designing games for learning

DESIGNING

GAMES FOR

LEARNING

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CHARLES M. REIGELUTH, PH.D.

PROFESSOR EMERITUS, INDIANA UNIVERSITY

RODNEY D. MYERS, PH.D.

INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR

BACKGROUND

Oct 2009 – IPA agreement with AFRL to “… provide

recommendations about instructional and learning theory …

Contract in Feb 2013 to prepare a report providing research-

based guidelines for the design of serious games in the Air

Force.

Instructional aspects

Gaming aspects

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INTRODUCTION

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Benefits of serious games

• Games capitalize on the relationship between action and

cognition (learning by doing)

• Authentic practice in specific roles and contexts

• Games promote team development, social learning, and

social cohesion

• Collaboration, distributed knowledge, and collective efficacy

• Games enhance learner engagement and effort

• Immersion and flow prolonged and focused engagement

• Control, autonomy, self-efficacy

INTRODUCTION

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Benefits of serious games

• Games provide a safe environment for learning

• Scaffold learners toward required competencies

• Games are customizable

• Variable levels of authenticity

• Dynamic difficulty adjustment for optimal challenge

INTRODUCTION

Criteria for selecting serious games as an instructional

strategy

• Effectiveness

• Skills as game actions

• Tasks include variations and are increasingly complex

• Risk requires safe environment for practice

• Efficiency

• Time and cost of development

• Time and cost of learning

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FUZZY VISION

Six fundamental design principles

1. Authenticity

• Scenario, roles, and contextual factors are consistent with whole, real-

world tasks

2. Levels of difficulty

• Must be mastered by each player before progressing to the next level

• Designed using Simplifying Conditions Method (Elaboration Theory)

3. Scaffolding

• 3 Forms: Adjust task environment, Coaching, Instructional overlay

• Virtual mentor – just-in-time coaching and instruction

• When: Automatic, triggered by player action, requested by player

• Quicker, easier, more enjoyable

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FUZZY VISION

Six fundamental design principles

4. Part-task mastery

• When the game is paused, KSAs are mastered before game continues

• Ensures mastery across range of situations, automatization

5. Feedback

• Natural consequences during game play

• Player can request explanations by virtual mentor

• Virtual mentor provides debriefing at end of each performance

• Immediate feedback is provided in instructional overlay

6. Motivation

• A score for each role

• Collaboration (when appropriate), authenticity, confidence (levels)

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

• Goal(s)

• Game mechanics

• Rules

• Players

• Environment

• Objects

• Information

• Technology

• Narrative

• Aesthetics

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Goal(s)

To achieve the configuration of game elements that matches the winning

state defined in the rules

• Desired learning outcomes Goals of game (authenticity)

• Achieving the goals of the game = Achieving the learning goals

• Subgoals (authenticity, levels of difficulty, motivation)

• Whole, authentic tasks > Subgoals > Final goals

• Levels: progressive difficulty/complexity

• Game (learning) cycles Motivation

• Acquire tools and abilities

• Develop skillfulness by completing tasks

• Achieve subgoals through mastery

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Goal(s) | Game mechanics | Rules | Players | Environment

Objects | Information | Technology | Narrative |Aesthetics

ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Game mechanics

Actions governed by rules that a player may take with or on one or more game elements

• Desired learning outcomes Actions (authenticity)

• Core mechanics

• Must master to achieve goals

• Should become skill-based (automatic) through practice

• Compound mechanics

• Two or more mechanics combined by a rule

• Recur less frequently than core mechanics

• Peripheral mechanics

• Optional/non-vital in achieving goals

• Novel (non-recurrent) and knowledge-based

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Rules

Define the possibilities of and constraints on actions in a game, as well as

the rewards and penalties for those actions

• Tightly bound with mechanics

• Player expectations based on precedent

• Outcomes and feedback consistent with real world (authenticity and

feedback)

• Game balancing

• Designing the relationships among all of the elements to promote the

desired game experience

• Playtest frequently to observe results of design decisions

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Players

The individuals who choose to undergo the experience of a game

• Possible single- and multi-player configurations (Avedon, 1971)

• Intra-individual, extra-individual, aggregate, inter-individual, unilateral,

multi-lateral, intra-group, inter-group

• Roles and avatars

• Game dynamics

• Emergent patterns of interplay between mechanics, rules, and players

• Observed during playtesting

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Environment

The setting in which the action of the game takes place

• Movement

• Structure: discrete or continuous (or a combination)

• Dimensionality: linear, rectilinear, 2D, 3D

• Perspective

• Isometric (or top-down): 2D simulations and strategy games

• First-person: 3D subjective

• Third-person: 3D objective (“camera” perspective)

• Physics

• Time

• Play time and event time (Juul, 2004)

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Objects

The components of the game system that embody and enable the game

mechanics or are affected by the player’s use of game mechanics

• Diegetic objects

• Exist in the game setting; accessible to an avatar

• Non-diegetic objects

• Exist outside the game setting; accessible to the player

• Properties (or attributes)

• Static or dynamic states

• Affordances make apparent how the object is used

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Information

• About avatars

• Role and attribute states, inventory, location

• About objects

• Attribute states related to game mechanics

• About events

• Feedback: immediate result of the use of game mechanics

• Narrative information: descriptions of past performance, backstory, cut scenes, pending tasks, and other information related to the story

• About the environment

• Maps, sensory cues (esp. for tone and mood)

• About the system

• Game state, available system procedures

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Technology

• Equipment

• Physical pieces required to play

• Videogames

• Computing device (platform)

• Screen and speakers

• Physical interface

• Virtual interface

• Network for multiplayer

• Data storage

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Narrative

A sequence of events that tells a story

• Episodic memory

• Familiar frame of reference (genre)

• Cognitive frame of reference (schema)

• Structure

• Linear

• Branching

• Foldback (multiple paths leading to a single event)

• Roles

• Shaffer’s (2006) epistemic frame: a set of “skills, knowledge,

identities, values, and epistemology that professionals use to think in

innovative ways” (p. 12)

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

Aesthetics

A player’s emotional responses and felt experiences as a result of interacting with/in a game system

• How will the player feel? (Hunicke, LeBlanc, & Zubek, 2004)

• Challenge (obstacle course)

• Fellowship (social framework)

• Discovery (uncharted territory)

• Expression (self-discovery)

• Fantasy (make-believe)

• Authenticity and realism

• Physical (feels real)

• Perceptual (seems real)

• Functional (acts real)

• Cognitive (matches mental model)

• Emotional (evokes reality)

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ELEMENTS OF THE

GAME SPACE

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

• Adjusting

• Coaching

• Instructing

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Adjusting

• Definition

• Adjusts aspects of the game for ZPD, behind the scenes

• Indications

• When the task is too difficult for the player

• When adjusting is better than coaching or instructing

• Kinds of Adjusting

• Provide easier cases first (SCM)

• Provide artificial prompts – with fading

• Perform parts of the task for the player – with fading

• Access (Timing)

• Universal, Triggered, or Requested

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Coaching

• Definition

• Provides cognitive and/or emotional support to the player, usually during performance, without teaching – can pause the game

• Indications

• When the task is too difficult for the player

• When coaching is better than adjusting or instructing (just a little help)

• Kinds

• Provide information, a hint or tip, or an understanding

• Inquisitory (Socratic) or expository form

• Timing

• Before, during, or after a performance

• Access

• Universal, Triggered, or Requested (without freezing time if authentic)

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Instructing

• Definition

• Provides information and activities appropriate for the kind of learning

– must pause the game, is offered JIT

• Indications

• When a significant amount of learning effort is required

• Access

• Universal, Triggered, Requested, or Suggested

• Formats

• Part-task selection (customized?), Virtual mentor (present?)

• Strategies for instruction and assessment

• Coming up

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Instructing

• Strategies for memorization

• Primary strategies

• Present, Practice (Test) (Consistent with real task)

• Secondary strategies

• Repetition, Chunking, Spacing, Prompting, Mnemonics, Review

• Use more with increasingly difficult tasks

• Control strategies

• System control, or Player control over …

• Presentation or practice, amount of repetition, chunking, spacing,

prompting, mnemonics, review

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Instructing

• Strategies for skills


• Generality, Example, Practice (Test), Feedback (Consistent)


• G: Attention-focusing devices, Alternative rep, Simultaneous E

• E: Attention-focusing devices, Alternative rep, Easy-dif, Diverg

• P: Easy-difficult sequence, Divergence, Prompting, Overlearning

• FB: Attention-focusing devices, Alternative representations

• Control strategies

• System control, or Player control over …

• Inductive or deductive, G-E-P, all secondary strategies

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Instructing

• Strategies for causal understanding


• Acquisition (G, E), Application (P, FB) (Consistent)


• G: Expository or Confirmatory with prototyp E; Atten foc, Alt rep

• E: Passive or Active (manipulation of c or e); Atten foc, Alt rep

• P: Easy-difficult, Divergent, Overlearning

• FB: Natural or Artificial; Confirmatory, Hint, or Explanation;

Informational or Motivational; Atten foc, Alt rep

• Performance strategies

• Explanation, Prediction, Solution; Performance Routine (GEP)

• Control strategies – System or Player Control

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Instructing

• Strategies for process understanding – similar to those for

causal understanding except …

• Performance strategies

• Description of the natural process (events, sequence)

• Performance routine


• G-E-P-FB for the natural process (Consistent)

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Instructing

• Strategies for conceptual understanding

• Dimensions of understanding

• Superordinate, Coordinate, and Subordinate (in which the

concepts may be either parts or kinds of each other)

• Analogical, Experiential, Functional, etc.


• Description (G), Application (P), Feedback (Consistent)


• G: Expository or Confirmatory

• P: No. of dimensions, separate or integrated with the task

• FB: Confirmatory, Hint, Description; Informational, Motivational

• Control strategies – System or Player Control

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ELEMENTS OF THE

SCAFFOLDING

Instructing

• Strategies for attitudes and values

• Primary strategies for

• Cognitive component: Persuasion

• Affective component: Operant conditioning

• Behavioral component: Practice for habit


• Move all three components along continuum simultaneously

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CONCLUDING

REMARKS

Fundamental

Design Principles

• Authenticity

• Levels of

difficulty

• Scaffolding

• Part-task

mastery

• Feedback

• Motivation

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Elements of the Game Space

• Goal(s)

• Game mechanics

• Rules

• Players

• Environment

• Objects

• Information

• Technology

• Narrative

• Aesthetics

Elements of

Scaffolding

• Adjusting

• Coaching

• Instructing

QUESTIONS AND

COMMENTS?

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Chapter in Green Book IV

Full Report available at: www.reigeluth.net/

Click on “Publications” > “Instructional Theory” and scroll to

bottom of page for the PDF.

Emails:

[email protected]

[email protected]

http://www.reigeluth.net/

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

designing games for learning

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