Learning in Location
 
Some things to think about in location based learning Developing Roles and Communities of Practice in Game Based Learning These pages explore the contexts in which we are expecting to set the learner’s activities. This is a broad outline of an approach that has been developed into workshop activities in the COLLAGE project. The aim is to help teachers or other designers of educational experiences that are based on learning around specific roles and communities of practice. It involves a process of thinking carefully about a role and the community that role engages with, thinking of what is special to learn about that role and then deriving a narrative for learners about that role. From research in learning with games we know that a rich and understandable narrative and activity that challenges learners produce motivating and effective learning. This section is intended to support the development of narratives and challenges. It is important to bear in mind key limitations of the technology when developing tasks. Limited functions need not be a bar – having a clever human in a real environment is the important issue. A little technological input can help structure or catalyse and result in something special. Natural Narratives This section deals with the purpose of setting a learning activity in a given space. Technology has the capability of transforming a space from what it is to what it isn’t. The Futurelab game Savannah turned a school soccer pitch into a virtual Savannah. However most spaces have their own stories to tell and this section is mainly about developing those stories. We start with asking questions about the space itself. We move on to asking about important things to learn. We then imagine stories about the place that will support the learning and then briefly suggest ways to move forward from the story to the development of a game- which is beyond the scope of this document. What Stories has this place got to tell? The task here is for a group to provide as many answers to these questions as possible. This material will inform the brainstorm that will generate the appropriate narratives. What was it like in the past? What is it now? Why did it change? Does it change now – over what timescales? What might it be like in the future? Who uses this space? – what do they do? Who used to use this space?- what did they do? What is important about the physical geography of this space? – has this changed? What is important about the ecology of this space What is important about the man-made and man-shaped artefacts in this space? What is important about the ways that the physical geography, ecology and human activity interact? What has happened in this space? What might happen in this space? What are the big lessons? The aim is of course is that the students will come away from the experience more knowledgeable and hopefully wiser than they were before the experience. The experience itself may not be sufficient for this learning, however the experience obviously makes a contribution. A question that needs to have an answer for each story is therefore: What is important for the student to learn from this place? Possible answers may be:- Pollution is damaging historical heritage Ancient belief systems, as well as being a means of codifying the social and moral codes of a civilization, could be a means of transmitting important agrarian and environmental knowledge from generation to generation. Airports become poles for other significant economic activity Ancient buildings had their own unique means of dealing with the climatic conditions of the time. Why ancient civilisations decline……. From this we should be able to develop some high level learning aims that arise from the activity in the space – uniquely - or coupled with other activities. What stories can we make about this place? Phase 1: In a group suggest (in a sentence) story ideas that can be told about this place. Suggest as many as you can. There are no unacceptable suggestions – be bold. The purpose here is to come up with the key motivation of the activity. In the Futurelab project Space Mission we have a simple plot: Four astronauts are stranded by a quake under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa and they need to get home. Starting from this kind of sentence we will see below how we can begin to elaborate narrative and activity that leads to an engaging sequence. Important issues are things which define goal – like “they need to get home” or some other resolution because it is easier to explain or reveal to participants. A technique for generating further ideas is to take a sentence, like the one above and start substituting other words in the sentence. If we substituted Roman Legionaries for the word astronaut it may trigger other ideas. Phase 2: The Group can select a few (say 5 ) story ideas for development into 100 word synopsis. This should answer questions “by who?”, “to who?”, “involving who?”, “When?”, “Why?” and “how?” In this phase the purpose is to identify the principle roles, the actions those roles have to perform, could perform and what might be their motivations. Having multiple characters developed is important. It is obviously important to have sufficient balance for all learners to be engaged in the process. Virtual characters also need to have roles and motivations, however their roles can be designed for situation. Game Narratives A second issue which may influence the development of stories is that some narratives lend themselves better to game like activity. This should not necessarily preclude any strong story – you can set puzzles (or game elements) in the middle of a story that are only loosely based on the story. Some of the key narratives that are used in games are: Journeys Races Quests Foraging expeditions( eg collecting sets of things) Battling Occupation of territory Placing objects in locations. Rescuing. Building Most games are hybrids. The popular board game Monopoly™ is simultaneously a race, territory occupation and foraging. The next question to address is “how does our story become a game?” – “What kinds of game things does it involve?” It is worth considering the role of the students – are they role playing (like football and Monopoly™) or are they controllers (like chess or card games) or quiz contestants (like Trivial Pursuit™ and Scrabble™)? At this point there is a need to revisit the story outline and annotate it with the potential game strategies How close will the learning match the game? There is a choice to be made. Early research in games and learning demonstrated there is greater learner engagement if the narrative of the game matched the learning goals – ie the game-play matches the narrative. There is a another approach – the game narrative may only have loose or even no connection with the narrative (eg the word guessing game hangman has nothing to do with capital punishment). If you choose the latter approach your puzzles can be drawn up as convenient interludes in the narrative. We take an example from a visit to the Minoan remains at Knossos. Here are four different kinds of ways we might work with location. The examples progressively demand more engagement with combining narrative and locations. a) You are at the Bull of Minos – you will now do a maze game to test multiplication. b) You have reached the horns of the Bull of Minos – at the end of the maze you will have another clue about the destruction of Minoan culture. c) At this point in your journey you will have more visual evidence of the cult of the “bull” What can you collect here? If you have a full set you will be able to enter the maze. d) Theseus, If you have reached this point you will shortly meet up with Ariadne. If you make the right promises to Ariadne she will give you two gifts. With these gifts you may enter the maze. (ie the students will be role playing either Araidne or Thesueus) (d) Would be an example of collaborative collection and exchange allowing for progress to another level – (c) is similar but less immersed in the plot. There are a number of game-play elements that can be used here and there is a full discussion in the Anatomy of Games elsewhere on this site. It is probably wise to stick to a specific strategy of using the narrative to structure the event. It would be odd to encounter a fractions test on one occasion and serious role play in another. Mapping Knowledge and Skills to the Narrative At this point the process of breaking down both the narrative and the big idea into learning events can start. It is likely to be revisited as the narrative and the learning requirements are better understood. This process can be a two way – narrative can drive learning opportunities. Some learning opportunities may be necessary and important and therefore the plot of the narrative has to provide opportunities for those items to be learned. However there is a significant point that can not be expressed too forcibly. It is easy to create a game which relies on observation and recall but it is unlikely to be motivating and its educational value would be questionable. We would want to make a game for higher level skills. This is not only important in terms of the learnin g outcomes it is also important in game play. Games should challenge, it is important that students sometimes try and fail, but the problem should be rich enough for them to want to try again. Some higher level learning outcomes can be described as: − Evaluation-making judgments − Synthesis: a new design or problem solution − Analysis: Comparing and contrasting more than one potential “solution” − Problem solving – applying concepts A growing table (or map) can be developed. Finding things out In defining the activity there are also other aspects to be taken into account. There are multiple sources of knowledge and understanding for the students.  − Some information will come from direct experience of the environment − They have the advantage of having mobile phones- allowing to find out from other people (fellow students, outside experts, their teachers) in conversation (SMS or voice). − They will also have PDAs – this will give them internet searching and any pre-installed (and location sensitive) information sources we choose to give them. − Some information may come in collaboration with fellow players who will have had a different set of experiences. In defining the map of Knowledge and Skills to be gained it is worthwhile considering the balance of these ways of coming to know. The story structure By collaborative iteration you should now have a clear idea of a story and how to fit game elements into the story, what information the student will need and how they will get that information. It is worthwhile remembering that narratives need a good structure to keep them compelling that we can learn from other genres. There are clear differences between a play and a game. A game has to have multiple possibilities and importantly it has to have the ability to fail and try again – to relive scenarios in different ways. However there are useful things to note about the ways that plays build narrative and think about applying them in structuring learning in game-like learning A three act play usually follows a particular structure: In Act 1 the characters and the situation are introduced. A play usually does not start at the beginning – there is an assumed pre-history that will colour the scenario. At the end of Act 1 the nature of the problem to be solved is realised. In Act 2 the necessary information to solve the problem is gathered through encounters with people and places – each encounter makes the problem clearer and gives an opportunity for collecting information or virtual objects to be used in Act 3. At the end of Act 2 however the problem usually becomes magnified – a bigger dilemma is unfolded. In Act 3 you apply what you have gained in Act 2 to solve the problem. Conclusion The suggestions made here are not sufficient in themselves to create a location based game – more work needs to be done on thinking through what the experience of the student will be – what actions they take, how they will be rewarded, how they know they are winning or losing and so on. However the checklist above will reveal a top level understanding of: What can be learned from a location What is worth learning from a location How that might be transformed into a narrative How that story might contain (game) challenges It should be possible to sketch out a fairly complete learning scenario based on answering the questions posed in this section. There is a video of a teacher who has gone through some of this process based on the Fodele Valley in Crete http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226307662/carlosparada-20../seriousgames/anatomy%20of%20games.htmlhttp://www.nischelwitzer.com/mm/collage/shapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2