PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING USING GAME MASTERS,

STORYTELLERS& GAMIFICATION

By Ken Hubbell

KEN HUBBELL, SR. MGR LEARNING TECH, IR• 27 year veteran in animation, 2D/3D entertainment, business games

and simulations – Red Storm Entertainment, the EPA, Glaxo, Raytheon Missile Systems, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, and the FAA.

• Earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Design from NCSU and is completing an MS in Instructional Design and Technology at ECU.

• 2011 recipient of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology Immersive Learning Award.

• Gamer (D&D and other role playing computer and board games) since 1977.

• Currently researching advanced techniques for business leveraging games and learning technologies to promote innovation.

Ingersoll Rand University

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

• How many of you play or have played any kind of game with points and levels based on how well you play (golf, soccer, tetris)?

• How many of your organizations leverage a personal or organizational goal system with incentives based on the performance of the company and/or employees?

• How many of you play games that have quests or missions?

• How many of you work on projects throughout the year?

• How many of you are Game Masters (Dungeon Masters, etc)?

• How many of you manage teams of learning professionals?

WHAT IS PROBLEM(PROJECT)-BASED LEARNING?

• A Need to Know

• A Driving Question

• Learner Voice and Choice

• Inquiry and Innovation

• Feedback and Revision

• A Publicly Presented Product (or annotation)

A good driving question captures the heart of the project in clear, compelling language.

*Andre Geim, Nobel Award in Physics @ Nobel Banquet

The player(s) The story

The world The guide

*

WHAT ARE GAMES?• Structured or semi-structured activities• Generally distinct from work and art• Key components

• Goals• Rules• Challenge• Interactivity

• Involve mental or physical stimulation• Played as far back as the 30th century BC

“Games are a gateway to innovation.” - Dr. Jane McGonigal

“Who’s line is it anyways? - Where everything's made up and the points don't matter. That's right the points are just like” badges in [Gamification]. - Drew Cary

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LEVEL 1 BADGE

WHAT IS STORYTELLING?

• An oral tradition

• Reshapes knowledge into something meaningful

• Archetypes, not stereotypes

• Uses a classic narrative structure

• Show not just tell

• Provides the “how” and “why” to the “what” and “where”

Stories make people care.

DRAMA IS MADE OF

• Plot

• Character

• Thought

• Diction

• Music

• Spectacle

In games plot = gameplay (the imitation of action)and Narrative or story is delegated to thought and diction

TRIM THE FAT NARRATIVELY

The player has agency through the main character, but that doesn’t mean the player has to agree with all of the main character’s actions.

• This game is about A

• It takes place B

• The main character wants C

• It begins when D

• It ends when E

LEVEL 2 BADGE

A WORLD OF HIS OWN

A good fictional experience feels real even though we know it isn’t. Sometimes these experiences can be much more powerful than our mundane lives.

NARRATIVE ENVIRONMENTS

Many instructional arrangements seem 'contrived,' but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life."

– B.F. Skinner

While PBL games may be invented, combined, or adapted from other game environments, all such games have strengths and weaknesses that constrain them to specific kinds of problems.

WHAT IS PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING MASTERING?

• Leading/guiding

• Refereeing

• Storytelling

• Acting

• Cultivating the best user experience

• Making all equal participants in the story

The game master enforces the rules impartially and plays all non-player characters or situations encountered by the players - describing the world, and providing the story.

World Peace Game (TED) - Video: World Peace and other 4th Grade Achievements - SXSW 2010 Accepted Film - John Hunter

It is the role of the problem-based learning master to assign the right quest, to the right person, at the right time to enable them to attain their quest and stay in their own personal flow channel.

Adaptation of Csikszentmihalyi (1990).

EXPERIENTIAL MODEL

Understanding the decision making process of each individual is just as important, if not more important, than the decisions themselves.

LEVEL 3 BADGE

DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

The availability of low/no cost tools like Unity3D, Muvizu, Unreal Dev Kit, and Crytek SDK make world building possible even in today’s limited business economy.

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CONTACT INFORMATIONKen Hubbell @twubbell

khubbell@irco.com or williambellfive@gmail.comhttp://goingaroundmyelbow.blogspot.com

SL: WmBell

RESOURCE INFORMATION• John Hunter - http://youtu.be/0_ihrNohVGs

• http://www.RPGnow.com

• http://www.gamemastering.info/

• http://www.unity3d.com

• http://udk.com/download

• http://www.crydev.net/

• http://www.muvizu.com

• Luke Hohmann, Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products through Collaborative Play (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2007), 47-124.

• Larmer and Mergendoller. 7 Essentials for Project-Based Learning - www.bie.org

• http://www.vcu.edu/cte/resources/nfrg/11_07_problem_based_learning.htm