Chapter 20: Design model for obtaining diverse learning outcomes

-          Chapter 21: Preparing computer games for future learning

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Chapter 2: Three frameworks for assessing learning from, with, and in games

(Copyright of the original publisher)

The decisions involved in integrating educational games in education as they lead and inform assessment

Reaction: There is no actual “frameworks” presented in the paper. Perhaps, the best we can learn from this chapter is how three different games (Brainage, Spore & World of Warcraft) of three different genres (puzzle, simulation game & MMORPG) can be used to assess learning. Nonetheless, the figure included in the chapter can help educators (not game designers though) to think about issues and aspects related to assessment in GBL.

Chapter 3: Formative assessment – role, theory, construct generation & refinement, test item development

Role of formative assessment: to provide

-          information directly to students to inform them of the adequacy of their learning and performance

-          direction for improvement (Wiliam & Black, 1996)

Two types of evidence that can be collected during formative assessment (Wiliam & Black, 1996):

-          Purposive = evidence collected through deliberate provision of assessments to students

-          Incidental = evidence that is spontaneously and continuously generated

Two ways of formative assessment administration:

-          Through a teacher [employs debriefing sessions (Delacrus, 2010)]

o   Students respond to questions orally or in writing; teacher gives feedback accordingly

o   Teacher uses rubrics to guide assessment in debriefing sessions

o   Teacher provides rubrics directly to students, allowing students to self-assess or assess the performance of peers.

o   If scoring rules for the games are tied to learning goals, then tying the rubric to scoring rules can make assessment transparent (Delacruz, 2010)  

-          Embedded within a game

Theory underlying formative assessment:

How to generate construct

How to refine construct after generation

How to develop test items

How I reviewed literature related to GBL when I was a PhD student

When I was a PhD student (2008 - 2011), I learned how to review literature. I found the following notes which I did not use eventually in my thesis, but I am using them to show my students how literature review can be a fun dialogue I have with other academics!

Evidences of effective game-based learning:

Author	Claims	My perception
Molenda & Sullivan, 2003	Among problem solving and intergrated learning systems, games and simulations are among the least used technology applications in education.	I think this evidence is a bit out of date. By the time I completed my dissertation next year; this would be nearly 7 years ago. So I need newer evidence to support my agreement upon his statement.
Cole, 1996	Long-term game playing has a positive effect on students’ learning.	Although this evidence is outdated, it seems worth to dig out the nature and context of Cole’s study. Like what kind of game playing? How long is considered long? What is the positive effect, ie which domain of learning?
Gredler, 1996	Intellectual skills and “cognitive strategies” are acquired during academic games (p. 525).	Another out-of-date evidence. Why scare quote? What does she mean by academic games?
Gredler, 1994	Certain games require only simple skills such as recall of verbal or visual elements rather than higher-order skills and as a result, provide environments for winning by guessing.	Agree with her claim.
Prensky, 2001; Provenzo, 1992	Especially with the non-stop speedy games, the opportunity to stop and think critically about the experience is lessened.	Need to look to the similar claim in Prensky (2007).
Csikszentmihalyi, 1990	During an enjoyable activity, insufficient amount of time is devoted for thinking and reflection.	The key text on the effect of GBL.
Greenfield, 1984	Games are claimed to have cognitive development effects on visual skills including “spatial representation”, “iconic skills”, and “visual attention”.	Good evidence. Need to find out what does he meant by those visual skills. Secondary citation, need to trace from Prensky, 2001, p.45.
Greenfield et al, 1994	As players become more skilled in games, their visual attention becomes proportionally better.	On what basis they made this claim? It would be interesting to see how Greenfield retained or changed his thought after 10 years.
Rieber, 1996	Critical thinking and problem-solving skills,	I can said since the beginning of game used in education, its potential had been identified in 80s, 90s and 2000s. It would be worth to table the research done by others chronologically.  But in old days, games were not as multimedia-rich as nowadays.
Price, 1990	Drawing meaningful conclusions,
Gorriz & Medina, 2000; Greenfield, 1984, cited in Prensky, 2001; Price, 1990	Some inductive discovery skills like observation, trial and error and hypothesis testing
Prensky, 2001; Provenzo, 1992	Some strategies of exploration
Subrahmanyam  et al, 2001	Playing computer games con provide training opportunities for gaining computer literacy.
Prensky, 2001	Games can be used in order to help people gain some familiarity with the computer hardware.
Rieber, 1996	Games motivate learners to take responsibility for their own learning, which leads to intrinsic motivation contained by the method itself.	See Rieber above.
Malone (1980) and Malone & Lepper (1987)	Define four characteristics of games that contribute to increases in motivation and eagerness for learning. These are challenge, fantasy, curiosity, and control. Challenges in a game tend to fight students’ boredom and keep them engaged with the activity by means of adjusted levels of difficulty. Fantasy in a game increases enthusiasm by providing an appealing imaginary context, whereas curiosity offers interesting, surprising, and novel contexts that stimulates students’ needs to explore the unknown. Finally, the control characteristic gives learners the feeling of self-determination.
Rieber (1996)	Gaming elements have a relationship with enjoyable activities that enable the ‘flow’ stage	Maybe he is the first who link flow stage and game playing.
Prensky, 2001	Gaming activities have the potential to engross the learner into a state of flow and consequently cause better learning through focus and pleasant rewards.
Rosas et al, 2003	increasing their motivation and attainment
Gredler, 1996; Prensky, 2001; Price, 1990; Provenzo, 1992	Other characteristics that ensure the effectiveness of GBL are their engagement and interactivity, and active participation	Must dig out all literature.
Gredler, 1994; Melone, 1980; Prensky, 2001; Rieber, 1996.	Games provide a great deal of highly interactive feedback, which is crucial to learning
Prensky, 2001	“Practice and feedback, learning by doing, learning from mistakes, goal oriented learning, discovery learning, task-based learning, question-based learning, situated learning, role playing, coaching, constructivist learning, multi-sensory learning” are applicable interactive learning techniques, when learning through games (p. 157).	Prensky’s claims are not research-based.
Dempsey et al, 1998; Dempsey et al, 1996	Computer games can be considered powerful tools for increasing learning.
Prensky, 2001	Learning can best take place when there is high engagement, and he proposes “digital game-based learning” which has potential for achievement of the necessary “high learning” through “high engagement” (p. 149). High engagement, interactive learning process, and the way the two are put together will guarantee the sound working  of digital GBL.

Akili, G.K. (2007) Games and simulations: a new approach in education? In Gibson, D., Aldrich, C. and Prensky, M. (Eds.), Games and simulations in online learning: research and development frameworks (pp. 1-20), London, Information Science Publishing.

Dempsey, J. V., Lucassen, B. A., Haynes, L. L., & Casey, M. S. (1998). Instructional applications of computer games. In J.J. Hirschbuhl & D. Bishop (Eds.), Computer studies: Computers in education (8th ed., pp. 85-91). Guilford, CT: Dushkin/MaGraw Hill.

Dempsey, J. V., Rasmussen, K., & Lucassen, B. (1996). The instructional gaming literature: Implications and 99 sources (Tech. Rep. No. 96-1). Mobile, AL: University of South Alabama, College of Education. [available] http://www.coe.usouthal.edu/TechReports/TR96_1.pdf [broken link]

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. 521-539). New York: Macmillan.  

Heinich, R., Molenda, M., Russell, J. D., & Smaldino, S. E. (2002). Instructional media and technologies for learning (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Turkle, S. (1984). Video games and computer holding power. In The second self: Computers and the human spirit (pp. 64-92). New York: Simon and Schuster.

Author(s)	Genre	My views
Prensky, 2001	Action, puzzle, educational, fighting/combat, sports, racing, role play/adventure, flight, shoot’em, violence, non-violent sports, sports violence, and simulation games.	I need to clearly demarcate them according to author and source.
Alessi & Trollip, 2001
Funk et al, 1999
Media Analysis Laboratory, 1999
Yelland & Lloyd, 2001

References:

Alessi, G. K. & Trollip, S. R. (2001). Multimedia for learning: Methods and development (3rd ed.) Boston: Allyn and Bacon Publication.

Funk, J. B., Hagan, J., & Schimming, J. (1999). Children and electronic games: A comparison of parents' and children's perceptions of children's habits and preferences in a United States Sample. Psychological Reports, 85(3), 883-888.

Media Analysis Laboratory, Simon Fraser University, B.C. (1998). Video game culture: Leisure and play of B.C. teens [online] http://www.mediaawareness.ca/eng/ISSUES/VIOLENCE/RESOURCE/reports/vgames.html [broken link]

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Yelland, N. & Lloyd, M. (2001). Virtual kids of the 21st century: Understanding the children in schools today. Information Technology in Childhood Education Annual, 13(1), 175-192.

Academics’ definitions

Author(s)	Definition	My views
Baudrillard, 1983	An interactive abstraction or simplification of some real life.	Need demarcation
Heinich et al, 2002
Alessi & Trollip, 2001	Any attempt to imitate a real or imaginary environment or system	Need demarcation
Reigeluth & Schwartz, 1989
Thurman, 1993
Tessmer et al, 1989	A simulated real-life scenario displayed on the computer, which the student has to act upon (p. 89).
Prensky, 2001	Depending on what it is doing, a simulation can be a story, it can be a game, it can be a toy (p. 128).	Check with version 2007
Akili, 2007	Game-like learning environments, which are authentic or simulated places, where learning is fostered and supported especially by seamless integration of motivating game elements, such as challenge, curiosity, and fantasy.	So, it is only game-like, not actually a game.

Association between game and simulation

Jacobs & Dempsey, 1993:

The distinction between simulation and games is often blurred, and that many recent articles in this area refer to a single “simulation game” entity.

Similarities
Gredler, 1996	Both contain a model of some kind of system In both of them learners can observe the consequences of their actions, such as changes occurred in variable, values, or specific actions
Jacobs & Dempsey, 1993

Differences
Author(s)	Game	Simulation
Gredler, 1996	Participants are attempting to win the objective of games	Participants are executing serious responsibilities with privileges that result in associated consequences.
	The event sequence is typically linear: The player or a team in many games respond to a content-related question and either advance or do not advance depending on the answer, which is repeated for each player or team at each turn.	The event sequence is non-linear: Participants are confronted with different problems, issues, or events caused mainly by their prior decisions made at each decision point.
	The mechanisms that determine the consequences to be conveyed for different action taken by the players.
	Games consist of rules that describe allowable moves, constraints, privilege, and penalties for illegal (non-permissable) actions. The rules may be totally imaginative, unrelated to real world or events.	A simulation is based on dynamic set(s) of relationships among several variables that change over time and reflect authentic causal processes. The processes should possess, embody, and result in verifiable relationships.
Prensky, 2001	In order to become games, simulations need additional structural elements—fun, play, rules, a goal, winning, competition, etc (p. 212)

Characteristics of games:

Author(s)	Characteristics of games	My views
Price, 1990	One or more players (decision makes), rules of play, one or more goals that the players are trying to reach, conditions introduced by chance, a spirit of competition, a strategy or pattern of action-choices to be taken by the players, a feedback system for revealing the state of the game, and a winning player or team (p. 52).
Alessi & Trollip, 2001	Turn-taking, fantasy, equipment, and some combination of skill versus luck (p. 271).

Educational Use of Games and Simulations

History / Background

Author(s)	Evidence	My views
Dempsey et al, 1998	There is evidence that the use of games as instructional tools dates back to 3000 B.C. in China	This is a very good starting point which I could use to set the overall scene for games used in education. However, the author had to stick to “games and simulations” instead of “games” alone—a problem I don’t have to face.
Gredler, 1996	Nevertheless, games and simulations did not become a part of the formal field of instructional design until the early 1970s, despite their entrance into the educational scene in the late 1950s	Hopefully, there are some examples of titles provided in the original source.
Seels & Richie, 1994	In those times audio-visual specialists saw the potential of games and simulations but not of video or electronic games	What do the authors mean?

Problems

Author(s)	Evidence	My views
Gredler, 1996	There are two major problems that instructional designers encounter: -          There are no available comprehensive design paradigms -          The lack of well-designed research studies.	I agree with this.
	While the literature on games and simulations is growing, a majority of the research studies report on perceived student reactions preceded by vague descriptions of games and simulations or on comparisons of simulations versus regular classroom instruction.
Dede, 1996; Dempsey et al, 1998	The more important questions that need further research remain unanswered: -          How to incorporate games into learning environments? -          How do students learn best through games and simulations? -          What are the significant impacts of games and simulations on learning that differentiate them from other forms of online teaching?	Am I trying to answer one or some of these questions?
Rieber, 1996	Technological innovations provide new opportunities for interactive learning environments that can be integrated with and validated by theories of learning.	I disagree as I buy Prensky’s idea on how to learn what.
Prensky, 2001	Underscores the need for change in instructional design by claiming that much of the instruction currently provided through computer assisted instruction and Web-based technologies does not contribute to learning, rather it subtracts. People do not want to be included in such learning “opportunities” offered via “new wine into old bottles” innovative technologies, unless they have to, since these learning “opportunities” possess still the same boring content and same old fashioned strategy as traditional education (pp. 92-92).