Download What can we learn from playing interactive games?

Video Game & Learning
What can we learn from playing interactive
games?
Erica Gallinaro
Marta Grodzicka
Michal Skrzypek
Blazej Grzechnik

What can we learn from
playing interactive games?

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Reasearch finds that players learn new skills,
knowledge, insights, attitudes, or even
behaviors in games that challenge them to
think , explore and respond.
Players learn by doing and they receive help
when needed and a feedback on their
progress.
Games usually adapt to players abilities and
keep the level of difficulty in a range that is
challenging but not impossibile for each
individual
What are educational game
teaching?
Current reasearch focuses on nine areas:
Motivation to learn
Perception and coordination
Thinking and problem solving
Knowledge
Skill and behaviours
Self-regulation and therapy
Self-concepts
Social relationship
Attitudes and values
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Motivation to Learn
Interactive games can motivate people to learn, including those who at
first are not particularly interested in the subject matter.
The incentive of trying win a game, which is an extrinsic, external
motivation for learning, can draw the players into the learning
activities.
More than 50% of population in the United States plays interactive
games regularly.
Players come from all socioeconomic backgrounds, genders and age
group.
Motivation to Learn
Appeal
ex. children are attracted to games that support them in developing the
skills needed to succed in the game. They like explorations and
constructions activities that help them achieve game-related goals.
Challenge to Reach a Goal
The challenge to perform and win makes a game highly involving,
especially when the challenge is difficulty, it is possible to lose, and there
is more than one pathway to winning.
Emotions and Fun
An enthralling story, appealing characters, lush production values, a
sense of social presence....
These experience can heighten players'emotional response yo an
interactive game and motivate their effort to learn.
Motivation to Learn
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Interactivity
It gives to players a great deal of control, involves them in
active decision making, and provides continuous feedback.

Engagement
Inter. Games requires deep levels of attention, managing
more cognitive task at a time, making quick responses.

Flow
It is a state of pleasure, well being, and increased cognitive
efficiency that occurs during an absorbing task.

Story Line
Can attract and involve an audience: players have to solve
problem in order to advance the plot.
Perception and Coordination
Many studies ask whether players learn and improve
the cognitive and motor skill they use while playing
interactive games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JzcqALklRs
Perception and Coordination
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Spatial Perception
Some visually oriented interactive games improve
players'spatial perception and visualization skills.
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Visual Style of Communication
A cross-cultural experiment found that playing a visually
oriented interactive game shifted players'representation
styles from verbal to iconic and spatial.

Cognitive Processing, Visual Processing, and
Eye-Hand Coordination
Children who are frequent players have greate capacity for
deep concentration, are more adept making quick decisions
and responses and have exceptional eye-hand coordination.
Perception and Coordination
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Manual Dextery and Speed
A study shows that who usually spent at least 3 hours a
week playing action video games during leisure time, made
about 37% fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgey practice
tasks and performed them 27% faster than their collegues
who did not play video games.
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Tecnological Skills and Career Interests
The enjoyment and skill development in video game playing
may stimulate interest in career involving advanced
technological work, scinetific research or computer
programming.
Thinking and Problem Solving
Games with puzzles and complex questions
may improve players'ability to think logically
and tactically.
 Simulation games may enhance scientific
thinking, such as the ability to control for a
single variable.
 Adventure games may increase players'skills
in observation, analysis of system and
coaching of others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDwmWLbK
sOE
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Thinking and Problem Solving
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Self directed Learning: gameschallenge players to pay
attention, monitor and evaluate their own actions, use strategies such us
grouping and the use of imagery as aids to memory.
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Components of learning: children who are expert players
of interactive gamrs tend to be highly skilled at self-monitoring, pattern
recognition, iconic representation, principle-based decision making,
qualitative thinking and memory.
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Transfer of Skills: Arcade style action games increasead
players abilities in inductive discovery, and they transferred their newly
acquired skills from the game environment to a non game enviroment.
Knowledge
Interactive games often require players to take in
new information, apply it toward solving a problem,
receive feedback on their performance, and then
apply the information again until they are
successful.
Knowledge
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Learning outcames
Learning is especially well supported when learners proceed
at their own ability level and pace, receive individualized and
constructive performance feedback, receive help when
needed and review material until they understand it
thoroughly.
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Pedagogical Agents
A character in an interactive game can be designed to
interact with the player as a pedagogical agent, serving as a
role model, tutor, or guide to support learning.
Knowledge
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Situated learning and Mindfulness
Situated learning in interactive games can motivate deep
cognitive engagement. To succed in the situation, players
become especially mindful of the content they need to know
in order to win the game and mindful of the skills they must
apply, and they use effortful and strategic processes of
thinking.

Simulations
It'a a representation of a physical or social system that lets
the user change its parameters and observe its dynamics.
Skills and Behaviors
Interactive games can challenge players to apply a
wide variety of skillst.
Direct participation in virtual tasks with interactive
media such as games has in some cases developed
lerners'skills better than traditional didactic, less
participatory, forms of learning.
Ex. Health behavior and aggressive behavior
Self regulation and therapy
Interactive games have been used to teach people
how to regulate physiological process such as brain
waves and relaxation, cognitive process involved in
allocating attention, emotional reactions to events
and the enviroment, and phobias.
Virtual enviroments have been used very
successfully in exposure therapy, for patients who
have phobias such as fear of snake, spiders, public
speaking, elevators and flying.
Self Concepts
Games can teach playersabout themselves, especially in the aereas of
self-esteem and self-efficacy.
Self-Esteem:Players enjoy having control over the actiob in an
interactive game. They feel pride because the success was based on
their decisions and skills.
Self-Efficacy: Players apply specific skills and the game supports
them with encouragement, feedback, help and rehearsal.
Privacy: computer based media such as interactive games offer
users the unique experience of receiving interactive and
individualized performance feedback without the presence or
surveillance of another person.
Social Relationships
Interactive game playing is essentially a social
activity. Game players are not social isolates;
instead they tend to meet friends outside of work or
school more often than occasional players or
nonplayers do.
es. with video gam arcades, are meeting places for
adolscents, where they can socialize without
parental control and can show off their skills to
others.
Social Relationships:
Game Communities
Interactive game is essentially a social activity.
Communities develop around games, offline and online, and they
often involve extensive social interaction and sharing of knowledge.
Some games are designed especially for collaboration and group
participation. Playing in a MUD allows players to collaborate in
groups to complete quests, solve puzzles, or defeat enemies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raAtkPgok6E
Attitudes and Values
Games can affect players'attitudes and values related
to learning, social roles and behaviors such as
violence or nurturing.
Ex. playing violent games can desentize players to
the horrors of real world violence, increase their
hostility and mistrust of others, and they teach them
to accept violence as a legitimate way to solve
problems.
Video Games for Entertainment
and Education
Reaserch show an impressive body of literature
demonstrating mostly negative, but also positive
effect of video game playing.
The majority of research has focused on the
potential negative effects of videogame playing.
But, playing video games can facilitate
“developmental process”
Video Games for Enteratinment
and Education
The term “developmental proccess” refers to an understanding of
media usage and effects in the context of human development.
Human development is the result of continuous transactions between a
person's biological constitution and his physical, social, and media
enviroment over the life span.
Media usage reflects the developmental process of a usar who is
selecting some media. At the same time, the media usage influences
the developmental processes of the user.
Video Games for Entertainment
and Education
Individuals may interpret the same video game play in complitely
different way.
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ex. one persone takes the videogame world as a realistic simulation,
whereas another reads it in a metaphoric or even ironic. way.
Considering that media effects may vary subsantially in the realm of a
person's development, media impact studies should overtake a
longitudinal perspective
Changes over time are crucial!
Vygotsky (1978) introduce the “zone of proximal development” to
explain which input characteristics aremost likely to influence human
development.
Video Games for Entertainment
and Education
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Malone (1981) introduced three facts of intrinsic motivation derived
from video play: challenge, fantasy and curiosity.
Challenge: occurs in situation of uncertain outcomeenhance
motivation to play the game again if the game posed an adeguate
challenge. Losing a game can be intrisically motivating as well, if the
player receives positive feedback for his effort.
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Fantasy: state of cognitive and emotional involvement with the video
game play faciliting game play skills.
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Curiosity: divided into sensory and cognitive components, with
sensory curiosity being dependent on game surface and cognitive
curiosity referring to the narrative of the game play.
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Characteristics of video game
play
See Table 1
The interactive nature of a video game results in the incomparability
of game play: every game play experience is unique.
Characteristics of video game
play
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The term “intelligence of the medium” refers to the fact that the
video takes the player's play history into account.
One popular understanding of video games is that there will be an
increased impact on its users compared to television because of the
interactive possibilities.
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A study by Lee, Jin, Park and Kang (2004) demonstred that that
elaboration of a video game narrative led to a greather presence, but
reasearch on the specific impact of interactivity is still lacking
(methodological constraints).
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study about epilepsy in children: compared a group of children
playing a game with another group of children watching the game.
The electroencephalographic recording demonstrating equally hight
activation.
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Learning
Every input processed influences the user.
The question is what we learn and for how long the effect persists.
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Enhancement in cognitive and metacognitive skills is the most
desired outcome.
Cognitive skills include: spatial abilities, linguistic competence,
knowledge acquisition, decision making competence, problem
solving.
Metacognition refers to the fact that humasns are conscious about
their thinking: one can select, evaluate and modify strategies for
knowledge acquisition, problem solving or other learning process.
Reasearch suggests that teaching metacognitive skills results in
increased learning.
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Learning
It is assumed that computer game-mediated communication enhances
communication skills. But identify formation, autonomy, tolerance for
frustration, or coping behaviour ay also improve extensively through
video game play.
The potential is immense if one considers the global experiences of
online gamer communicating with each other.
Video games can be specifically tailored to enhance cognitive,
metacognitive, socio-emotional or behavioral skills: with the
develpoment of more sophisticated intelligent system, the potential for
education in formal and informal contexts will rise dramatically.
Learning
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Several studies report that the amount of videogame playing
correlates negatively with school performance:
children playing violent video games performed more poorly in
school than children who rarely used those games.
school performance increased in children who frequently played
educational games.
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But parents are somehow negligent in controlling their children's
video playing!
43% of adolescents said their parents did not control their video
games usage.
Enjoyment
Enjoyment ist considered the core experience of entertainment,
defining the sum of positive reactions toward media experiences being
cognitive, affective or conative.

Enjoyment in game play may result from:
sensory delight;
suspense, thrill, and relief;
achievement, control and self-efficacy.

The concept of enjoyment is closely related, if not identical, to
intrinsic motivation, qhich again is crucial for developmental
processes.
Entertainment Education
The distinction between educational and entertainment games is
based on the assumption of a single dimension with education and
entertainment defining the poles.
However, entertainment and education should be conceptualized as
two different dimensions.
The general idea to utilize enjoyment for learning is not new: mostly
applied in the area of health communication, entertainment-education
programming in radio and television have recently proven to be
effective for knowledge acquisition, attitude, and even behavior
change.
Paradigm for entertainmenteducation.
1. ENTERTAINMENT + EDUCATION
(Motivation Paradigm)
An entertainment experiences is used as a motivational facilitator
to process educational information.
It is implied that content alone would not be a strong enough
attractor to ensure processing, and it requires enrichment
through entertainment.
ex. addition of information to entertainment ccan be found in
some video game providing hyperlinks.
Paradigm for entertainmenteducation.
2. EDUCATION + ENTERTAINMENT
(Reinforcement Paradigm)
A reinforcement strategy is applied in most educational games.
But reinforcement may result in an unintended and undesired
motivational decrease: if individuals are intrinsically motivated,
reinforcement may even reduce intrinsic motivation on the long
run.
ex. addition of scores, virtual money, fun animations, the reward
of progress in the video game play.
Entertainment-Education
Longitudinal data reveal that a combination of intense practice,
highly developed interest and instrinsic motivation predicts above
average performance.
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Video game provide a great opportunity to realize the described
triad
(practice, interest, instrinsic motivation).
intrinsic motivation & interest are higher in entertainment video
games. Consequently, practice will be lower in educational game
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Paradigm for entertainment3.EDUCATION <PRESENCE> ENTERTAINMENT
education
(Blending Paradigm)
The information is an essential part of the entertainment
experience
If player enjoy educational settings and develop interest in
instructional learning, the distinction between primarily
entertainment and primarily learning activities is unnecessary:
humans may enjoy both activities and learn in both settings.
Blending an entertaining narrative with educational content
became a populare strategy in health-related TV and radio
programming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht8GWOwdc30&feature=relat
ed
Pedagocical Dramata
Similar to educational games, pedagogical dramata pursue an
explicit learning goal.
In contrast to educational games, they offer simulated situations
that otherwise cannot be experience for training purposes.

Clarke & Schoech (1994) developed a game for adolescents to learn
impulse control.
Oakly (1994) pioneered a video game play for at-risk teens
displaying consequences of drug abus.
Miller and Read developed a technology to teach homosexual men
safe-sex negotiations.
Evaluation results demonstrate the acceptance of the technology
in the target groups.
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Entertainment-Education
See table 2
Children play various games with differential impact on their
developmental processes. One predominant game format to resolve
developmental tasks is role-play, which simulates real life, engages,
fantasies, and involves new formats for communication and
exploration of behavior.
Discussion...
How players and the advent of internet can
re-invented a video-game...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VC34LKQwn8
&feature=related