Case Studies: Themes Emerging ~ All of My Expression

Getting the various games onto the appropriate machines proved more challenging than expected, primarily as a result of the various copy-protection features of the titles. As an example of the kind of problem encountered, conflicts with account management software in one particular school meant it was impossible to install The Sims 2 using multiple CDs, whereas using a single DVD met with success. Administrators were not always able to deploy a game installer across a network in the way they were used to, for reasons that varied across schools despite the similarities of their network configurations. Overcoming these issues was time-consuming and, for those schools that bought external CD drives, expensive. In these circumstances, it is easy to sympathise with (although not condone) the minority of technical staff who felt that downloading a ‘cracked’ version of the software (one that didn’t require a physical copy of the disc and that could be installed across a network as easily as other software in use) was a more effi cient use of their limited resources.

Age Constraints

The teachers were concerned with ensuring that their students’ participation in this project did not impact negatively upon their attainment. As a result, teachers were concerned first, with ensuring that the games used mapped onto their curriculum objectives (which we will discuss later in the report) and, second, that the ‘experimental’ nature of the project should not impact on students’ results in high stakes assessment. As a result, those teachers in the state sector opted to develop lesson plans and activities for students in Years 7 and 8, years often seen as more flexible in that there is no high stakes assessment in operation in these years. These concerns over curriculum and assessment appeared to be more influential in selecting the age groups teachers would work with than the age rating for the games. No teacher expressed concern about using ‘teen games’, ie those suitable for 13 and over, with 11 year-olds.

Timetabling and Lesson Length

As suggested by earlier studies22, many teachers found the fixed length of lessons to be constraining in both the planning and implementation of games-based learning in schools. In part, this seemed to be a result of the novelty of the activity: teachers were unsure how much time an activity might take, and several expressed confi dence that if they were to try similar activities again they would be able to manage classroom time more effectively. The fact that the available time was fixed meant that the impact of any technical issues (loading times, crashes, etc) was more keenly felt than might have been the case had there been more flexibility in the timetable.

There is a more fundamental tension between fixed lessons and open-ended games that presents more of a challenge than resolving purely logistical issues. The natural pauses in play that occur within these games (for example, at the end of a battle in Knights of Honor, or reaching a scenario objective in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3) did not appear to occur frequently enough that teachers could fit them into a single period; additionally, students progressed with game tasks at widely-differing rates, ensuring that even if some students completed a stage in a game within a lesson, other students would not.

Sharing Ideas and Professional Cultures

Few of the teachers reported talking with other participating teachers or their colleagues about their approaches to lesson plans or to the difficulties they faced, or made use of the opportunities provided by Futurelab to communicate with researchers and other teachers through personal journals, e-mail, or the message board set up for the project. Equally, it may simply be that the means provided by Futurelab for sharing ideas and thoughts were inappropriate for teachers without an office or desk and limited access to email and the internet. Either way, support from peers could well have helped participating teachers resolve some of the issues they faced more effectively.

Resource Preparation

In the early stages of the project, some teachers expressed a concern that the amount of time needed to develop these materials for use in the classroom would be much greater than that usually taken for the lessons they planned to teach. In the event, most teachers reported spending no longer on the preparation of materials than they would do usually, although this tended to be distinct from the amount of time spent thinking about their plans in the games group and the amount of time spent learning to play the game in the first place.

In some cases, chiefly among those focusing on content rather than skills acquisition, this was consistent with their general approach of appropriating elements of the game,rather than adapting their teaching to fit the narrative of the game. In others, this similarity between game and non-game resources might suggest that the game added little to their usual teaching, or that its full potential had not been recognised. What was clear was that the cultures and ‘rituals’ of classroom practice – from teaching styles to ‘best practice’ in lesson planning – played a significant role in shaping how teachers approached the task of understanding how games might play a role in their teaching.

Curriculum

In general, those teachers following a content-based curriculum felt they would struggle to find a meaningful role for the game within their teaching, while those following competency or skill-based curricula felt that the skills demanded by the game were already recognised in the curriculum, and so were more confident that integrating their game would be straightforward.

For example, teachers involved in the competency curriculum at John Cabot decided to use the games in this context rather than in more formal subject contexts as they felt that the games mapped more easily onto a skills rather than content-based curriculum.

“I’d probably not use the Sims in my RE lessons as I really can’t see a direct relationship to my subject or anything I’m teaching at the moment.” (Teacher B, interview)

“There is no subject where this kind of thinking would fit in.” (Teacher L, interview)

However, this dichotomy between a ‘flexible curriculum’ approach that lent itself to using games on the one hand and a ‘rigid curriculum’, subject-based approach that worked against their implementation on the other proved to be misleading. Some teachers who had initially expressed doubts about the possibility of integrating a game into their content-based curriculum were able to produce successful activities that worked within the perceived constraints of their curriculum, while others who had initially been confi dent that playing the game would map directly onto the competencies that were the focus of their curriculum, found that in practice students needed more support andstructure than had been envisaged. This may be due in part to the personal approaches encouraged by these initial impressions. Those teachers who felt that integrating a game into their teaching would be particularly challenging may have consequently been more detailed about their planning than teachers who perceived an easy fit between the game and their curricular aims.

Curriculum and Game Narrative

This section focuses instead specifi cally upon the ways in which the games themselves (their narratives and architecture) interacted with the curriculum contexts in which the teachers were working to inform the design of lesson activities. All of the games used in the project were designed primarily for entertainment. In these games, the game designer has a narrative in mind for players to follow, explicitly or implicitly expressed through:

the game mechanics (the affordances enjoyed by the player’s avatar and the interaction of the different in-game variables)
the interface (through which relevant game metrics are revealed, such as the amount of money available to a ruler in Knights of Honor, or the particular aspirations and needs of a character in The Sims 2)
on-screen instruction.

Players are not forced to follow this narrative, of course, and in all games there is room for players to explore and to follow their own interests in the game. In order to win a game, however, players have to follow the designer’s narrative and pay attention to the routes and elements that the designer has implicitly said should matter.

Figure 2

Hypothetical framework for approaches to balancing curriculum objectives against games narrative

The approaches of the teachers on the project can be mapped onto this framework (see Figure 3 opposite). In their different lessons, we witnessed:

Those teachers who felt that asking students to follow the game designers’ narrative would also allow them to address their curriculum goals (for example, playing Knights of Honor with a focus on strategic thinking and working in groups, Teacher A), seen mainly in the top right-hand quadrant (Figure 3).
Those teachers who felt that the game designer’s narrative was inappropriate for their needs, but who were able to borrow certain game elements to support their teaching (for example, building rollercoasters to certain specifications detailed by the teacher, using the sandbox feature in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, Teacher N), seen largely in the bottom right-hand quadrant (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Categorisation of case study lessons balancing curriculum objectives against games narrative

Those who didn’t follow the game designers’ narrative, or find elements of the game to appropriate, but who used the game instead as a stimulus for classroom-based activity (for example, using The Sims 2 as the starting point for discussions on personal responsibility, or as a stimulus for creative writing, Teacher K), seen in the bottom left-hand quadrant (Figure 3). For this group, curriculum objectives were more often met through means other than playing the game, and consequently the game occupied much less ‘space’ in their lesson plans; less time was spent using it, less value was placed on the game by the teacher and it was less important in supporting students’ thinking around the aspects of the curriculum that were the focus of the lesson.

Those teachers who would follow the game designer’s narrative without focusing on any particular curriculum needs are seen in the top left-hand quadrant (Figure 3). (For example, Teacher L used Knights of Honor to allow his mathematics class to practice team skills, which were not part of the curriculum he originally intended to address).

Two aspects of the games’ design seemed to inform how teachers used the game in the support of curriculum goals:

The extent to which elements of the game could be separated out from the whole game narrative and appropriated for specifi c use by teachers.
The extent to which the game was conceived as offering authentic and reliable models of the real world.

Titles varied in the ease with which game elements could be uncoupled from the wider game, or at least privileged over other elements of the game. Elements that were separated out by teachers for use in a discrete fashion outside the overarching games narrative include:

The Sims 2: the ability to export still or moving images using the movie creator for use in other contexts (such as providing scripts in drama or a description in French); the use of the game as an illustration of daily tasks for class discussion; the aspirations and social needs of the Sims as topics for class discussion.

Knights of Honor: using the game as a resource for a presentation on medieval life, for example, asking the students to specifi cally consider the costumes worn, or the type of weapons that were used.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: using the coaster cam to illustrate the impact of forces (for example, students acting out which direction they would be swung going round a corner); using the sandbox which allowed you to test your rollercoaster; or identifying the constituents of a theme park (and receiving user feedback from visitors) in order to help with understanding design processes.

The uses of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 suggest that this game in particular is one that contains discrete elements that can be separated out and used by teachers without requiring the context of the wider game narrative. Separate elements of The Sims 2 were also used (Teachers D, E and F), for example, using the images on screen as a topic for descriptive writing. In Knights of Honor, however, the various game elements (battles, diplomatic contact with other states, resource management) were suffi ciently tightly interwoven that no teachers attempted to extract discrete elements and instead used the whole game in class activities.

Interestingly, although it is hard to identify the direction of causality in this instance, all of the teachers working with Knights of Honor and following the games narrative closely were also those attempting to teach competencies (listening, strategic thinking, problem solving etc) rather than understanding of factual content. Whether this game was selected as a result of these teachers’ curriculum focus, or whether the game itself determined what teachers felt could be taught, is not clear. It is clear that for the game to be of benefi t to some teachers, it need only be accurate to a certain degree; there may be wider inaccuracies within the game model, but these do not necessarily preclude the game from being used meaningfully in a lesson.

Teaching Style

Where teachers were experienced in the subject/curriculum area they were addressing, they were able either to appropriate only those game elements that would support their teaching (and so, in some cases, make their lack of game literacy less of an issue) or to scaffold students’ use of the game appropriately. This point was reinforced by one teacher, when asked what another teacher

might need to know:

“I’d say they’d need to be really clear about what learning they want out of it before they went down the road of using it. So that they can always bring the focus back to the sort of learning activities.” (Teacher G, interview)

The role of the teacher, in encouraging students’ refl ection and ability to make links between their game activities and the wider learning aims of the class, was acknowledged by the majority of teachers through explicitly allowing time for plenary sessions within their lesson plans. The constraints of the timetable and the longer time taken by students to complete game tasks meant that in practice, however, many teachers spent less time than planned supporting students’ reflection on their learning. On completion of the trial schemes of work, the majority of teachers suggested that this was something that would need to be taken into account in running these activities again.

Figure 4 provides a diagrammatic summary of the way in which classes were organised by four of the teachers. This figure highlights the diverse approaches to incorporating games into the lesson structures and teaching styles adopted by the different teachers. There is no decisive correlation between the teaching approach adopted and either the game used or the curriculum context. As such, it suggests that the incorporation of games into formal educational environments may be more a reflection of individual and school attitudes towards teaching styles than a necessary outcome of either the game or the curriculum context involved.

In Figure 4A the teacher began by discussing the lesson goals and reiterating the competencies expected. The entire class then played Knights of Honor in their groups with the teacher going round and discussing the tactics with the teams. Prior to the end of the lesson the students were asked to switch off the machines and a short plenary was held.
Figure 4B shows a lesson where there was an introduction, followed by two students playing the game with the rest of the class observing, ending with a class discussion of the events seen. During the time when the Sims was displayed on the large screen the teacher was discussing the type of actions the students could describe in their written exercise to create a news story based on the lives of the Sims.
In 4C the teacher demonstrates how to use RollerCoaster Tycoon to her class. She then divides them into two groups with half playing the game in groups and the others doing practical design tasks based on requirements identified by playing the game. Halfway through she switches the teams. At the end there is a short plenary.
Finally in 4D the lesson is divided into sections. Initially there is a discussion of the goals for the lesson. The students then go through the Sims tutorial. Next the teacher describes the actions expected of the teams of students and demonstrates some of the skills she expects them to use. In teams they then complete the worksheet given.

The use of the game takes place within a wider context of teachers’ personal and professional experience: the roles taken by teachers might be assumed not to be radically different from those adopted in lessons not focusing on games.

Teachers expectations of children’s games literacy and motivation
All the teachers in the project had assumptions about their students’ motivation and game literacy which implicitly informed the design of their lesson plans and auxiliary classroom materials. These assumptions were both positive and negative. In some cases, teachers assumed that students would be more accomplished than they were:

“I did have an expectation that they’d all be really good at it. And they weren’t all really good at it.” (Teacher G, fi nal interview)

In some cases, however, we witnessed a disconnect between teachers’ conceptions of student games literacy and motivation and students’ own conceptions, a disconnect which resulted in sometimes unexpected experiences in the classroom.

Motivation
The survey of teachers’ attitudes to using games in school reports that 53% of teachers see children’s motivation as the primary reason for using games for learning. Similarly, the teachers involved in the project viewed enhancing student motivation and engagement as an important reason for exploring the potential of games for learning.
Remarks such as these are representative of feedback received from students:

“It’s not like a boring lesson, you actually have fun and at the same time learn something.” (Year 7 boy, John Cabot, KoH)

“It was better than a normal text book lesson because that’s really boring, so it made it more interesting.” (SRG report, St Johns)

This motivational effect of games, for example, is often ascribed to ‘higher production values’, and while it is undoubtedly true that the commercial games used in the four schools have more detailed graphics and glossier interaction elements, there may be other reasons for these games engaging students. One student commented that:

“There was one class where they got to play games they play at home but we had to do Knights of Honor and they got to play Sims and RollerCoaster Tycoon.” (Year 7 girl, John Cabot)

What was clear was that the expectation that games would be intrinsically (and in whatever way they were used) motivating for all students, informed the ways in which teachers went about designing their lessons. In future, it would be helpful to explore in more detail:

The features of games which support motivation and the ways in which these can be drawn upon and incorporated into lesson design.
The need to develop multiple strategies for the use of games so as to account for those children with little interest.
The need to identify strategies for ‘managing’ the motivation and engagement with games in the classroom context.

Author

Ahoy, It is me Triska. A college student of English Education Department in University of Singaperbangsa Karawang. I am a-pixie-dust-enthusiast. I love to watch a movie or Korean Drama and also love to write my blog.