Virtual Learning Worlds

Heavenly Sword, due out shortly, has received a lot of attention. Some people have called it “Goddess of War”, implying that it’s simply a re-make of “God of War” but with a heroine. Based on the articles I’ve read, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

One interesting aspect of Heavenly Sword is the amount of time spent fleshing out the story. The team behind the game consisted of several people with movie backgrounds who spent a great deal of time building the story and characters. In a recent interview, a quote by lead writer Rhianna Pratchett caught my eye. Rhianna was asked “But as a script writer, do you find that detracts from your job if there’s an implied narrative that you don’t have to write?”. The interviewer was referencing an earlier quote about players having their own internal narratives as they move through a game.

Oh, no! Not at all. I don’t consider myself just a script writer, I’m a story designer as well and I am credited as such on both Heavenly Sword and another of my recent games, Overlord. Good story design is actually as important as the words you see on screen, because it’s creating the world in which you hear those words. It’s embedding narrative in the way a world looks, the way a character moves, speech, facial tics etc. It’s doing everything to facilitate the story, but it isn’t necessarily what the character is saying. It’s much more subtle than that.

This really struck a chord, because it’s similar to how I view myself as a designer. My educational background is formally in instructional design, but more and more I think of myself as simply a designer. Maybe a learning designer or an experience designer is more accurate, but I think it goes above and beyond simply instructional design.

I wish I had my copy of Engaging Learning on my desk right now. Quinn describes and outlines a process, that uses instructional design as a foundation, to build elearning simulations and games. But unlike instructional design, its primary focus is on the context of the learning environment. Every learning environment should be built around some sort of story or context(s), where the learner is making decisions along a storyline or story arc. At least that’s one of Quinn’s arguments that I happen to agree with (but that could partially be my learning style).

I feel like there’s a connection between how Rhianna describes building a story, and how Quinn envisions successful learning game design. Creating a learning environment where the learner has her own narrative (which might be different from a colleague’s narrative) within a specific context could be a very powerful tool.

I try not to do this often, but I’m extremely frustrated after going through several resumes today for a Serious Game Developer position. One item that I always find fascinating (and frustrating) is the total lack of game playing experience of individuals who wish to embark upon serious game projects and initiatives.

Marc Prensky argues that game designers are better at designing learning experiences than instructional designers (which in some contexts I agree). The problem is compounded due to people who want to work in the serious games space who DON’T ACTIVELY PLAY GAMES!

In order for us to learn how game designers are capable of engaging a player’s attention for 20+ hours, forcing the player to learn information about a new environment, a story, build strategies, navigate and traverse obscure spaces, and ultimately conquer the game…we, as educational administrators, designers, and developers have to at least spend SOME TIME playing popular games.

If I was applying for a serious game design and/or development position, I’d be sure to provide enough information (probably in my cover letter) that illustrated to the search committee that I’m familiar with the current gaming landscape. In addition to being conscious of what’s out there, I’d also want to convey information regarding how games have been, are, and could be used for learning. In this specific instance of a developer position, I think highlighting skills in Flash, 3D Modeling, and game-related programming languages is a plus.

Fortunately, we did have a couple solid applicants. I look forward to chatting with the rest of the committee next week to see if they had similar frustrations.

Stevie sent me an interesting Educause read on Pedagogical Foundations for Second Life. It’s nice and short read with some great ideas on how educators could put Second Life to good use. Some points the author makes that are worth discussing:

Reflecting on these instructional anecdotes, I find myself thinking that Second life is ideally suited for (at least) two kinds of learning activities - empathy-based learning and encounter learning…Empathy-based learning design requires the instructional designer to create a habitus, consisting of physical markers and parameters, position markings, behavioural options and the like that enable someone undertaking the lesson to experience social or instrumental interactions in a way that allows them to experience reality from a perspective different from their own….Another kind of educational activity that Second Life enables is encounter-based learning. Second Life allows one to transcend physical geography and bring diverse people together.

Neil provides great examples of empathy-based learning, and briefly touches on encounter learning. I find that Second Life also provides a great platform for simulation learning. The giant computer on Dell’s space, all the simulations on NOAA’s sim dealing with weather, Denver’s weather map, etc. We’re looking at simulating network security architectures and contexts that our students would interact with via Second Life. I also feel exploratory learning is huge in Second Life, which is something Neil adds to his list later in the article.

The design of exploratory learning is an interesting challenge. How do you design non-sequential instruction? In a blog entry I wrote earlier, I discussed a game-design book that offers some guidance on this design task. The book is called _Rules of Play_ . In that book, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman describe three layers of design:

- Rules: The logic and organization of possibilities within the system of the game
- Play: The human experience of the system - the constaints that enable people to move through the logic of the game rules in a structured and workable manner
- Culture: The larger activities, social and instructional contexts engaged with and inhabited by the system.

Ah, now we’re starting to touch on design. I’ve read parts of the Rules of Play, and I can see where Neil is coming from…to a degree. As I’ve mentioned before, Second Life is definitely NOT a game. Using game design guidelines within Second Life might work in some instances, but might fail miserably in others. For instance, Second Life does not have rules in a game design sense, and one could also argue that it doesn’t have any form of play either. Both of these dimensions reference the logic of the game rules or the game system…and second life has neither of these. Now, if you’re trying to design an educational game experience in Second Life, these three dimensions absolutely need to be considered. But now you’re also getting into designing your own system and your own rules, which will drive the mechanics of the game experience. A very challenging endeavor.

I have no idea how I missed this. The decision to target this at the Japanese market is puzzling (aside from the Sake game). I would think this would be a prime candidate for the Brits! Maybe they could make a similar game that deals with the consequences of binge drinking that I could distribute on my campus. The idea of learning how to bartend via a game is a no-brainer, a space that computer games have gone in the past. The wine game also sounds interesting. I’m curious what the gameplay will involve.

I’ve had this article about My Word Coach open in my browser for nearly a week now. I posted a while back that Ubisoft is embarking on a serious game initiative, and it looks as if this is one of their first public demos of a title.

I guess the only thing to note here is that Joystiq:
1) actually spent time playing an educational title at E3 and posted a short hands-on review.
2) they seemed to really enjoy the game!

E3 was a bit different this year in terms of format, but I’m still impressed with the effort at Joystiq. With hundreds of games available for demo, they took the time to checkout what many journalists would probably skip. The fact that they found it FUN gives me hope that the example these big developers are setting will hopefully trickle down and more professionals in the game industry will be open to working with educators in the future.

The talk last night went very well. We utilized a combination of Adobe Connect (formerly Breeze) and Second Life for the course session. I’d like to thank Karl and his students for coming up with some great questions and bearing with me as several of us struggled with the technology. Some things to ponder based on the experience:

- Being on the “bleeding-edge” can be painful…for both the learners and the facilitator. Several students couldn’t login to Second Life due to lab computerse, several people got disconnected on occasion (including me), and it was difficult for some folks to quickly navigate between Second Life, Breeze, and this blog with all the SLurls (the post below).

- When using Second Life for teaching and learning, something like Breeze could work on its own. In the case of last night, it would have been possible (maybe even preferrable?) for me to simply screen share Second Life, and move from place to place on my own, pointing out interesting design aspects of various sims. It would have alleviated some of the technical issues (I did start screen sharing towards the end when several people couldn’t login), but it would have been a much more passive experience.

- Choose the places in Second Life you want to visit (and bring an entire class with you) carefully. For instance, Harvard looked to be in the middle of a class session when I pulled up Berkman on the mini-map, so we decided to skip that stop on the tour. Other sims contained excessive amounts of prims that made exploring nearly impossible. These sims (in conjunction with running Breeze and screen sharing) crashed my entire computer…twice.

- Utilize the Buddy System. Some students had trouble getting from place to place. I suggested that students pair up, and once a student finds the correct location, offer a portal to the other student. Mass-teleports could also be utilized, but I haven’t explored this option enough to figure out the logistics.

- In the future, I’d like to collect real-time data on these virtual field trips. I envisioned the class being able to ‘vote’ on each sim, ranking it from 1-10 after each visit. This would be from a design perspective, maybe even an experience perspective. I may work something like this into a homework assignment for the Fall, and utilize something like ANGEL or Zoomerang for the voting. If we could collect this type of basic data, it could really help inform future project designs in Second Life (and other virtual worlds).

I believe Karl recorded the entire session. I’ll try and get a link posted here.

This post isn’t necassarily about the content, it’s more of a facilitation post for my guest talk in Karl’s course, Learning in 3D. The talk will be Monday, July 16th. Hopefully after class is over, I can revisit this post (or create a new one) and add student thoughts about various designs. Should be interesting.

RESOURCES:
List of Academic Institutions in Second Life
IST Second Life Resources

SLurls
College of Information Sciences and Technology- http://slurl.com/secondlife/istania

Ohio University - http://slurl.com/secondlife/OHIO%20Outreach/96/211/27

Dell - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dell%20Island/249/83/23

Harvard - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Berkman/105/74/35

Information Island - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/60/120/0/ and http://infoisland.org/

Bowling Green - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bowling%20Green%20State/113/171/

Bromley College, UK
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Daydream%20SE%20Islands/206/40

Buena Vista University
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Buena%20Vista/23/172/28

Drexel
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Drexel/

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities
http://slurl.com/secondlife/MNSCU/128/128/0

Northern Illinois University
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Glidden/144/176/33

IBM - http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM/108/7/23/

Amazon - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Amazon%20Developers%201/195/193/36

EduNation - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Edunation/67/47/22/

IBM CodeStation - http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%20CODESTATION/93/87/38

SUN - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sun%20Pavilion/167/157/90

Additional Virtual Worlds worth checking out:
World of Warcraft
Toon Town
Whyville
A Tale in the Desert
There

I’m assuming Google Docs isn’t new to anyone, but if you haven’t checked it out, you probably should. I’ve been using the service more and more lately, and I’ve recently found myself approaching Google Docs from a familiar vantage point:

Game Forums.

I used to belong to several forum communities back in college. Ultima Online, Unreal Tournament, Tomb Reaider, Resident Evil, the list goes on. Every few hours I’d pull up my forums, and quickly jump from page to page in an attempt to find new posts, new information that somehow fed my curiousity about these environments. Sometimes I’d get into debates with people about a game mechanic or strategy, sometimes I’d end up meeting someone from the forums inside of a game world, sometimes the conversations spilled out of the forums and into IMs, or even in-game battles. Whatever it was about these forums, one thing was for sure: it was ENGAGING. Extremely engaging.

Now that I’m involved in a variety of collaborative projects, many of which utilize Google Docs, I find myself pulling up the Docs dashboard, and hastily examining all the “Date” fields of each document. When was this lasted edited? By whom? I always have my fingers crossed that the who is NOT “Bartonpursel”, that someone has contributed something new and hopefully interesting to the document so I have something new to think about, then react if necassary.

Google Docs might be more than just a web-based version of the MS Office suite. Maybe, just maybe they’ve somehow managed to capture some of the feel of game forums, and create the type of excitement many people experience in these environments.

Summer usually isn’t the optimal time to bunker down with a book, but for some reason that’s what I’ve been doing lately. I finished Everything Bad is Good for You the other day, which was a great read. Lots of interesting observations and theories on how today’s popular culture (mostly television and video games) is creating a very intelligent group of youngsters. Not in the IQ-sort of way, but more in the problem-solving sense.

I’ve been reading Egnaging Learning off and on for many months now, and almost to the end. I’ll post more specific thoughts on that once I’m done, but in general it’s a fastastic book. Quinn paints a very practical picture for how we can create simulations and games using a loose framework or process. Things to stress:
- ALWAYS use a context. Put learners in a story appropriate to the audience. Don’t present the content without a context.
- ALWAYS think of the learner’s experience in the learning environment. Make sure you have hooks to keep them engaged.
- Iterative development is the key to creating successful simulations and games for learning. Be sure to constantly test and revise.
- While creating decision points for learners, the distractors (wrong answers) are even more important than the correct answer. Specifically, you want to make the distractors decisions people actually make while performing the job or task in real life. In some isntances, you don’t want to correct them immediately in the simulation or game. Let them make the wrong decision, then have the environment SHOW THEM what happens a couple steps later. Then bring them back to that decision point and explain.

This post might get a bit loopy. I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, and basically trying to flesh it out via a post (or more depending where this one goes).

I’ve been thinking a lot about interfaces lately. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

This somewhat builds from my post about Interface Design + Games. When I first started demonstrating World of Warcraft for people at work, they couldn’t get over how confusing the interface looked. Buttons everywhere, no labels, limited text on the screen, etc. “How in the world do you know what you’re doing?”. That’s part of where my idea for what I’m initially calling phased interfaces originated. When you start WoW for the first time and create a character, you literally have about 3-4 buttons you can press to perform some sort of action in the world. In addition to the limited buttons, you also have smart tool-tips that recognize what you’re interacting with, and provide you additional information (not uncommon in most games and software packages). As you progress through the game, you slowly accumulate more actions you can perform in the environment, and your interface starts to grow organically as you learn how to use your new abilities. In the end, your interface starts to look something like this:

I’m also playing Resident Evil 4 on my Wii. They take a similar approach in the form of “Player Manuals” that you access as you move through the game. Each manual illustrates how to use the Wii-mote to execute an action within the game. The further along you are, the more intricate and detailed the manuals become.

In gaming, this seems to be a great technique to bring in users who might not be that comfortable with the UI, and turn them into experts quickly as they move through the environment.

I started to wonder: what if Second Life took this approach? What if, upon creating an account, you were only provided a subset of the menu and interface items? For instance, maybe the building, scripting, and land ownership menus weren’t just grayed out, but totally removed? What if the building and scripting interface slowly built upon itself? You need to build a shape or two before you were presented with the edit shape tools, then you had to edit a few shapes before the environment gave you the tools to merge objects, etc.

Beyond Second Life, what if our LMS and CMS environments took this approach? What about software applications? It’s a fine line when we start to look at productivity software and applying this approach, but I think it would be worth experimenting.

This is learning at its finest in the manner in which games coach users how to actually play. As designers of elearning environments, we should be taking a very careful look at successful titles and how we can borrow strategies for teaching our students how to navigate and interact with our environments.

An interface should NEVER get in the way of the user, but enable her to navigate and interact efficiently.