Pablo Moreno-Ger’s blog

By the end of November, I attended the DIGITEL 2008 conference in Banff, Canada. This is the IEEE conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning and, as such, there were a lot of interesting papers about game-based learning. The papers are already available at IEEE Xplore.

Our paper, also available as a draft at the <e-UCM> website, described our first steps towards the implementation of a mobile version of the <e-Adventure> platform:

Pablo Lavín-Mera, Pablo Moreno-Ger, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón: Development of educational videogames in m-Learning contexts. Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning (DIGITEL 2008), pp. 44-51. Banff, Canada. (IEEE Computer Society). 2008

This article is part of Pablo Lavín’s Master Thesis, a project that I’m proud to be directing.

During the conference I met a lot of great fellows, including a group of European grad students that are researching in game-based learning:

From left to right, they are Hanno Hildmann (German, but residing in the UK), Sheryl Wu (from Taiwan, neither grad student nor european, but great anyway), Neil Peirce (from Ireland) and Rikki Prince (from the UK). And yes, it was very very cold.

Travelling to Banff was difficult and expensive, but the location was really awesome. Apart from the work bits, we went all the way up to the mountains with the Banff Gondola, did some hiking in the forest, spotted wild animals and threw rocks into a couple of iced ponds. I would say we had a lot of fun. And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?

Last Monday I found myself surprisingly walking the streets of Maastricht after having lived there for almost 2 months. I went there to attend the First Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Gaming (STEG08), a part of the 2008 European Conference on Web-based Learning (ECTEL 2008).

There, I presented a joint work with researchers from Complutense University, the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science and RWTH Aachen, combining the MIST platform and the <e-Adventure> platform to create story-driven educational games. The idea is to use MIST to create interactive stories and then export these stories as <e-Adventure> game skeletons. The skeletons can then be refined (fleshed?) using the <e-Adventure> editor. The result is a two-step process that enables the creation of good educational games with solid stories, or more attractive interactive stories with game elements. This is our second report on this work, focusing on metadata interoperbility.

If you are interested in knowing some more about this project, you can check this reference on the <e-UCM> website:

Marc Spaniol, Yiwei Cao, Ralf Klamma, Pablo Moreno-Ger, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, José Luis Sierra, Georgios Toubekis: From Story-Telling to Educational Gaming: The Bamiyan Valley Case. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2008), Jinhua, China. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5145, pp. 253-264. 2008

Following this line of collaboration with our German friends, Yiwei Cao presented the brand new version of the MIST project, called PESE. It mostly focuses on increasing the collaborative nature of the original project.

There were also a couple of presentations from the 80 Days project. I was surprised by how their discourse resembles ours. In fact, I could have used several of their slides in my thesis presentation as the introduction and identification of objectives.

Unfortunately, they have the support of the VII Framework Program and we don’t (for non-Europeans or non-researchers: the FP is the way in which the EU injects huge amounts of money into research projects). In any case, it makes me very glad to see that there is someone with the will and the resources to put all these ideas into practice. I actually see it as a legitimation of our work.

Some other contributions dealt with the impact of online gaming in career development (in short, the idea that participating in complex online communities is a good training for soft-skills that can be applied in career development), with the importance of some narrative ideas in our society (most of all, the Hero’s Journey), or with the development of interesting mashups using google maps to teach Ancient Greek Myths.

If you want to know more, the online procedures from the Workshop can be found here:
http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-386/

For those outside the Computer Science publications arena, Lecture Notes in Computer Science was initially a journal/book series, with a relatively high relevance in the field (JCR indexed, Computer Science Schools would systematically buy every issue, etc.). Around 2004-2005, the series transitioned to a higher rythm of publications. It is now publishing hundreds of volumes per year, with proceedings different conferences on the field.

In terms of evaluating research, this has meant a descent in its perceived prestige in the field. In 2006 it was removed from the JCR listings. In any case, even if it had remained, its indexing would be so low that it wouldn’t be worth it (so many articles cannot get enough references).

Maybe as a reaction to this, or maybe simply to diversify Springer’s product range, LNCS is now launching the so-called journal sub-lines. These are series of LNCS volumes that have a fixed editorial board.

One of these sublines is of special interest for my area: Transactions on Edutainment. I am very glad to say that we were invited to publish a paper on the first volume. After our success in the GDTW2007 conference, where we received the “Best Paper Award”, we were told to submit an extended version for that first volume. It has now been published and the final draft is available at the
<e-UCM> website. This is the complete reference:

Pablo Moreno-Ger, Carl Blesius, Paul Currier, José Luis Sierra, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón: Online Learning and Clinical Procedures: Rapid Development and Effective Deployment of Game-Like Interactive Simulations. Transactions on Edutainment I, LNCS 5080, pp. 288–304. 2008.

The question that now remains open is what will happen in the future to these series. Will they gather the prestige of a journal? Maybe even enter the JCR as an independent series? Time will tell, but I think game-based learning (or Edutainment) deserves its own dedicated JCR-level journal.

In the last few years, the concept of the “Learning Objects Model” has been a keystone in the discussion of web-based learning (and even learning in general). The model suggests that content can be composed as small self-contained units that can then be contained. The perspective is very interesting: If every piece of educational content is created in a self-contained and reusable way, it would be possible to create huge courses simply combining these objects as LEGO bricks.

The model will only work if these pieces of content can be easily identified (in a repository, for example) and can be deployed together in, say, a Learning Managament System. For this reason, there have been huge efforts in the direction of standardizing these procedures. The IMS Content Packaging specification defines how we should distribute these Learning Objects so that they can be deployed in different platforms without an adaptation effort. When it comes to “discovering” these Learning Objects in a repository, we need standardized metadata (like IEEE LOM or DublinCore) that allows us to search in these repositories and quickly decide if the LO is suitable for our needs. Some higher-level initiatives combine different standards and propose a generic model for the deployment of online materials (ADL SCORM would be the most relevant example).

The model, as most things, has faithful believers and angry opponents. Personally, I haven’t decided yet. I do believe that the idea of resuing educational content is good (it sort of works in programming) but tend to reject the concept of standardized content. Without standard students, standard content seems like a bad idea. This is one of the reasons why I think game-based learning is good and adaptive game-based learning is great.

However, I also believe that the current e-learning infrastructure can be leveraged as a deployment method. E-Learning parcipants (developers, instructors and students) are more open to new ideas than the traditional school participants. Besides, most schools and universities are shifting towards a blended learning (b-learning) approach that combines traditional classes with e-learning technologies. A teacher from an online training environment, a school or a university can use an e-learning platform to send the games to the students so that they can play with them at home.

Putting both ideas together, my idea was that we could encapsulate the games as standards-compliant Learning Objects so that they can deployed by a teacher in (mostly) any Learning Management System and played by the students at home. Additionally, if the games are labelled with standardized metadata, they can be stored and discovered in content repositories, which seems like a good a idea in itself.

We are trying to support and test this idea with the <e-Adventure> platform. Thanks to the programming talent displayed by Javier Torrente, from version 0.3 <e-Adventure> supports tagging the games with IEEE LOM metadata and then exporting them as IMS packages. We will soon be publishing a detailed report on our experiences, which include successful deployment of the games in platforms such as WebCT and Moodle, and easy inclusion of the games in bigger modules using the Reload Editor.

In the meantime, why don’t you try for yourself? Download the new version, export your game as a Learning Object and try to deploy it in your LMS of choice. We will be waiting for your kind feedback.

The March issue of Computer (an IEEE magazine) includes a report on the development process model behind <e-Adventure> as included in my thesis. The full citation is:

Pablo Moreno-Ger, Iván Martínez-Ortiz, José Luis Sierra, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, “A Content-Centric Development Process Model,” Computer, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 24-30, Mar., 2008

An this is its brief abstract:

Working from the belief that when content is king, content experts should lead, a storyboard-driven approach provides a sound methodology for developing educational games that helps ensure that no good storyboard becomes a bad game.

Let us know your feedback!

(we will publish the original draft at the <e-UCM> website soon)

Aww, crap, I did it again… Once more I have managed to neglect my blog for more than two months. Quite a feat, indeed.

For the comeback, I will be completing the post that I left uncompleted about four months ago. In the post Integrating games and e-learning (pt. 1) I discussed Aldrich’s six stages for new technologies and ideas, concluding that educational videogames were slowly entering a critical phase where public awareness and the expectations generated by the media put a pressure on any future game-based learning initiative.

As I stated in that post, the value of games as an educational tool is barely disputed in the academic field. The debate has moved on to discuss if they are cost-effective (is there a real ROI if you spend a million dollars in an educational product?) and how we can introduce educational videogames and game-like simulations in the current educational system without disconnecting them from the rest of the curriculum. The post ended with the open question of how to overcome those issues, which is the topic of my thesis.

I would like to focus this discussion on the second issue, the integration of the games with the rest of the educational process. A typical target for educational gaming is K-12 education. Often this is because we consider that only children play games. This is an idea that I strongly dispute, but that’s not the point of this post. Taking a step back from the concept of regulated schools, other environments may be willing to use game-based learning approaches. In particular, the e-learning arena is currently evolving to meet the challenge of improving the quality of the learning experiences and compensating the consequences of the separation from the instructor (e.g. lack of motivation, the inability to detect students that require additional support, etc.). This has caused e-learning technologies to move beyond the concept of mere static-content repositories, becoming complex environments that manage learning experiences, allowing the interaction between instructors and students, giving the instructor the ability to monitor student progress, and offering complex interaction mechanisms that improve the learning experiences: They are the so-called Learning Management Systems (LMS).

The field is ripe for the introduction of game-based learning. LMS vendors are constantly reinventing the concept trying to explore new alternatives that may give them a competitive advantage. In addition, focusing our efforts on the introduction of educational videogames in these environments allows us to leverage the existing technological infrastructure and facilitates the the integration of the games with the rest of activities in the instructional design.

Additionally, even though these e-learning systems were born as an alternative to traditional (schooled) learning, they are currently being used to enrich and complement those traditional models in what has been branded the b-learning approach (as in blended learning). I consider that the integration with modern e-learning environments can be a base on which to build an educational model that combines all the elements previously identified: The role of the instructor, the importance of rich instructional designs, the use of traditional contents, and leveraging the benefits of educational videogames. Additionally, given the current trend towards the adoption of b-learning approaches, the benefits can have an impact on both online learning environments and traditional environments willing to embrace blended approaches.

In the development of the <e-Adventure> platform, we always had LMS platforms in mind. The engine can be deployed as a Java Applet through any web system, just like any other kind of web content. The problem is, if we simply do that, we only get the advantages of any other kind of web content. Games can be dynamically adapted, they can generate traces of the activity of the student and even perform automatic assessment. Those are all desirable features in online learning, and all that we need is to connect the games with the LMS (and thus with the rest of the learning experience). That’s the reason why the <e-Adventure> platform includes an API that enables the communication between <e-Adventure> games and LMS platforms, as well as a reference implementation of the API on both the client and the server sides.

When the games are deployed through a compliant LMS (in our current state, that means an LMS that follows the IMS Learning Design specification), they establish a communication link through this API, and use this channel to exchange adaptation and assessment information with the LMS.

We are only beginning to explore the possibilities of this integration and the learning patterns that emerge. For more information about this integration and its educational possibilities, I recommed reading our paper Adaptive Units of Learning and Educational Videogames, recently published in the Journal of Interactive Media in Education.

The pressure of completing my thesis in time made me miss the self-imposed weekly deadline to write here that I was proudly accomplishing until this weekend. As a quick fix, here’s an excerpt of the motivation of my research, stolen from the introduction to my thesis.

In his book Learning by Doing, Aldrich states that every new technology undergoes a 6-stage cycle from its inception until it becomes a established feature of our daily lives. The cycle starts at the Theory stage, when the academic world starts discussing an idea that may suppose a change or an advancement. When innovators start pushing the first pilots, the idea becomes an Innovation.

If these first developments are successful and show potential, the expectation grows and both marketing divisions and the media start making promises about the future of the technology. Then, institutions and corporations assume this may be the “next big thing”: it’s the Magic Bullet stage and, driven by the hype, vast amounts of money and resources are invested in exploring further. But as more solutions are tested, the results do not always live up to the expectations. The idea suddenly does not look so interesting and the Confusion stage starts.

The next step, which Aldrich names Strategic Advantage is the second, more refined implementation the idea, tackling the issues that generated the previous crisis and providing real value to adopters. After that stage, the new technology eventually becomes Infrastructure.

The idea of using games or videogames as learning tools has been around for some time. It’s origins trace back to seminal works by Malone on the 80s and the major contributions by Leutner, Porter, Lepper, Cordova, Rieber and many many others.

In the last few years, the exponential increase in the technology and complexity of modern videogames has turned them into one of the biggest entertainment industries. Meanwhile, the idea of using games for education has gained momentum in these first years of the 21st Century. New scholars (Prensky, Garris, Gee, Squire, Jekins…) have pushed the idea and successfully argued that videogames contain precisely the elements required to improve the learning experiences in order to match the requirements of the Information Society. The work of these authors has finally made an impact and, in the last 5 years, the use of videogames and game-like simulations in educational environments has moved on from the academic Theory stage towards the Innovation stage with the development of several initiatives and pilots. And then quoting Van Eck in 2006:

After years of research and proselytizing, the proponents of digital game-based learning (DGBL) have been caught unaware. Like the person who is still yelling after the sudden cessation of loud music at a party, DGBL proponents have been shouting to be heard above the prejudice against games. But now, unexpectedly, we have everyone’s attention.

This sudden attention marks the transition to the Magic Bullet stage which often leads to the corresponding Confusion stage. That critical stage has already started. Even though the initial pilots hint a great potential and learning benefits, it has not been possible to quantify such benefits precisely and this lack of evidence, bringing back the images of the principle and fueling a new critical debate.

The academic debate has thus moved on to new grounds. One of the key questions now is, assuming that videogames provide a quality learning experience, is this experience significant enough so as to justify its enormous cost when compared to traditional contents? This question, by now, lacks a broadly accepted answer.

Another critique often heard is that merely interacting with an educational game does not guarantee that the student learns the lessons, and that games should be a part of more bigger educational models. How can we introduce educational videogames and game-like simulations in the current educational system without disconnecting them from the rest of the curriculum? Changes in the educational system are always introduced with caution. Given the stakes, it is not feasible to overhaul the educational system due to unaffordable costs and a lack of absolute guarantees of a risk-free transition.

Therefore, if the idea is to become a common element in our learning experiences, we need ways to overcome the current Confusion stage and refine the successful elements of the current approaches, eliminate the bad approaches and eventually move on to the Strategic Advantage stage.

How can we achieve this? Some suggestions next week…

…and therefore, school is not learning.

In the book mentioned in the previous post, Gee states that part of the reason why games are fun is precisely due to the satisfaction of learning them. What this means is that games tap into a common human trait, the satisfaction of mastery. This is neither new nor specific to videogames. It happens, for instance, when driving. Many drivers (myself included) refer to the pleasure of driving. Paraphrasing Steve Swink, when driving a car, you have a very strong sense of the direction, speed and behavior of that car and you feel the effect of steering and controlling it. A feeling of control and mastery. You develop the ability to extend precise control over something outside your body. There is a great amount of pleasure in the learning and eventual mastery of such a motion translation. In scientific terms, cognitive scientists argue that this control is exercised through remapped neural pathways, and when mastery is achieved, your brain rewards you with pleasure.

Games transmit these feelings too. Complex games, when mastered, are deeply satisfactory just because of that mastery. Gradually, the myriad of controls that you need to lookup constantly and keep mistaking, becomes an intuitive process where you think the action and see it on the screen, no longer thinking about buttons or even about your thumbs. This is what my mind process when learning a new game feels like:

Ok, now I need to jump this gap, which is means I must run towards it and then press button 1. There is an enemy on the other side, so I draw my sword with button 2 after completing the jump. I need to attack him, and the attack is with button 3… oh, shit! I ducked! agh! It was button 4!. Ok, button 3 to stand up again, now button 4 to slash the sword. Oh, and I approach a wall, I can use button 1 to jump against it and dive towards my enemy. Ok, that was a cool move… now keep pushing button 4 for more slashing, move here… wow! that was awesome! How did I do that? Did I press 2 and then 1?

At this point I’m exploring the game space, trying to learn the controls as the in-game tutorial instructs me. The example is somewhat inspired by the new Prince of Persia series (altough it could be any other game) because these games offer a very interesting and fine-tuned learning curve for some very complex controls. The theory says that mastering these controls is a great part of the fun. Here’s a figurative line of thought a few days later into the game…

So, there is a crowd of enemies below, the space is ample which suggest an easy fight if I manage not to get cornered. Ok, now I dive from this ledge and do a controlled descent using my dagger to cut this hanging curtain and in the middle of the descent, do a back flip and fall in the middle of the group with my weapons unsheathed. I slash a couple of enemies and then jump over a third one with a back flip, performing an execution move as I fall behind him. Now I’ll use the wall to bounce above another enemy and slash yet another opponent. Since I got at least two seconds, I will actually do the cool backstabbing move, and then quickly turn back to attack the last enemy.

Now I’m proficient in the game space. I think of actions and plan my moves, but no longer think about the controls. The game-pad is an extension of my mind, and my fingers are doing their job on their own. Gee says that when you achieve this kind of mastery, the game is fun. Let me tell you, in a good game, it’s actually exhilarating. Your mastery has immediate results and you see your character on the screen perform amazing feats just as you think them.

But if I’m absolutely proficient, the novelty and feeling of mastery may eventually fade… my brain wants to keep learning and mastering more things! Thus, a good game, will keep a consisting learning cycle in which it teaches the player a new skill, allows her to practice and master it and then moves on to new skills and challenges before she gets bored.

Prince of Persia has a great implementation of this cycle, in which you keep learning moves and techniques until the very end of the game. The design is so conscious of this having-fun-because-you-master-the-controls aspect that, often, after learning new amazing moves, you are presented with in a room with a few of lesser monsters so that you can practice your new skill and recreate on its use. Finally, when you have mastered all the feats, the learning process is over and the fun is over. Thus, the game ends there.

The moral of the story is: learning complex skills is fun. If you are not having fun, chances are you aren’t really learning them, just being exposed.

Sources:

Good Videogames + Good Learning, by James Paul Gee
Principles of Virtual Sensation, by Steve Swink (Gamasutra)

James Paul Gee is an author that has written several essays and books around the concept that games exhibit the purest forms of learning. Not the usual statement that “games could be used for learning”, but a subtler yet absolutely true concept: games are really complex applications and yet, players, learn to play them. Without ever reading the manual. And with a very low tolerance towards studying and learning (after all, they just invested 60$ in a game). Modern games, out of neccessity, have developed in-game tutorials and other learning mechanisms that allow the players to learn the game mechanics as they play, as opposed to first teaching them how to control the game and then starting play. Those games unable to provide successful learning experiences resulted in a failure. Game players don’t offer second chances. They expect to be having fun shortly after launching the game, and boring lessons are out of the question.

Good Videogames + Good Learning is a compilation of essays by James Paul Gee on the topic. I recently purchased a number of books that I did need, but this one was not one of my objectives. However, Amazon returned it as part of the “related books” function, and I simply couldn’t help buying it. Why the impulse?

Well, here is a deep secret. In 2003 I was passionate about games in general and mildly interested in serious games and in the concept of learning while playing. Out of that curiosity, I ordered a book by J.P. Gee. It was called “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy“. The book, as the rest of his writings, was not explicitly about learning with educational games, but about the learning that takes place in comercial games. For me, I admit, reading that book was a life-changing event. I read the entire book in one day, finishing late at night and then pondering about it until even later. Next morning, thinking in the shower (my favourite place for deep thoughts), it dawned on me: I had found the field on which I wanted to base my research. Or, with a special wink to a specific reader of this blog (as if there were many), I had found the shirt on which I would eventually find a spot to clean.

That summer I would graduate and, up to that morning, I was thinking whether to pursue an academic career or try my luck as a developer in the videogame industry. After reading that book, I decided to stay in the university, and try to get a PhD working on this field. As life-changing as it gets.

Among all the books I purchased, Good Videogames + Good Learning may not be the one I needed most for my research, but I have devoured it almost as quickly as the other one, and again loved it. Unfortunately, this time it hasn’t changed my life in a noticeable way (yet), but it is a remarkable read that I recommend. Personally, it has reminded me why I believe in this field and I will actually try to squeeze some time out of my current stay in Portugal to write a couple of posts about this topic.

Yay! Another research stay. This time I’m visiting Coimbra, one of the most ancient and respected universities in Europe. There I will be at working at the Departamento de Engenharia Informática the with António José Mendes in giving the final touches to my thesis.

I will be leaving next week and come back by the end of October. This means that by the day I come back, I will have been abroad for 9 out of 16 months. Not bad!

My only two concerns are whether with all this travelling I may eventually forget the faces of my loved ones and the fact that I leave for Coimbra in three days and I’m still homeless. Any reader from Coimbra knows a place where I could crash on sunday?