Category: Walden

The following is a summary of responses from an expert panel over three rounds of a Delphi study conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation. This is the sixth of six thematic summaries I plan to share on this blog.

In a final consensus check survey, the participating experts indicated a high level of consensus with this summary:

MMORPGs may require fewer hardware resources compared to many other video game genres, but implementing MMORPGs in existing schools would include many challenges related to infrastructure and logistics. With current student to computer ratios, students might experience limited access to the game at school. Many computers in schools might not meet the hardware needs of modern MMORPGs. The bandwidth available at the school might also be limited. Technical problems with the software, hardware, and network as well as the logistical and cognitive overhead necessary to play the games might outweigh the positive learning experience. (Outside of the school, many socio-economically disadvantaged students might also have limited access to the equipment necessary to play an MMORPG.) Filtering games for age appropriate content may also be a concern.In addition, MMORPGs require thousands of players to feel inhabited and provide a persistent sense of community; it may be difficult to achieve such a population in an educational game, and allow students to play commercial games in schools raises concerns about appropriate content and student safety. However, it is possible to populate a game world with richly interactive non-player characters (NPCs) controlled by the computer. Also, it may not be necessary for educational online role-playing games to be massively multiplayer in order to take advantage of the benefits of being multiplayer. Smaller scale multiplayer games (or MORPGs) might be more appropriate; these games would not necessarily need to be persistent worlds.

Funding an educational MMORPG would be expensive to start and difficult to sustain. Even if an existing engine is used, it would be expensive to develop the game and attract players and teachers to the idea. However, the costs of development could be distributed across many many schools and the potential benefits might justify the expense. In addition, existing game engines, digital objects, and environments could be imported from the entertainment industry. Gaming engines (and graphics) that are a generation behind the cutting edge would still be effective for creating an engaging educational game. Low cost easy to learn tools would be ideal. A well designed game concept could also attract the necessary developers, players, and educators.

The amount of time needed to implement such a game may be the greatest cost, including the time for students to learn the game and to spend time on the less educational fun elements of the game. MMORPG game play also does not fit neatly into traditional school schedules. In a truly massive multiplayer game, coordination of players with different school schedules (potentially even across different time zones) would also be a challenge. Single player training modes or the ability to solo might help alleviate some of these concerns. Also, coordinating large numbers of students together in the game world might be in conflict with the ideals of a constructivist learning environment in which students are engaged in individualize inquiry-driven learning, and so might not be a desirable use of an MMORPG anyway; self-organized groups of students similar to existing “guilds” in existing games might be more desirable.

Cultural resistance to video games in schools might also prove a challenge. The primary barriers might not be technical, but rather psychological, political, and cultural – including sometimes unconscious beliefs, assumptions, and values. Many educators and parents may not accept the potential educational value of video games, including MMORPGs. Even if the games are accepted, there will be a need to establish appropriate norms and ethics for the educational use of MMORPGs. For a MMORPG to take root in the current environment of high-stakes testing, the game may need to be accepted in terms of what schools now value. Moreover, games would need to be based on non-violent, appropriate, and non-trivial subject matter and content – and would need to include reasonable measures to ensure student safety. Naturally, student learning would ned to be measurable and demonstrable as well. Unfortunately, this might reduce the engaging and motivating elements of the games, and as Prensky says, “suck the fun out.”

A great deal of organizational change will also be necessary if games are to be accepted and supported in existing educational organizations. There would be a significant need for teacher professional development in order to ensure that teachers would have the necessary understanding to effectively implement the games and guide students with their reflection and transfer of skills. Establishing pilot programs that follow models set by similar technologies already in use would be critical to successful implementation.

However slowly, educational institutions are moving inexorably towards the ability to overcome these hinderances.

The following are a selection of significant dissenting opinions and/or final comments that members of the expert panel made in response to this final summary:

“The costs of current MMORPG infrastructures are a concern for any one school. There are many servers and other infrastructure required that is cost prohibitive for a small environment; also, consider the scalability of running the operations is a consideration. I think MMORPG environments must be at least across schooling districts with some consideration to scheduling and optimizing around what a base system can support in concurrent players (CCU).”“Due to the high costs of developing MMORPG and the little garuantee that this investment will be liked by students or that the intended benefits are achievable, I think it is critical that existing MMORPGs be adapted for education purposes. The storylines and quests can be adapted have better material. Often changing game play and adapting graphics can customize the environment for local norms and goals. At [our development company], this is exactly the complex analysis and localization processes that we use to bring successful games from other countries to India to resonate with a local population made up of many different cultures.”

“In general, I suggest let the students coordinate themselves. The gameplay is usually enticing enough to inspire play. With a large and distributed (across timezones) population of players, ensuring there is a mass of players will happen organically.”

“Cultural resistance to video games in schools might also prove a challenge.” This is a huge barrier. We need to provide accurate tools, feedback, and information to educate parents of the benefits. This should be a major focus for the education-gaming community. Like any new media (as TV and Radio at one point) the negative perception hinders the potential benefits. The Guttenberg printing press was a major concern for the governing powers of the day such as the church, because information and lessons could be disseminated in ways they could not control. Bad and good literature can be produced, but again, the benefits far outweigh the concerns. MMORPGs are no different. They offer a unique way to provide education, and teach things that other mediums are not as effective. This is a media to be embraced, not feared. I spent 6 years in NYC educational system while working for IBM in the K-12 division. The hardest part for the adoption of technology in classrooms was that teachers were lost, as they will be with MMORPG. It helps to provide a support organization for teachers to teach and learn. This will facilitate the use and measurable results of MMORPGs in Education.”

“People don’t take pilots seriously, no amount of “proof” changes people’s deep down beliefs. It’s naive to suggest that pilots or research studies would change anything.”

“Schools are not moving in this direction (last sentence). If anything, they are becoming more rigid and resistant to change. They are driving out the very teachers and administrators who would be able to create the systemic changes that would be necessary for games to play a larger part in education.”

“Interesting thing about computers and students is kids play nicely with each other. I agree with you, part of the logistics is the computer to kid ratio, but I also regularly see kids playing well with each other when using a computer.”

“Again, I think the idea of an educational MMORPG is a bad idea. I think if you modded a current COTS-MMORPG then that might work, but there are plenty of decent reasons to stay away from designing an educational mmorpg.”

I am interested in additional feedback from readers of this blog. What is your level of consensus with this summary? Are there any points you might want to elaborate on – or more importantly, disagree with? Please leave a comment.

The following is a summary of responses from an expert panel over three rounds of a Delphi study conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation. This is the fifth of six thematic summaries I plan to share on this blog.

In a final consensus check survey, the participating experts indicated a very high level of consensus with this summary:

Summary of Participant Responses
Theme 5
ReflectionWith the guidance of an educator and with dedicated, structured, and frequent debriefing time, MMORPGs might also offer an opportunity for students to reflect on their learning and problem-solving strategies. Educators might help students to realize the correlation between their in-game strategies and real world scenarios they might encounter. Something not unlike an after-action-review might be used for this purpose, but clear procedures for reflecting on skills such as the 21st century skills mentioned in the previous session are not well established in traditional education. Many existing techniques might be borrowed from other fields. New tools for capturing in-game experiences and representing them for later reflection may need to be developed as well.

Due to the potentially global nature of an MMORPG, they might also provide an opportunity for students and teachers to reflect on cultural differences of others playing the game. However, it might be difficult to reflect on real world cultural differences in an online game when many of those differences would not be apparent in the game-world and the players avatars. It may also be difficult for many teachers to facilitate reflections on cultural differences, particularly without exposure to different cultures themselves. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned about culture is that people are more alike than different, and this can be learned in an online game environment as students engage in play with others from around the world and their cultural differences do not deter them from enjoying – and succeeding within – the game together.

Debriefing may reduce the scalability, increase the cost of implementation, increase the time required, and limit the independent use of an MMORPG for educational purposes, especially if conducted in a face-to-face format. However, such potential drawbacks do not outweigh the benefits of having students reflect on their game play. Without such explicit reflection activities the educational value of playing an MMORPG might largely be lost. To mitigate these concerns, though, games can be designed to scaffold reflection and to automate it to some extent. Even independent use of an MMORPG might include a report back to a teacher or peers.

The following are a selection of significant dissenting opinions and/or final comments that members of the expert panel made in response to this final summary:

“I’m concerned that this doesn’t mention the difficulty in having instructors who can provide the reflection guidance needed (in general, not just cultural).”

“Reflection is the most important part of any educational aspect of a game and I think you’ve captured it well. However, I do think that in-game reflection would be valuable because it would of necessity break into game play.”

I am interested in additional feedback from readers of this blog. What is your level of consensus with this summary? Are there any points you might want to elaborate on – or more importantly, disagree with? Please leave a comment.

The following is a summary of responses from an expert panel over three rounds of a Delphi study conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation. This is the fourth of six thematic summaries I plan to share on this blog.

In a final consensus check survey, the participating experts indicated a very high level of consensus with this summary:

Summary of Participant Responses
Theme 4
21st Century SkillsMMORPGs might be useful for helping students to develop 21st century skills such as critical thinking, creativity, comfort with computer use, fluency in multiple media, economic literacy, and global awareness. Success in an MMORPG requires strategic thinking, planning, decision making, judgement, and the ability to react to changing conditions, all while multitasking effectively. Players must balance their resource, prioritize their actions, manage multiple objectives, and understand in-game systems, including the game economy. Even information literacy skills are important as players seek to find, evaluate, and use information (both in-game and from other outside sources). MMORPGs as a genre may be particularly beneficial in for educational purposes because they focus on working within systems and processes rather than on achieving a single win-state. The challenges and systems in the game can be selected or designed to authentically parallel real-world scenarios. Also, these are very complex skills, and an MMORPG in isolation is unlikely to develop them deeply unless complimented by a variety of other educational activities.

MMORPGs might also provide an arena for developing skills of leadership (and followership), interpersonal communications and management. Additionally, the learning communities that players form around MMORPGs (in which they share codes and strategies) parallel the activities of 21st century professionals in knowledge-based workplaces.

MMORPGs might also encourage risk taking by making failure safe and often fun. However, if failure is too easy (or fun) within a game, it might lead players to become more risk-adverse in real life or else to have an unrealistic view of risk, failure, and consequences in real life. An educational MMORPG would have to balance providing an environment safe for student risk taking with in-game consequences that are significant enough to make the risk of failure real and disappointing. In game consequences might even be irrevsible. Though this might conflict with the replayability of a game, then the game could also be used to help students learn how to deal with failure, a key to real-world risk taking.

A potential concern is the inclination of many MMORPG players to “game the system” or “cheat” in an effort to succeed in achieving in-game goals. This may reduce the effectiveness of the role-playing experience, may detract from (or eliminate) educational goals, and may encourage students to “cheat” the educational system outside of the game as well. Many existing MMORPGs will cancel a player’s account if they are caught cheating. Educators might want to engage students in discussions about the ethical implications and consequences of cheating the system. Another way to manage the risk of such “cheating” is to build it into the game by expecting students to exploit or “mod” the game system to accomplish a task. (In this way they will learn the underlying systems and assumptions well.) In some respects the ability to exploit a system is another valuable life skill and perhaps should be part of the process of playing an educational game. In this respect, the potential of gaming or cheating the system is a minor if not insignificant concern.

It may also be difficult to assess whether or not MMORPGs are successful in helping students to develop such 21st Century Skills and transfer them to real world situations. (However, this difficulty in assessment does not mean that learning and transfer are not occurring.) Transfer might be explicitly facilitated by educators guiding students from game scenarios into real world scenarios. Games will also need to be chosen or designed to include tasks that authentically mimic the real world tasks and situations in which students will be expected to demonstrate success – without being unnecessarily high fidelity to the point of boredom. The elements of fantasy and play are important to the success of role-playing games. Regardless, without careful alignment and monitoring students could transfer learning that has a negative effect on their real world success.

NOTE:

Many of the skills mentioned in this section were important skills for success in the 20th century and in some cases throughout human history. However, modern schools are notoriously poor at teaching and assessing such skills, and recent changes in students, technology, and world markets suggests that such skills will be even more important in this new century. For these reasons, and because the breadth of these skills is difficult to name, the researcher continues to use the term “21st Century Skills.” To view more in-depth definitions and frameworks describing “21st Century Skills” please see the following two websites:

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org
http://www.ncrel.org/engauge/skills/skills.htm

The following are a selection of significant dissenting opinions and/or final comments that members of the expert panel made in response to this final summary:

“However, if failure is too easy (or fun) within a game, it might lead players to become more risk-adverse in real life or else to have an unrealistic view of risk, failure, and consequences in real life.” Let’s make sure that the student understands that this is a game. I am not sure why they would become risk-adverse, hopefully the opposite affect will happen, where taking risks is encouraged and people learn that calculated risks are a way to excel in life and that failure is a part of the process. i.e. the old entrepreneurial adage, “Every success was preceded by 100 failures.” We should encourage people to try and fail, learn and progress. MMORPG can be a good testing bed for this. I don’t think we should protect kids from failure, it is an intrinsic and beneficial part of the self-actualization process.”“When it comes to cheating the system, in general I am against permanent banning unless the behaviour is violent or destructively abusive. This will happen and the student is learning a different set of skills. Kids cheat in classrooms as well, and businessmen cheat at work. Let’s put in safeguards, monitor, and deal with it, without negating the benefits that an MMORPG can also provide. The benefits of gaming can far outweigh the affects of the cheaters.”

“Even though the note says that 21st century skills aren’t really anything new, it seems that the skills you’ve grouped here don’t really hang together and overlap a lot with other sections.”

“On cheating, I think that this has to be an open discussion and HUGE part of the reflection. Cheating in a game is different than cheating in real life. For example, players could create alliances that exist outside of the game. Is this cheating or not? It happens all the time in the real world, and laws try to regulate it, but it still happpens. Is it cheating to push the laws/rules to gain an advantage? I think cheating and discussions of rules is probably one of the most educational parts of these games”

“I’m not sure cheating is as big of a deal as you are making it – again, I think commercial MMORPG’s are the best way to go here, and they are pretty good at finding cheaters. :-)”

I am interested in additional feedback from readers of this blog. What is your level of consensus with this summary? Are there any points you might want to elaborate on – or more importantly, disagree with? Please leave a comment.

The following is a summary of responses from an expert panel over three rounds of a Delphi study conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation. This is the third of six thematic summaries I plan to share on this blog.

In a final consensus check survey, the participating experts indicated a high level of consensus with this summary (however, it is worth noting that this section rated the lowest average level of consensus out of all the thematic summaries):

Summary of Participant Responses
Theme 3
Social Learning

MMORPGs often promote collaboration over individualism and can facilitate social negotiation of meaning. Students who play such games might develop communication skills, including negotiation skills, and valuable new social roles. Cooperative problem-solving and teamwork are often necessary to achieve goals within the game. In-game competition can also lead to collaborative learning. Educational MMORPGs will need to include tasks that require cooperation or competition, and a means for tracking such collaborative play; otherwise, some students may not participate in and benefit from collaborative learning. Teachers might also establish out-of-game incentives for cooperating and competing in the game.

Unfortunately, MMORPGs that include competitive elements, particularly PvP elements, may foster aggressive competitiveness and may cause emotional distress for those who lose or do not win. If some students are ostracized for their lack of skill or success in the game this can lead to bullying, embarrassment, or other victimizing behavior. However, even when negative social interactions occur as a result of cooperative or competitive play, these episodes can be used as opportunities to provide students with strategies to cope with such interactions. Also, the anonymity of players in MMORPGs may contribute to this sort of behavior. Alternatively, anonymity might mitigate some of the effects of this behavior in the real world, so educators planning to use such a game would need to be thoughtful in their decision to allow anonymity or not. Teachers and students might also benefit from working together to establish the social rules of the game and the consequences of infractions. A well-designed MMORPG might also help to address these issues and have a positive effect on potentially disruptive students by providing them a new social environment in which to take on new more positive roles.

The social learning needs of each student are different; MMORPGs might provide an alternative means for engaging a student less adept at interpersonal communication, and might help such students develop new social skills in a safe environment. However, the violent and male dominated social structures of many commercial MMORPGs may be inappropriate for use in an educational setting. Also, if students are free to choose the roles they play, teachers may find that not all roles are filled. In addition, some students may choose to play roles that might operate counter to educational goals. On the other hand, it is possible to play most existing commercial MMORPG in a non-violent way and still progress and succeed in the game. Also, MMORPGs usually allow players to choose male or female avatars and to undertake quests and other activities that are likely to appeal to female players. In a well-designed open-eneded game it would not be necessary for all roles to be filled for each student to find success. Most MMORPGs are already designed to support players interested in achieving, exploring, and socializing – and most games discouraging disruptive behavior by design. Educational MMORPGs can be selected or designed to follow this model and to avoid violent or gender-biased game play.

MMORPGs can also serve to bring distant learners together in a meaningful way, although this may require additional technical skill on the part of the players. In addition, students can socialize outside the games about the games, or even build a learning network around the game. However, there is a risk of including a potentially malicious person in the game or in the metagame social circles; most distance learning takes place in a “walled garden” such as a password protected content management system.

MMORPGs may also be used or designed in such a way that they allow players to see things from another’s perspective. In this way the games might be used to address controversial social issues, to teach about other cultures, or to effect positive social change. However, it is unlikely that a transformational shift in a students’ cultural beliefs will occur unless complemented by a variety of other educational activities. Also, students are likely to “see through” anything they perceive as manipulation in such an effort to change their beliefs or values.

Video games, including MMORPGs, can constantly challenge a player within his or her Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) by constantly adapting to the player’s skill level. However, MMORPGs may have less flexibility to adapt to individual players because changes in the game world may effect others as well. The social structure of an MMORPG can also help provide the scaffolding necessary for individual students to succeed and grow. For instance as some players develop skill in the game they can work in groups with other newer players.

The computer mediated social environment does not provide the same level of interactivity as face-to-face communication and might re-enforce solitude and anti-social behavior, or accentuate problems such as bullying, creating new channels for certain individuals to be ostracized. Admittedly, traditional classrooms and other school activities such as sports might are at least as likely to create this scenario. However, students who are more reserved or shy might blossom in a game-world. especially through the use of an avatar. The game environment might also allow for a “psychosocial moratorium” that encourages growth and development, particularly in adolescents. Additionally, communication within a game or virtual reality can create relationships that transcend what may be achieved by the player in a real-life situation.

Also, a player may come to identify too strongly with their avatar, which represents only a small portion of the player’s personality, a fact that may need to be communicated to and reinforced for students.

The following are a selection of significant dissenting opinions and/or final comments that members of the expert panel made in response to this final summary:

“[Existing] MMORPGs are educational and this discussion is around enhancing the educational value so more skills and knowledge can be transferred. The entire gameplay, to different degrees depending on the game, teach, sometime just basic computation skills, sometime more advanced social and networking skills, and in some game, things like analytics, problem solving, history, science and languages.”“We need some line that says this MMORPG is being used specifically for education and this line is around Anonymity. MMORPGs will teach no matter what, but when explicitly used for education, the entire environment must be safe and protect all the players. The balance of ensuring anonymous exploration without real-world social reprisals, could be to let students to anonymous to each other and take on as many characters as they like, but have each student’s character known to the school or teacher in confidence. This allows the school to mitigate risk malicious people disrupting the experience for all.”

“The statement, ‘However, it is unlikely that a transformational shift in a students’ cultural beliefs will occur unless complemented by a variety of other educational activities.’ Please explain what environment does this well and why MMORPGs are any less valuable in transforming cultural beliefs? Ultimately cultural beliefs change via exposure to new ideas and cultures. MMORPGs provide a unique way to expand one’s interaction. More specifically, people’s cultural belief will not change if information is only received from only the places, people and surroundings they grow up in. MMORPGs enable an environment for perspectives to be shared from outside the context in which the student is living. This is a huge opportunity for transformational shift, that can arguably be less effective if mediated by people/teachers from within the same social context. Students are like to see through the contradiction of a teacher saying things from their own cultural perspective, when their own interaction with other cultures tells them differently.”

“I am less concerned about the potential problem of “a player may come to identify too strongly with their avatar.” I think this can be more easily addressed then some of the other psychosocial issues.”

“Come to identify to closely with their avatar? Who has been taking this survey?”

“Having spent considerable time in SL and WoW, I find this to be the opposite of the below statement. The virtual or MMORPG environment may actually make people feel as though the are more closely connected to other players, which in turn can lead to misunderstanding especially where chat is used in place of voice. “The computer mediated social environment does not provide the same level of interactivity as face-to-face communication and might re-enforce solitude and anti-social behavior, or accentuate problems such as bullying, creating new channels for certain individuals to be ostracized.”

“While I agree with the intent behind this statement, I think in the real world the problem would be capturing this in any way that was embedded into the game. Capturing and assessing social learning is really tricky, and I think it would be too easy to game the game, if the players knew that they were being graded on teamwork or other social aspects. Making the game scoring system transparent to the player means that it’s easier to work around and fool, hiding it makes the game confusing and feels like trickery. Are you doing a psychological profile or teaching history, would be the question. My only answer would be that this cannot be embedded in the game and would have to be something the teacher does outside the game as part of the reflection. You have to trust the teacher as a professional to determine these things, not the game.”

“‘Aggressive competitiveness and may cause emotional distress for those who lose or do not win.’ I disagree with this point, as one of the unique things about games is that kids do not suffer from high-levels of distress when they fail. In fact, failure is often shrugged off or encourages the player to keep trying, and learn from their mistakes.”

I am interested in additional feedback from readers of this blog. What is your level of consensus with this summary? Are there any points you might want to elaborate on – or more importantly, disagree with? Please leave a comment.