by Timothy Dang
Starting on minor gamification of class assessments
Mar 16, 2012 at 11:23 pm in post by Timothy Dang
I’m working on thoughts for putting some degree of gamification into my intermediate economic theory course. The course has approximately 140 students, and the course material often comes as a shock to students who have been introduced to economics as ideas, but are suddenly expected to get into those ideas with mathematical rigor.
I’m working on figuring out gameful aspects I can include in the course assessments, keeping in mind that I’ll also need this to be something I can practically administer (with some TA assistance) and that I’ll need to convince the department it’s not batty. All the same, what I have so far isn’t as gameful as I’d like. That might be how it needs to be-I’ve considered and rejected some gameful aspects as not right for the course. I might reject any suggestions you make, but I’d still love to hear them because they might be just what I need.
There are several things particular to this course:
- It is problem-solving-based, in the sense that the students are presented with problems for which there is a single correct answer. The tools they acquire here will be used more flexibly in later courses, but the emphasis in this course is on mastering those tools.
- The material is largely cumulative.
Related to #1, cheating is a concern. Since there is not really room for interpretation, there’s little ability to recognize who might have asked who else for the answer.
Related to #1 and #3, the goal would be that students get perfect answers to the problems. (A typical problem will be taking a word problem, making it a math problem, showing the solution graphically and mathematically, so there are a number of components.) A student who understands the material should simply get it correct. When giving 75-minute exams, perfection is an unreasonable standard, so partial credit must be given. I’m hoping to move away from that.
Here’s the core approach:
Problems when you want them: Make single-problem quizzes available on a drop-in basis to students so that they can try them whenever they feel ready. (Since space and labor is limited, in practice, this would might mean that there are 6 hours per week when a classroom and proctor are available for the drop-in quizzes.)
Mastery as perfection: A student would need to truly demonstrate that they had mastered a topic, so that problems would be graded in binary, perfect or wrong.
4) Re-trying: Since perfection is difficult, students should be given multiple opportunities to try a given kind of problem. Since perfection can sometimes happen by accident, it would need to be accomplished on a given type of problem at least (twice? three times?).
Badges! When a student has shown mastery of aparticular topic (kind of problem), they receive a “badge” that they have done so, and are
then freed from needing be evaluated on that specific idea again. (This is not
to say, of course, that the same idea won’t re-appear as part of a later
concept. That will naturally happen since material is cumulative.) This accomplishment could not be “averaged away” due to the student doing poorly on later
assessments.
2)
Stepped progression: Since material is
cumulative, regardless of where the class as a whole is in lecture, a student who
had not yet mastered earlier material would not be allowed to complete problems on later material. This would help focus a student having difficulty on, “this
is what I need to learn now”.
3) Traditional exams:
Standard exams will be offered. Students who have no badges would need to take the exams as usual. Students with badges would have the opportunity to skip over problems for the material they have already mastered. The grades would nominally be based on these exams, but the more badges a student has, the less important the exams are.
————-
So, that’s the start. It has what I see as a few “gameful” aspects:
- It gives the students multiple possible paths to take. (A student could try to almost-completely bypass the exams, or could concentrate on only the exams.)
- It gives the students chances to make mistakes. (They can re-try the drop-in quizzes if they get them wrong, they can still take the exams if they get the quizzes wrong, and there’s not a penalty for getting them wrong.)
- It gives the students recognition of forward progress. (I don’t like that students who have learned more stuff might feel like they’re moving backward due to a later test grade lowering their class average.)
- Badges!
That’s only some gameful aspects. I’m still wondering about other elements to include, and about how to frame everything. Here are (a jumble) of thoughts and imagined constraints:
- Constraint: I’m not much of a performer or improviser, so gameful material which is dependent on me being an exciting live-action game master is probably a bad idea. That doesn’t rule out any such activity (I do periodically run experimental games in other courses), but it does mean that some gameful approaches I’ve known others to take won’t work.
- Constraint: I don’t see room for competition, for a few reasons. First, there’s a wide range of abilities in the course, so any *substantive* competition would probably be discouraging to too many students. Second, because the typical problems have a single correct answer, the only obvious axis for competition would be speed of completion, which I think gives the wrong emphasis.
- Feedback: Paper, computer, or…? Should students have a card on which they can put stickers for each of their badges? Should all that be handled by software? How game-like should the interface/presentation be?
- Fantasy: If running a gameful course for middle-schoolers or for a course in game design, there is a natural place for some fantasy element. (“You receive a badge in constrained optimization, and a +2 Sword of the Maximizer!”) For a course of heterogeneous adult students who are not enrolled because of games, I’m timid about including obviously fantasy elements (avatars, attributes, etc.).
- XP: Like the Fantasy aspect, I’m not sure if the XP would work, or how to manage it. I wouldn’t rule it out, since like badges it would show that any learning is forward progress, but would it simply be better to call it “current score” or something not-game-framed?
- Randomness: This is one of the first extra gameful bits I would lean toward taking. There can be some random challenges/quizzes/whatever in addition to the standard ones via drop-in quizzes and exams. They could be “green”/”yellow”/”red”, green: material everyone in the class should have already mastered, so for most people a nice feeling that they have learned something (and a kick in the pants for the few who haven’t); yellow: material which someone who’s keeping pace can probably handle just fine; red: a problem which is either ahead of the course material, or requires deeper thought about it. If I do this, would these be “random encounters” when someone comes in for a drop-in quiz, or problems given as pop quizzes during lecture (encouraging attendance), or… And how should those add into the course grade?
- Parallel tracks: I have seen some gameful courses where there are “skill points” that the students accumulate which are essentially a parallel way of tracking accomplishment, but which don’t affect the course grade at all. Should there be such a parallel track, something which doesn’t really affect things but gives the students feedback and is fun?
- Of course, all of the above might turn out to be too much to administer and grade. A great deal of the material could in principle be done via online quizzes, if it weren’t for concern about cheating.
That’s roughly where it currently stands.
by Katie
Educational Games Replacing Teachers?
Feb 22, 2012 at 8:13 pm in post by Katie
Salman Khan is testing his video-based tutoring program with differentiated practice problems in many school districts including mine. My district currently uses the online ALEKS tutoring program, which offers students the incentive of filling in pieces of a pie that represent different mathematical topics as they successfully answer practice problems.
Many teachers use ALEKS as a teaching tool without any human interaction involved, whatsoever. In these cases, the program really is acting as the teacher and the man or woman in the room who goes by the title of “teacher” is really just the supervisor who tells everyone to be quiet and stop playing solitaire.
During this week off from school, I am leading an optional tutoring program in the math computer lab on campus for students who want more practice with ALEKS. As you might expect, the student turn-out is low. Actually, I have only one pupil who is attending these extra practice sessions at the school.
The two of us are working on filling in the pieces of the pie in his account. He practices the problems and I give him verbal feedback and explanations to support the automated responses. Over and over, the student proclaimed, “We’re getting so much done!” Out of curiousity, he clicked on the report that ALEKS provides of the number of topics that he has learned over time. I was surprised to see that he was learning 7 times as many topics an hour working with me than working on his own!
There is a feeling by some that the pace set by teachers slows down the advanced students and that they ought to be replaced with faster computer games and programs. My position is that games that differentiate and offer feedback and motivation for students are valuable but are far more so with the support of a knowledgable and caring person to aid the learner. Rather than replace teachers with games, we can use educational games to enhance the skills that teachers have to offer.
by Kat White
Naturally Gameful
May 25, 2011 at 3:25 pm in post by Kat White
Not all education is as gameful in nature as others, but it is generally true that you know what goal you’re working towards (preparing for exams, or coursework, or a job), and you get taught the rules as you go along. What makes my course feel particularly gameful is the progressive way they have set up the smaller challenges along the way.
Each session has a presentation introducing some new ideas (currently I’m learning SQL on Wednesdays and XHTML & CSS on Thursdays), interspersed with ‘Hands-On Exercises’. The exercises aren’t just disconnected little challenges, they build up and add onto one central project as your knowledge increases. Not only do you feel the delicious satisfaction of steady advancement, you also get that rush of self-worth which comes from proving you’ve mastered a new skill.
It being a technology course helps, because I can see the impact of my actions immediately with a quick command in MySQL or a hit of the refresh button on Firefox to see how my webpage has changed. There is also that gentle nagging to get things perfect by the browser which doesn’t recognise your faulty code and the Database Manager which quietly shouts at you when you do the wrong thing.
Then, for the problem-solver in me, there are the mini-challenges in figuring out just why a line of code won’t work – is it that comma? have I missed a semi-colon?? I had great joy last week when the girl next to me asked for my help in figuring out why her CSS stylesheet wasn’t working and it was like a little puzzle to solve. (You can probably tell by now I’m a big fan of games like Prof Layton and Pandora’s Box).
Education doesn’t need to be gameful to be fulfilling, since it also satisfies our desire for self-development, but it was interesting to realise how much game mechanics was contributing to my enjoyment of my course, without anyone even trying to turn it into a game.
Shout out below if you’ve particularly enjoyed any unintentionally gameful experiences of late…
by Liam Boyle
Just Playing with some game code
May 7, 2011 at 12:11 pm in post by Liam Boyle
#————-
# Name: Guess The Number from PyGame Tutorial
# Purpose: Learning to program
#
# Author: Liam P Boyle
#
# Created: 05/05/2011
# Copyright: (c) Liam P. Boyle 2011
# Licence: <your licence>
#————-
#!/usr/bin/env python
def main():
## This is a guess the Number game
import random
guessesTaken = 0
print (“Hello, what is your name?”)
myName = input()
number = random.randint(1,20)
print (“Well, ” + myName + “, I am thinking of a number between 1 and 20.”)
while guessesTaken < 6:
print (“Take a guess”)
guess = input()
guess = int(guess)
guessesTaken = guessesTaken + 1
if guess < number:
print(“Your guess is too low”)
if guess > number:
print(“Your guess is too high”)
if guess == number:
break
if guess == number:
guessesTaken = str(guessesTaken)
print (“Good Job ” + myName + “! You guessed my number in ” + guessesTaken + ” tries.”)
if guess != number:
number = str(number)
print (“No. The number I was thinking of was ” + number)
if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
main()
## End
Just for fun (Yes, I remember the Zork games and choose your own adventure books)
#————-
# Name: Dragon Realm from the PyGame tutorial
# Purpose: Learning to program
#
# Author: Liam P Boyle
#
# Created: 06/05/2011
# Copyright: (c) Liam P Boyle 2011
# Licence: <>
#————-
#!/usr/bin/env python
#————-
## Import Statements
import random
import time
##————-
## Global Variable Initializatins and Function definitions
def displayIntro():
print (“You are on a planet full of dragons. In front of you,”)
print (“you see two caves. In one cave the dragon is friendly”)
print (“and will share his treasure with you. The other dragon”)
print (“is greedy and hungry, and will eat you on sight.\n”)
def chooseCave():
cave = “”
while cave != “1″ and cave != “2″:
print (“Which cave will you go into (1 or 2)”)
cave = input()
return cave
def checkCave(chosenCave):
print (“You approach the cave…”)
time.sleep(2)
print (“It is dark and spooky…”)
time.sleep(2)
print(“A large dragon jumps out in front of you! He opens his jaws and…”)
print()
time.sleep(2)
friendlyCave = random.randint(1,2)
if chosenCave == str(friendlyCave):
print(“He gives you his treasure.”)
else:
print(“He gobbles you up!”)
#————-
## Main Program Logic
def main():
playAgain = “yes”
while playAgain == “yes” or playAgain == “y”:
displayIntro()
caveNumber = chooseCave()
checkCave(caveNumber)
prompt = “Do you want to play again: yes/no?”
playAgain = input(prompt)
if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
main()
##End
#————-
And finally, my own work:
#——————————————————————————-
# Name: Math Tutor pre-K
# Purpose: help children learn addition and subtraction
#
# Author: Liam P. Boyle
#
# Created: 06/05/2011
# Copyright: (c) Liam P. Boyle 2011
# Licence: <freeware w/ author attribution>
#——————————————————————————-
#!/usr/bin/env python
##Import Statements
import random
#——————————————————————————-
def greeting():
print (“What is your name?\n”)
plyrName = input()
print (“Hello, ” + plyrName + “, would you like to add and subtract?\n”)
print (“Enter y for yes or n for no\n”)
playAns = input()
return playAns
def selectMode():
ModeNum = random.randint(0,1)
return ModeNum
def additionPractice():
tries = 1
num1 = random.randint(0,5)
num2 = random.randint(0,5)
answer = num1 + num2
while tries <= 3:
print (“What does “, num1, ” plus”, num2, “equal?\n”)
plyrAnswer = int(input())
if plyrAnswer == answer:
break
else:
print(“That isn’t correct. Please try again\n”)
tries = tries +1
if plyrAnswer == answer:
print(“Great Job!!!”)
else:
print(“The correct answer is: “, answer)
def subtractionPractice():
tries = 1
num1 = random.randint(0,5)
num2 = random.randint(0,5)
if num1 < num2:
num1, num2 = num2, num1
answer = num1 – num2
while tries <= 3:
print (“What does “, num1, ” minus”, num2, “equal?\n”)
plyrAnswer = int(input())
if plyrAnswer == answer:
break
else:
print(“That isn’t correct. Please try again\n”)
tries = tries +1
if plyrAnswer == answer:
print(“Great Job!!!”)
else:
print(“The correct answer is: “, answer)
def main():
playAns = greeting()
while playAns == “y”:
switch = selectMode()
if switch == 0:
additionPractice()
else:
subtractionPractice()
print (“Do you want to play some more?\n”)
print (“Enter y for yes or n for no”)
playAns = input()
if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
main()
## End
I would like to think that I’m getting better at this 
Liam B
by Haley Grace
Competitive Gaming: The Best Thing Parents Ever Hated
May 6, 2011 at 7:28 pm in post by Haley Grace
His parents are trading furtive looks. What’s happening to him? He spends all his time on that thing now! It’s not normal, it’s not healthy! Hopefully tomorrow, on Saturday, he’ll go outside and go play some normal games with his friends!
It’s Saturday afternoon, and instead of playing football with his buddies, little Jimmy is shut up in his room, on that darn PC. He’s got that headset on, and he hasn’t moved for hours. He, so randomly it seems, laughs, yells, screams, and cheers.
His parents are getting worried now. Why doesn’t he want to do anything else? That game has to have a hold on him. It’s like he’s an addict! That’s it! That video game must be addictive, and Jimmy just can’t help himself!
Unfortunately, the above example is precisely what happens in many households across the globe. Parents see a deviation from what would be considered “normal” behavior, and immediately assume something sinister or troubling is at hand. But in fact it is only the positive experiences and the fulfillment that Jimmy is receiving from his new endeavor, that keeps him glued to that screen. If only his parents knew more about the world and the experience that Jimmy is participating in, they may actually prize the phenomena for what it can instill in their child, and what their child can achieve through the active pursuit of obtaining a goal or achievement. In fact professional and competitive gaming can obtain results from children naturally, that parents and teachers must exhaust limitless resources to try to attain. Things like leadership, responsibility, accountability, dependability. Teamwork skills, strategy, and critical thinking. These are all things that competitive and professional gaming have drawn out of children effortlessly, and naturally, as they simply do their best to become the
best at their particular game of choice. It is the desire and the motivation to become better that enacts the positive and ideal behavioral changes in the child themselves.
Being part of a clan or guild in a FPS or MMORPG game requires that a child be dependable and responsible enough to adhere to a practice schedule, and be where he says he will be, when he says he will be. Leadership and teamwork skills emerge naturally as the child identifies in-game challenges and then works with team or guildmates to overcome them. Critical thinking and problem solving skills are again, coming out naturally as the child
uses even more teamwork and social skills to develop strategies and plans of action with his team or guildmates. The child is being introduced to more and more diverse groups of people and playing partners the longer he plays, teaching him even more valuable social skills and giving him direct experience in dealing with other cultures and ethnicities, often times much more so than he would be exposed to
in his local geographic area. Through competition and league play, the child is exposed to both the joy of victory, and the agony of defeat, and he will have a much deeper connection to what caused the outcome
and will have opinions and THOUGHTS on why it occurred, than he would in a one-night-a-week school governed athletic program where the coach makes all the decisions and planning. Communication skills also emerge
naturally as the child communicates those thoughts and opinions to his team or guild, and they then work together to plan and decide what course of action will reward them with the best results. And thankfully, those results are no longer going to be based on who is bigger, or faster. Computer gaming gives children who are smaller and less physically gifted to be on an absolutely even playing field with everyone else. Gaming environments such as these instill or develop skills in children that parents have always striven to achieve, and they do it in a way that comes naturally to the child without having to try to coax or force it out of them. It is no longer a chore to show up on time, to contribute to a discussion, or lead his peers in an endeavor. It is an expected duty, and simply another opportunity to excel.
Through education and involvement, parents can be made to see that the behavioral changes they are seeing in their child are not problems, but are actually results that they the parents have wished for their children themselves. They must be made to understand that it is an opportunity with limitless potential that should be embraced, and not denied. When the parent tries to limit the activity, or punishes the child by taking that activity away, they are really removing one of their greatest assets in helping the child grow and learn, instead replacing it with time spent watching the T.V., or texting on their cell phone. Instead of forcing the child to quit the activity, parents should try to include the activity as part of the child’s regular activities, enabling them to embrace the activity, and still ensure the child is staying healthy and getting all the physical exercise and
activity they need. And then parents can enjoy the full joy of a competitive gamer child, by using the experiences and skills the child has gained to influence their every day life.
Imagine a world, where a parent can say “Hey Jimmy, you know how you and your guild come up with different ways to beat bosses and win battles? Well can you and your brother please go figure out a way to get the garage organized?”, or “Hey Jimmy, you should ask some of your counter-strike teammates if they have any studying tips, too.”. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard teammates doing homework together, or helping each other with tough problems, and this is without any parent involvement whatsoever. For years children and young adults have run their own teams and organizations, organized leagues and events, created communities, influenced the design and development of both hardware and software, formed internet based businesses, developed both fundamental and advanced computer skills including but not limited to: typing, general pc basics, general internet and networking basics, image creation and modification, animation, video editing, sound and music modification, and computer security, all with little to no support from the people who are supposed to be the single most guiding factor in their lives.
The following is an example of what gamers can do, simply on their own, and for no real reward, beyond being known as the “best” in the game, or in the media creation attached to those games. Everything is done by young people who were NOT in the industry yet.(So nothing was “professionally” done). This shows the potential and the vast amounts of skills and ability these young people possess, as long as they CARE and really APPLY themselves to the fullest, which is something that games have always been capable of doing. If you are offended by pixelated blood or animated violence, you may not want to watch the video below, however I would recommend it to EVERYONE, even if your sensibilities are a bit disturbed, because the skills and abilities demonstrated by the creators is truly remarkable. This goes above and beyond the mastery of the game that you will witness by the young people IN the video, who have created names, reputations, friends, fans, and even careers for themselves, through the skills they demonstrated in-game, and applies to the editing, both sound and video, as well as the special effects and transitions seen and heard throughout the entire video.
I can hardly imagine what these same children and young adults would be capable of achieving, if they had their parents right behind them, telling them that anything is possible, and that they could do, anything.
by Liam Boyle
Semi-random thoughts 5/1/2011
May 1, 2011 at 11:57 am in post by Liam Boyle
Yet, it really is time to lower my aim for a bit. I just finished my programming logic course and I’m hoping that financial aid will kick in in time for me to take C++ programming over the summer. Anyway, I got to looking at some of the material in my course text book, and there’s a section at the end of each chapter called “Game Zone” with small projects for logical game design. The first of these was to design a simple MadLib type program that prompts the user to enter some words and then puts them into a short story or rhyme. So I fired up my copy of portable PyScripter (it runs off a usb flash drive) and here’s what I came up with:
## Attempt at Mad Lib Program
## Liam Boyle
## Mainline Program
quit = “n”
##Inputting the words
while quit != “y”:
prompt = “Please enter the name of a color:\n”
wordA = input(prompt)
prompt = “Please enter a noun:\n”
wordB = input(prompt)
prompt = “Please enter a number:\n”
wordC = input(prompt)
prompt = “Please enter another noun:\n”
wordD = input(prompt)
wordE = input(prompt)
prompt = “Please enter an adjective:\n”
wordF = input(prompt)
prompt = “Please enter a place:\n”
wordG = input(prompt)
print (“\n”, “\n”, “\n”, “Baa Baa “, wordA, ” sheep,\n”,
“Have you any “, wordB, “?\n”, “Yes sir, yes sir,\n”,
wordC, ” bags full;\n”, “One for the “, wordD, “\n”,
“And one the the “, wordE, “\n”, “And one for the “, wordF,
” boy\n”, “Who lives down the “, wordG, “.\n”)
## mainline finished, continue question
prompt = “Do you wish to quit y/n?\n”
quit = input(prompt)
## End program
The data formatting could be better, and I still haven’t gotten to how to develop a GUI but it works and we have a MadLib style version of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” It then occurred to me, that this could be a great learning tool for young children to develop language skills. Provided I can come up with the right graphic interface and a “bank” of rhymes to draw from, this could be a really good educational game. The same basic I/O format could also be used form simple math problems and puzzles. Therefore, it might be beneficial form to to work on developing some simple educational games over the summer for the Pre-K, kindergarten, to 1st grade range. (Which coincidentally would be precisely my son’s educational level.) Unfortunately I missed the deadlines for this year’s Google Summer of Code, but there’s always the next.
End of thoughts for today.
Liam B
by Dana Paxson
Riding a Tiger is Nothing Beside Riding a Dragon
Mar 16, 2011 at 1:30 pm in post by Dana Paxson
Take the human race forward 12,000 years in interstellar cold sleep and 10,000 years of trying to remember and recreate Earth, stranded on a distant planet, and you’ll have the general picture of the stories behind the build.
I have no idea who will be at the talk, but I can offer Second Lifers and guests the SLURL to get you to the build so you can get lost and go crazy with overload: Jeddin’s place. That way, you can see it even if the tour crashes the sim! (There! A few jitters just went away!)
;-D
Dana / Jeddin
by Sherman Dorn
Player experiences and emotions — a teacher’s perspective
Mar 14, 2011 at 7:38 pm in post by Sherman Dorn
What to do about and for that last group? Something about the readings on games I’ve done — McGonical’s Reality is Broken, but moreso Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop — reminded me this weekend of the summer I had pondered heavily the practical problem of running a doctoral class in a weekend format where students are in class for eight or nine hours and then not meeting for a stretch. I went back and forth between what I wanted to accomplish in the class and what I wanted students to feel and experience, along with the need to plan each eight-hour session in detail (imagine what would happen if it weren’t well-planned!).
And then I went out and read Bill Buxton‘s Sketching User Experiences, one of those gorgeous design books with an argument, in this case the importance of playing thoughtfully and critically with the lived use of industrial design. And I came up with a format and structure for the course that worked better than any other time I’ve had to teach a class with an odd schedule. For at least the weeks we were together in the course, the students appeared to buy into reading and debating deeply and then applying the ideas from a book (for a month, a book-a-week pace for research monographs) to something of interest. The core of it was respecting their time and understanding that they wanted the time they spent on the course to be useful and engaging. So we mixed up the slightly-silly with the serious each day we were together. And I tried to cut out academic BS as much as possible.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with the students who are attending class and trying but not succeeding as much as either they or I want… but I think I need to go back to thinking about their experience.
by Dana Paxson
Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education
Mar 14, 2011 at 7:08 pm in post by Dana Paxson
