Sustainability Learning through Gaming | Computing for Sustainability I’ve long been looking for approaches that use gameplay to engage in sustainability. I’ve previously been disappointed in a lack of systems thinking, and decisions in game design that damage a sustainable game’s utility. While participatory model development rather than gameplay, this was premise of my PhD Spatial Process Modelling. Prompted by Stefan Kreitmayer I’ve been reading an interesting paper by Carlo Fabricatore and Ximena Lopez presented at ECGBL: Sustainability Learning through Gaming: An Exploratory Study This paragraph is laden with potential: Educating for sustainability demands approaches and tools promoting systems thinking and learning to deal with traits of complexity, such as change, uncertainty, and emergence. So is this quote: All these steps are carried out directly in the gaming environment that serves as a frame for meaning making (Gee 2007). Their model of gameplay doesn’t seem to have interaction with other players, nor environmental scanning. Like this:
Teampedia “8 Tips for Measuring the Impact of Serious Games” | Pamela M. Kato, EdM, PhD Serious games are great! When you play them, the good ones (!!), you get the feeling that they are a breakthrough in learning. They “feel” like they are doing much more than traditional teaching and training approaches have done in the past. You think, “Everyone should be learning through games and they will replace textbooks in the classroom and brochures in the doctor’s office!” But that is not enough. Games are expensive to make, they come in all different levels of quality, and sometimes when you hear that a martian on an imaginary planet is teaching kids how to become successful entrepreneurs, you have to wonder if they really “work.” But because serious games seem to have an impact beyond the outcomes we have traditionally measured in training and teaching, this often means that we have to be smart, thoughtful and innovative to do a good job of measuring what they can do. Get your brain power-up because here are some tips about how to go about measuring what serious games can do.
MENTORIC Learning Analytic for Digital Game-Based Learning There is an overlooked opportunity in games – big data generated in the interactions through gaming. Game based learning is great, it’s learning-by-doing with lower costs in many cases, it’s focused on problem solving, it improves students motivation. But when we suggest teachers to use serious games to teach their students, the first question that it comes to their minds is: “Well, I like the idea, but… How do I assess this?”, or “How do I know it works for everyone?” Learning Analytics for Serious Games should step in now. Actually it’s another data mining process, quotes from the post from Games and Learning Alliance(GALA): Most of current research is focused on analyzing data generated by LMS, and they obtained interesting results analyzing visits and views of courses resources, forums interactions… However, serious games—and all videogames—are interactive by nature, and this interactivity generates a lot of data that can be analyzed. By MarkyBon, licensed under CC BY-SA
12 Steps for Designing Effective Training Programs If you have to design a new class, a lot of preparation work and practice run-throughs are required for a polished final product. Read through these steps to make sure you're doing everything necessary to create a successful class. As trainers, we are often called upon to design our own training based on the needs of the organization. Preparing the informationThe first task is to determine what you have to teach and how you’re going to teach it. Figure out the skills you need to teach. Remember to keep it in order, keep it simple and easy to follow, and make sure you have practiced the presentation several times (enough to become at ease with the program), and you will be assured of an effective training presentation. Marsha Glick has a variety of training experience. What’s the best way to create a new training program?
Serious Games Directory BETA | Brain Pickings Gaming the Past | historical simulation games in the classroom Games For Learning Institute playforce.org - Playforce: Learning from the games we play Solving the World - Serious Games Require Serious Gamers | Curiouser Institute Every day gamers go into fictional spaces to save the world. They go on quests to save the Mario Galaxy, battle evil in Azeroth, and improve their lots in Farmville. Millions of gamers spend in the area of 3 billion hours a week solving the difficult and challenging problems of hundreds of fictional worlds and thousands of quests. Until lately that didn't really have much of an effect on the real world. However with the rise of Serious Gaming, a movement that explores the uses of games beyond "entertainment", video games and the real world have become entwined. Games have already been developed that have helped scientists find planets around distance suns, create new proteins to help fight AIDS, teach about peak oil, and this is only the beginning. The ability of games to now reach out into the real world brings up a tantalizing question. Like puzzles? The term "serious gaming" is a useful, but in some ways unfortunate term. This is what makes the games so vitally important to us.
Game Theory, Popular Science On test day for my Behavioral Ecology class at UCLA, I walked into the classroom bearing an impossibly difficult exam. Rather than being neatly arranged in alternate rows with pen or pencil in hand, my students sat in one tight group, with notes and books and laptops open and available. They were poised to share each other's thoughts and to copy the best answers. As I distributed the tests, the students began to talk and write. All of this would normally be called cheating. But it was completely OK by me. Who in their right mind would condone and encourage cheating among UCLA juniors and seniors? The students began to talk and write. Nevertheless, I'm a realist. Much of evolution and natural selection can be summarized in three short words: "Life is games." So last quarter I had an intriguing thought while preparing my Game Theory lectures. Gasps filled the room. "None," I replied. They could surf the Web. But did the students themselves realize this?
Researchers Harness Brain Game Data The activities of cognitive training enthusiasts give insight into the effects of lifestyle choices and age on the brain’s performance. FLICKR, HEY PAUL STUDIOSScientists from California’s Lumos Labs, maker of Web-based brain training games, are gathering data from online users to make connections between cognitive performance, lifestyle choices, and aging, according to a paper published last week (June 20) in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. For tasks testing memory and arithmetic skills—each completed by around 127,000 to 162,000 users who took a lifestyle survey—the researchers found that high performance correlated with drinking one or two alcoholic beverages per day and sleeping around 7 hours a night. The researchers also analyzed data from the subset of users who completed individual tasks at least 25 times, in order to measure the relationship between learning ability and age. Around 23,000 to 107,000 users per task qualified as repeat users.