Games Help Make Learning Fun

Playful design, the blending of serious educational games (SEGs) with immersive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, is becoming the next big thing in higher education. Playful design works because people like to play games and games make learning fun, according to David Chandross, professor of education, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada.

“Serious games work by practicing skills and tracking achievement, but also by giving learning an addictive quality,” he wrote in an article for The Conversation. “The ‘one more move’ thinking that keeps video gamers up all night is harnessed for learning.”

Chandross noted peer-reviewed studies show SEGs encourage students to use what they learn while playing, engage them better than most lectures, and reward learners for their achievements. It’s a form of active learning that helps students succeed.

“We learn a lot when we love what we are learning,” Chandross said. “It’s a basic trademark of achievement in higher education. Human beings love doing certain things, and learning to become a master of their own world, however fantastical it might be, is one of them.”

Netflix, Smartphones Eat Up Bandwidth

The Netflix video-streaming service and smartphones are the two biggest drains on campus bandwidth, according to a report on residential networks (ResNet).

Netflix was named the biggest content threat to bandwidth capacity by 88% of the IT, housing, and business officers who participated in the State of ResNet 2018 Report, while smartphones were listed as the largest consumers of bandwith by 73% of respondents.

The smartphone percentage was an 11% increase over the 2017 report, with desktop computers and laptops finishing second (65%) and smart TVs in third (59%). At the same time, online learning tools and interactive digital textbooks were considered a threat by 33% and 14% of respondents, respectively.

Almost every respondent said their institution viewed “high-performing” ResNet as essential to attracting and keeping students on campus. Ninety-six percent of housing administrators said quality ResNet was “very important,” while 92% of IT respondents and 90% of business officers said the same thing.

At the same time, 41% of the respondents admitted their schools were shaping and limiting bandwidth, up 10% from the year before. There was also a double-digit increase in blocking activities such as peer-to-peer sharing and music downloading, from 34% in 2017 to 44% in 2018.

Screen Time Linked to Insomnia, Depression

For adolescents, the more time spent on electronic screens the greater the likelihood of insomnia and shorter sleep duration, which in turn are linked to a higher incidence of depressive symptoms. Those were the findings of a new study by researchers at Stony Brook University, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Higher rates of depressive symptoms among teens may be partially explained through the ubiquitous use of screen-based activities, which can interfere with high-quality restorative sleep,” Stella Xian Li, a postdoctoral associate at Stony Brook.

Parents, health-care professionals, and educators should consider instructing adolescents about the effects of screen time and regulating device use.

“We’re very interested to see whether the adverse influences of social media and screen use on sleep and mental health persist during the transition to adulthood,” said Lauren Hale, a professor of family, population, and preventive medicine at Stony Brook who also collaborated on the study.

The researchers analyzed data from surveys of more than 2,800 teens, about evenly divided between males and females. Respondents reported how many hours they spent daily on gaming, social messaging, TV/movies, and web surfing. Gaming was found to have a stronger link to depressive symptoms than messaging activity.

Calculus Gets Gamified at Texas A&M

With so many students being avid gamers, providing coursework within video games offers a chance to make learning more relevant and show how the concepts being studied can be applied outside the classroom.

To that end, Texas A&M University, College Station, gave researchers a $100,000 grant to commercialize 3-D video games in calculus and art history/appreciation as supplements to standard coursework. The games are offered by Triseum LLC, a company that grew from the Texas A&M Department of Visualization’s Learning Interactive Visualization Experience (LIVE) Lab. Triseum’s CEO is also founder and director of the LIVE Lab and an assistant professor teaching game design and development at the university.

In Variant: Limits, players work to save a fictional planet from imminent destruction by assisting the game’s protagonist in solving a series of increasingly complex calculus problems. Prompts within the game allow students to refresh themselves on theory or firm up the concepts involved.

The one-month, one-credit elective isn’t a replacement for a normal calculus course, but is instead intended to keep students motivated and engaged with the subject to boost retention. Of those who voluntarily took the course last year, about 72% said it increased their knowledge. When a high-school teacher in Milan, Italy, assigned Variant as homework for her calculus class, she saw the pass rate on her final exam rise from 80% the previous year to 100%, with grades overall notching up by 10%.

“Much of the content in the game was new for them, yet I didn’t have to push them to get through it,” she wrote in a blog post. “They wanted to apply what they were learning throughout the game so they could see what would happen next.”

Triseum’s ARTé: Mecenas game positions players as a member of the Medici family in Renaissance Italy to discover how local and international economic policies and negotiations influenced art patronage and the creation of artistic masterworks.

A mathematician who helped develop Variant said the games could be expanded into a suite of games to cover their subjects more comprehensively.

Attracting New Students with E-Sports

Video gaming is no longer just a favorite pastime for college students, it’s become a varsity sport because it drives enrollment, creates campus enthusiasm, is co-ed, and doesn’t cost much to launch.

“It’s on the cutting edge, if not already a little bit beyond that, of new opportunities to compete,” said Dave Gantt, vice president for athletics at the University of Providence, Great Falls, MN. “All of our admissions counselors are armed with the knowledge that we have this sport, and it has been something of interest at every one of their stops.”

E-sports have grown from a single team to more than 60 schools competing, with hundreds more looking into offering it. Gant’s institution is retrofitting its mailroom and bookstore in the student union for e-sport gamers, who will begin play in the fall.

Colleges are creating e-sports arenas in old computer labs and other rooms that were going unused. The competitions are often streamed live and have students providing play-by-play commentary, just like an NCAA football or basketball game.

The e-sports program at University of California, Irvine, is funded by university research into the learning applications of gaming. UC Irvine also offers summer camps for female gamers and underrepresented young people, and recently helped to launch a regional high school league.

“The research out there shows that women and men can compete equally, given equal access,” said Mark Deppe, acting director of e-sports at UC Irvine. “But online cultures can be toxic—there can be in-game harassment and bullying—and we think we can be an influence against that.”

Virtual-Reality Tech Keeps Getting Better

Gaming and educational applications are expected to increase the use of virtual-reality (VR) devices by 85% over the next five years, according to a report from technology market intelligence firm ABI Research.  The market for those devices is changing, with technology such as headsets and 365-degree cameras becoming more affordable and effective.

“Education is on the cusp of a profound change in the way we use VR technology,” said Emory Craig, director of e-learning at the College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY. “People are starting to use it in higher ed even though the tech is very fluid at the moment.”

Headsets for high-quality equipment can cost close to $2,000 per setup, but technology firms are developing devices that work with lower-end desktop computers for the more affordable price of $299. Newer 365-degree cameras have more user-friendly features, making it easier to introduce video content into course materials. VR hand controllers are also improving to provide full-motion interactive experiences.

Content developers are experimenting with new ways to create virtual medical simulations, as well as creating applications that allow users to manipulate VR content. At the same time, Facebook is working on ways for users to connect and collaborate virtually.

“We can expect to see certain trends in VR to move forward, while others will disappear,” said Maya Georgieva, tech strategist and co-founder of the consulting group Digital Bodies. “As devices continue to shrink, we will see the development of augmented- and mixed-reality experiences that will power compelling visualizations, immersive storytelling, gamified simulations, and learning experiences.”

ED Proposed Challenge for VR Developers

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has opened a competition for immersive-simulation concepts that prepare students for the global workforce of the 21st century. The EdSim Challenge will award $680,000 in prize money to the top computer-generated virtual- and augmented-reality educational experiences that work with skill-building content and assessment.

Submissions will be judged on learning outcomes and must have clearly defined goals, a description of the student skills the challenge will help improve, and a way to provide feedback. Five finalists in the EdSim Challenge will earn $50,000 each and access to expert mentorship to build a prototype, with the remainder of the $680,000 prize money going to the winning entry.

“This initiative is an exciting example of how virtual reality and game technologies can be applied to give students everywhere the tools to prepare for future success,” said Johan Uvin, the Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for career, technical, and adult education. “We encourage developers from all disciplines to answer our call and help define the future of applied learning.”

Challenge entries must be submitted by Jan. 17, 2017. A complete list of rules is available at www.edsimchallenge.com.

Higher Ed Keeping an Eye on VR

The release of two consumer virtual-reality headsets has more people thinking about buying the product, particularly those in the world of immersive games and interactive videos. That has caught the attention of higher education, according to Carl Straumsheim in a column for Inside Higher Education.

“The technology still has a way to go, but early adopters of virtual reality imagine a future in which students go on field trips around the world from the comfort of the VR lab, joined by tour guides who connect to the class remotely,” Straumsheim wrote. “Students in online programs, instead of only interacting with their classmates through discussion forums, meet in virtual classrooms, where they can lean over and talk to their neighbors or work together on a problem on a blackboard.”

Despite the excitement over VR, there are still some concerns that must be addressed, starting with cost. The two commercial headsets released earlier this year cost at least $600 each, and that doesn’t include the gaming computers needed to use them.

Headsets are clunky and wireless technology remains years away. In addition, some users have experienced eyestrain and a type of motion sickness caused by the difference between what the eye sees and the ear senses.

“Costs will come down, the software might be easier to develop, and the technology will continue to advance,” Nitocris Perez, an emerging-technology specialist at Indiana University, Bloomington, told Straumsheim. “I don’t think it’s going to be tomorrow, but three years from now things will be radically different.”

Keep an Eye on VR Products

Developers of virtual-reality products are currently focused on the gaming industry, but that could change rapidly. Companies are already beginning work on applications of VR technology in the medical field, with retail and education not far behind.

“What we learn from textbooks or labs can be really dull, but VR and AR [augmented reality] will greatly enhance learning abilities,” Chinese investor Zhu Bo said in a report for phys.org. “It can also be used in e-commerce. In the future, you will step into a real scene; you can see the products on the shelves, touch and feel them. So our shopping experience will totally change.”

International Data Corp. predicted shipments of VR devices will increase by more than 2,400% this year, but the market still needs development before retailers jump on the bandwagon. Current VR products only allow individual users to play a game or watch a movie, but companies are expected to continue creating more VR-related hardware and software.

“To experience VR, you need a powerful engine,” said L.Z. Wang, managing director of chipmaker AMD. “Without content, you can’t experience anything.”

Go Easy with Gaming in the Classroom

Gaming is being tried by instructors at every level as a creative way to engage and educate students. While games have a place in the classroom, they may be much less effective than expected.

Vic Vuchic, chief innovation officer and executive director of Digital Promise Global, told attendees at the 2016 Textbook Affordability Conference, held April 27-29 at the University of California, Davis, that games are so perfectly designed for the task performed in the game that information doesn’t always translate beyond the competition itself.

“To be honest, the hype is far beyond what the research is showing us is happening,” Vuchic said during a question-and-answer session that followed his presentation Collaborative and Innovation as Course Materials Strategy.  “If you learn something in a game, generally, when you step out of that game and have to apply it somewhere else, you really won’t be able to do it.”

Vuchic told the audience about work done at Stanford University by Daniel Schwartz, dean of the institution’s graduate school of education, that showed games are most helpful when direct instruction was part of the coursework. In the experiment, Schwartz had one test group play a game and then provided instruction before a test was given. A second group only played the game before the assessment and a third only received direct instruction.

“It ends up that the ones who played the game and got direct instruction far outperformed the others,” he said. “You get some loose concepts in understanding games, but it’s not enough to bring it home. Someone has to anchor it and say, ‘This is the theory.’”

Vuchic’s presentation was streamed live on the NACS Facebook page. Here is the entire 53-minute video:

E-Sports Find a Home at UC Irvine

The University of California, Irvine, is taking gaming to a new level with its e-sports and gaming initiative, which will include a state-of-the-art arena with high-end gaming computers, a stage for League of Legends events, and live webcasting. The arena is scheduled to be ready for use by the fall.

League of Legends is among the most popular video games in the world, according to a report for Tech Insider. UC Irvine will also offer up to 10 academic scholarships to students on the team, while providing nonteam students with a place to play.

“UCI e-sports will be built on four pillars: competition, academics, entertainment, and community,” Thomas Parham, vice chancellor for student affairs, said in a university release. “We hope to attract the best gamers from around the world, and our academic programs in computer gaming science, digital arts, computer science, engineering, anthropology, law, medicine, neuroscience, and behavior create a strong foundation for research and inquiry related to gaming.”

The 3,500-sq.-ft. arena is scheduled to have 80 custom gaming computers equipped with the most popular video game titles. The space will be made available to classes and research projects, as well as serving as a hub for social and competitive gaming.

“It has been a dream for many of us on campus that UCI recognize the importance of e-sports and create a space and a program that cater to the large community of gamers at the university,” said Jesse Wang, president of The Association of Gamers. “The e-sports team and arena will ensure that UCI continues to be a leader and trendsetter in collegiate e-sports.”

Microsoft Aquires MinecraftEdu

Microsoft participated in a Minecraft coding effort last year as part of the annual Hour of Code campaign from Code.org. Now, the Seattle-based software company has acquired MinecraftEdu, a firm that makes a version of the popular video game modified for the classroom, and is planning the launch of Minecraft Education Edition for the summer.

The MinecraftEdu version includes additions that make the original game more appropriate for a K-12 setting. It features a multiplayer mode for up to 40 students and offers a cloud-based system to host Minecraft classroom servers with a library of lessons and activities.

In addition, the Learning Tools add-on provides teachers special text-formatting options that make reading, writing, and note-taking easier. Other features include reading with audiotext playback and natural-language processing, according to a report in InformationWeek.

Microsoft plans to keep the user price at $5 per year, but will make a free trial version of the software available this summer, according to VentureBeat.

“One of the reasons Minecraft fits so well in the classroom is because it’s a common, creative playground,” said Vu Bui, chief operating officer of Mojang, a game-based development firm that created Minecraft and was acquired by Microsoft in 2014, in a report for eSchool News. “We’ve seen that Minecraft transcends the differences in teaching and learning styles of education systems around the world. It’s an open space where people can come together and build a lesson around nearly anything.”

Educators Asked about Digital Tech Use

A survey by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt found that 97% of K-12 educators and school administrators used some kind of digital content and more than 50% used apps, websites, and digital games in the classroom. The 2015 Educator Confidence Report also showed gaps in how teachers and administrators view the way technology was being used.

For instance, 71% of the responding teachers said they used free or open educational resources (OER) in their classrooms, while 87% of the administrators thought OER content was being used. Teachers and administrators also have different opinions on the use of online assessments (42% of the teachers said they used the tools, compared to 66% of administrators), learning management systems (36% vs. 64%), and adaptive learning content (35% vs. 49%).

Most educators said technology improved student engagement (66%) and provided students with better access to instructional content (55%). A majority (58%) were also either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about student privacy issues, according to the eSchool News report.

However, just 41% of those responding said they felt positive about teaching and 23% of teachers with less than 10 years of experience said they plan to leave the profession within five years.

“There is no denying that the education sector is undergoing an exciting—and challenging—transformation,” HMH Chief Content Officer Mary Cullinane said in a release. “Understanding the views of the teachers who are navigating this transformation is crucial. There is no one size fits all, which is why it is so important educator voices are heard and their real needs understood.”

Oculus Rift May Soon Be Available

Trade shows have been about the only places consumers have been able to discover the wonders of Oculus Rift. Some are miffed that it has taken so long for the virtual-reality headset to make its way to market, but that could be about to change.

The manufacturer announced it will begin taking preorders for the device later this year and start shipping them in the first quarter of 2016. The headset, which looks like a scuba diver’s facemask, has a 100-degree field of vision with accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass to track the position of the wearer’s head.

Oculus Rift was designed for video gaming, but could be used in virtual tourism, real-time cinema, and education. The latest prototype is lighter and faster than previous models with an improved tracking system.

“Just release the damned thing already,” one commenter posted on the Oculus blog. “You guys have been dragging on this marketing hype for years and your competitors are getting to market well ahead of you.”

Making Gaming Work in the Classroom

While gaming has shown promise in academic circles, education-specific games may not be the best products for the classroom, according to an eCampus News interview with two game-based-learning professors.

According to Sherry Jones, philosophy, rhetoric, and game studies instructor, University of Colorado, Denver, educators who use gaming in their classrooms are either passionate gamers in the first place, nongamers looking at games as a way to teach concepts, or nongamers who hire designers to build educational games from scratch. She found that the most successful games in the classroom were the ones available to all consumers, such as Angry Birds or World of Warcraft.

“Educational games designed specifically around a concept, especially custom-built ones, impose a certain way of teaching a concept on game designers, whose job it is to make games fun and interesting,” Jones said. “Educational games can be inflexible and very boring to play. Students don’t like them and then the whole process falls apart.”

She suggested that instructors need to spend more time finding out how games work and how they can work in the classroom. Karen Novack, instructional designer at Front Range Community College, Westminster, CO, said faculty should inform students why a particular game was chosen and provide them with the learning objectives of the game.

“Anytime you use a commercial game, or really with any kind of change, you get resistance, and because we’re higher-ed, our students run the gamut from 16-year-olds who are getting early college credits to retired adults,” she said. “So you need to be explicit with students about why you’re using these games in this course and how learning this game will benefit their education.”

Faculty must also be willing to get it wrong from time to time.

“Present the class with the game and the parameters they need to go unpack the game,” Jones said. “Survey the class to see how they liked it and if the game was more effective in assessing their understanding of the concepts. The best way to determine if it’s going to be effective is to do it.”

Environmental Gaming Pilot at ASU

A series of five story-based environmental games is being piloted by Arizona State University, Tempe, on its ASU Online site. Students take leadership roles in the game to help the community in each story face environmental and sustainability issues.

“I’m excited by how these authentic experiences will add a ‘human element’ to the learning process,” Tahnja Wilson, senior manager for EdPlus at ASU, said in an article for eCampus News. “The interactive features will be a great complement to the other course components.”

Students will be able to download information, take notes, and respond to questions using mobile phones or emails in the game’s day-in-the-life tools. The game is designed to get students to think about real-life environmental situations, with students and instructors receiving a performance summary at the end of each module.

Students Rewarded for Not Using Phones

There are plenty of smartphone applications focused on college students, ranging from study guides to textbook markets to games and quizzes. One new app helps keep students focused on class.

Two students from California State University at Chico created Pocket Points, a smartphone app that provides students coupons from local businesses as a reward for keeping their phones in their pockets during class. The app was launched last September and had 3,000 users and 15 local businesses participating within the first month.

“I looked around in my class of 100 people or so and I see half the kids with their heads down,” Rob Richardson, a junior computer-science major at CSU Chico who helped create the app, told a Chico news site. “Our initial name was going to be ‘heads up’ or something like that.”

Students earn points for keeping their phone locked based on the number of people in the class using the app. Once the class is finished, students simply swipe the Pocket Points notification to unlock their phone and see how many points they’ve earned.

Points can them be redeemed for coupons and discounts from businesses around the Chico campus. CSU Chico professors have inquired about providing extra credit or attendance points as rewards through the app and there’s a leaderboard and ranking that adds a gaming element to the app.

Richardson and his partner, Mitch Gardner, have taken a leave of absence from school to expand the program to more colleges and high schools. They are even working on plans to take the app off campus and offer it everyone.

“We want to be the biggest coupon outlet in the country, and we think we can do that,” Gardner said.

Game Makes Creative Writing Fun

A new video game that teaches the fundamentals of composition and creative writing is attracting attention and awards. Students playing Elegy for a Dead World explore and write about past civilizations that are based on the works of British Romantic poets.

The mission of the game is for students to compose firsthand accounts of new worlds they explore. The game prompts the players to complete sentences on what they’ve seen and then fashion those into short stories.

Challenges become more advanced as students move through the game, sending them on different paths that force them to come up with different conclusions and still finish with logical endings. The game is meant to be fun and thought-provoking, but also provides fill-in-the-blank questions that help students learn proper grammar usage.

“What we’re trying to do is motivate people so they get into a mindset where they have something they want to put out and write,” Ziba Scott, game co-creator, told Eurogamer.net. “We found just dropping them in a blank slate is too much. It’s intimidating. The roles are about giving them something to play as to set the stage for their writing.”

Khan Teams with Xbox on Learning Apps

The popular Xbox gaming platform is expanding into education. The Khan Academy is making it possible, launching a free app that makes more than 5,000 of its learning videos available through the Xbox One Live app.

“We’ve heard from many students who want to watch Khan Academy videos in a lean-back experience on their big screen and are excited by the ease of use in Xbox One apps,” a Khan Academy spokesperson told VentureBeat.

Khan Academy already makes its videos available through Microsoft desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices. The Khan app also helps Microsoft in its multibillion-dollar battle with Sony’s PlayStation 4, which has no learning apps.

The app is available to Xbox One users in Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Microsoft also reported that there are 48 million Xbox Live account holders.

Asessing Gaming Skills

Game-based education has become a popular trend because it helps students develop skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration. Now, research is being done to help teachers understand what a student knows and how they apply it when playing.

Kristen DiCerbo, principal research scientist at Pearson, was part of the team that developed SimCityEDU and Mars Generation One: Argubot Academy for the Institute of Play’s GlassLab. The work led the group to research student interactions while playing the games and ways to use the information.

“One of the things that games and simulation games do is provide those problems that are in context and ask learners to apply those to situations they might encounter,” DiCerbo told eSchool News. “We want them to be able to transfer the skills and use them in a different way.”

Tracking information such as students’ in-game actions could lead to models of student understanding that might then be fed back to the students through the game. DiCerbo and her team are also working on ways to measure skills developed through gaming.

“These underrepresented skills are a big place where we can potentially have an impact,” she said. “If we think about the idea behind, say, persistence and how much you continue in the face of trying to solve a difficult problem where you’re experiencing failure—do we assess that just by asking kids? In a game, we can see that and see how many times a student tries.”