More on Machinima

I started outlining some potential educational benefits of machinima in my last post. For some reason, Machinima has been sticking in my brain as a real educational opportunity that hasn't really been utilized yet. The example I touched on dealt with a consulting class, utilizing Machinima as a way to allow the students to 'get inside' the characters' heads. I'm not so sure this would be a game, a simulation, or true machinima...but it'd be extremely beneficial for students.

To build on this idea a bit more, let's say I'm teaching a course on consulting, with a large portion of the course dealing with negotiation skills. After providing the background on negotiation in the context of consultants, I open up an application to my students created using principles of machinima. The application begins with a short scenario (in text or in audio, on top of the environment) detailing three characters engaged in negotiating the time, money, and resources necassary to complete a project (the triple constraint). One character represents the client organization, while the two others represent consultants for a bidding company. Students then watch the scene unfold, paying attention to how the consultants drive the negotiation process. But the students can choose to watch in an active or a passive manner. Each character is selectable in that the student can click on that particular character, and get detailed information on the thoughts driving the character's actions...in this case, negotiation tactics. In terms of design, maybe this pauses the actual dialogue so the student can read/listen to the character's thought process. The students can navigate from one character to the next, examining the factors that drive each characters' actions.

What would it take to create something like this for educational use? For starters, a submect matter expert (SME) on negotiation would be needed. This person would work in conjunction with an instructional designer to flesh out the scenario and how best to present it to students. Then you'd need to choose some form of engine...potentially something like Source due to its facial expression capabilities. Then you'd need a programmer (IE: student) to build out the scene in the engine. Probably some voice talent (IE: co-workers) to record audio for the three characters. I'm not sure if Source has the capability to pull in dialogue from a text file, but that would remove the need for any voice talent, and would also open up huge doors for modifications. Then, after the students have experienced the activity, the students can then take the same application, mod it in terms of the scenario and script, then practice with other students. In teams of two, students could walk one another through the first set of dialogue, pause the application, then ask their partner "What would you do next?". Then begin the application again. The actual scenarios the students create would basically be a graded assignment for the course, and would need to be as accurate as possible based on the course readings and/or lectures.

Would utilizing something like this in a context described above be helpful for students? I'd imagine. How complex would something like this be to put together? I'm not sure...