games

Co-creativity and collaboration

It’s been a playful few weeks in LTI, starting with Chrissi Nerantzi from Manchester Metropolitan University presenting a workshop on playful and creative learning in HE.

Chrissi’s workshop was full of exercises designed to get people moving, thinking and talking with others. She started off by pointing out that being creative doesn’t always mean coming up with something completely original, as remixing, adapting and taking ideas into another context is also creative. We discussed the fact that the majority of learning theories omit the emotional and physical aspects of the learning process. We were asked to think about what we enjoy about teaching and also to discuss our failures and what went wrong for us when teaching recently. Talking this through with another person and getting feedback on what intervention would help was very useful and illustrated that we probably don’t spend enough time sharing and getting feedback on failure and yet this is where we can learn the most.

Chrissi recognised that sometimes it can be hard to make large scale change in institutions and gave some personal examples of the barriers and blockers that she has experienced but she also demonstrated that by taking a playful approach to your teaching and making small changes you can create a positive environment which encourages learners to experiment, be creative, try things out and get feedback.

Following on the theme of play and creativity, this week I went up to Coventry University to attend RemixPlay2, a summit to celebrate the design and application of all things gameful, playful and creative in Higher Education. This is the second year of the event hosted by the Disruptive Media Learning Lab in Coventry University (see my blog post on last years’ event). This year’s focus was on co-creativity and collaboration. With similar messages to Chrissi’s workshop on taking an experiential approach to learning by doing, there were a lot of examples of how playful activities and games can be embedded within courses.

Ross Flatt from the Institute of Play in New York has worked with a lot of teachers to transform their practice and was an advocate of involving students in the design process and using games as tools for assessment. Sylvester Arnab’s in his keynote argued that the word ‘Fail’ should be defined as ‘First, Attempt In Learning’. He has worked with staff and students on several interdisciplinary projects to try and solve problems in the community. Sylvester has found that by giving students a sense of purpose and encouraging them to think creatively about how they can use what they have learnt to change the world for the better, they are more likely to engage and be motivated to learn. Changing assessment to problem or project based tasks provides students with an intrinsic motivation and shifts the focus away from learning just for passing exams.

Both events provided a lot of inspiration and ideas on the ways we can transform teaching and assessment to be more creative and collaborative. If you are interested in finding out more about using games for learning, we are holding a workshop on designing games for learning on Monday 26 February book a place via the training and development system.

We are starting a community of practice for anyone at LSE who is interested in playful and game-based learning in HE. If you are interested in joining please contact LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk.

If you have an idea on how to make your teaching more playful, creative or game based and would like some funding to support the implementation and evaluation we are currently accepting proposals for Spark and Ignite grants, the deadline for applications is Friday 2nd March, contact s.ney@lse.ac.uk for more information or to discuss your idea.

February 16th, 2018|Conferences, Events & Workshops (LTI), games, Projects, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Playful and Creative Learning in HE

Next Tuesday LTI will be hosting a presentation by Chrissi Nerantzi (Principal Lecturer in Academic CPD, expert in creative, innovative learning, teaching and assessment from Manchester Metropolitan University) on Playful and Creative Learning. A good opportunity to reflect on what playfulness and creativity mean in an educational context and explore ways in which we can promote it in our practice.

Definition: What is playful learning?

In a blog post by JISC titled “Learning to play, playing to learn: the rise of playful learning in higher education“, Chrissi gives an explanation of what playful leraning means to her:

“Playful learning is using play activities to immerse ourselves and learn, either on our own or with others in a space we feel safe. In playful learning it’s ok to make mistakes when experimenting with new ideas, when challenging ourselves and others and doing things we normally wouldn’t do – which can lead us to surprising discoveries.

Playful learning can happen anywhere.”

Play and Its Connection to Creativity

The “Creativity for Learning in Higher Education” open course, based on the Manchester Metropolitan University’s PgCert and MA in Higher Education in which Chrissi is involved, offers colleagues with an interest in creative teaching and learning to explore three areas that foster more creativity in their practice and their students’ learning experience. One of which is play and games.

As Resnick (2017) puts it,

“Creativity doesn’t come from laughter and fun: It comes from experimenting, taking risks, and testing the boundaries.”

When it comes to experimenting, games are a very powerful learning tool. Games are by definition a space where the rule of the real world do not apply, thus providing a safe space to take risks and experiment with various choices, strategies and outcomes.

Moseley and Whitton (2015) define games as“a safe space in which participants have freedom to make mistakes, learn from failure, play with fantasy and identity, have control over decisions and outcomes”

Interested in finding out more?

Check out Chrissi’s various projects around playful and creative learning:

#creativeHE Google + community site
Creativity for Learning in Higher Education open course from MMU

At LSE

Head to our dedicated web pages to find out more about Game-Based Learning and related projects run and supported at the LSE.
Apply for our IGNITE and SPARK grants to support your game-based learning project for your own course or at programme and departmental level.
Join Chrissi’s session on Tuesday 6th February or LTI’s practical session on Designing Games for Learning on 26th February

References

Resnick, M. (2017). Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passions, Peers, and Play. MIT Press.

Moseley, A. and Whitton, N. (2015). Using Games to Enhance the Student Experience. Higher Education Academy

January 30th, 2018|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI), games, innovation, LTI Grants, Teaching & Learning, TEL Trends, Tools & Technologies, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Using Powerpoint to create engaging simulations

Last academic year, two PhD students teaching in the Department of International Relations embarked on a journey to make their course more engaging to students. They applied for an LTI SPARK! Grant to support the development of Powerpoint-based simulation games.

Here are the highlights of the project following its completion and evaluation. Quotes are from the two recipients of the grant, Gustav Meibauer and Andreas Aagaard Nohr.

Related outcomes and resources on our website

The rationale

Issues addressed

Currently available IR simulations for teaching purposes are often high-cost/high-tech and especially time-intensive: even if they do not require custom-made software packages with difficult interfaces and expensive licensing fees, they are almost without exception targeted at course-long or at least day-long activities that demand extensive preparation of both teachers and students, with book-length manuals, intricate rules, integrated assessment tools, and specific secondary literature. This is irrelevant for most of the undergraduate teaching practice, especially in introductory courses that often treat specific concepts only once in a 50-minutes class. But this should not mean that undergraduate students simply never get the chance to profit from interactive gaming and simulations.

Why simulations? The pedagogy behind the technology

The project is based in the pedagogy of experiential learning, student ownership and self-directed learning, and the use of gaming activities and simulations in the classroom.

Simulations and interactive gaming solutions have long been known to enhance understanding both of specific empirical examples as well as, more importantly, theoretical linkages because they make students experience, rather than only hear about, factors and variables involved in such different topics as foreign policy decision-making, diplomacy, great power dynamics or identity formation.

Students do not simply passively receive the PowerPoint (as in a standard presentation), but play it, change its outcome (within given options), determine what the next slide will show, and are thus actively involved in what they learn. This is thought to encourage deeper learning.

It is not the outcome of the simulation that matters, but the process of its coming-about. Just as in real-world foreign policy or diplomacy, there is not necessarily a correct path to take or a right decision to find – instead, by playing the simulation, students engage in discussion and compromise, take into account a multitude of different factors, realize own mistakes, and get a feeling for the complexity of decision-making in multiple settings.

Why Powerpoint?

There is no need to change the course design, overhaul the entire teaching approach, or experiment wildly outside what is currently known and available. Instead, our project aims at diversifying teaching where possible to integrate student-centered, activity-based teaching and learning. It does so by bringing out the true potential of already available teacher skills and learning technologies.

We do this by employing PowerPoint, specifically in-built features such as hyperlinks, interactive pathways, or audio or video integration that can be used interactively rather than passively.

Implementation

Integration into the course

By necessity, simulations do not stand alone: they are accompanied by a set of theoretical structures and debates in which students talk and theorize about their experiences during the gaming activity

Each of our simulation classes consisted of an introductory stage of about 5 minutes, a simulation stage with multiple discussion periods interspersed (moderated variously by the class teacher or by the students themselves, depending on class dynamics) of about 20-30 minutes, and a discussion stage to tease out theoretical insights of about 20-30 minutes.

Take Aways

“Andreas and Gustav came up with a formula that gave students ownership of their own decisions and helped them to apply their knowledge to difficult real world dilemmas. Students were able to experience the consequences of both the cautious and risk taking approach and the many nuances and customs that apply to foreign policy decisions.”

Sarah Leach, Senior Learning Technologist on the project

Students experience

Overall, results indicate a positive impact on student learning: students on average perceived simulations were enjoyable, allowed for stimulating discussion in the classroom and an experience of expertise and immersion into the topic of the class.

Not only did the simulations add an important additional method to diversify the learning experience and complement more “traditional” instruction styles, they also led to greater overall participation rates in class (compared to more conventional class types, as assessed by teachers, observers, and the students themselves), allowed students to bring in own previous experience and learn from their peers, and try out learned theoretical concepts in class.

They gave students a language to talk about new and often highly abstract concepts, and allowed for smooth and often in-depth reflection and discussion. The simulations also proved entertaining and supported positive group dynamics in class, such as self-moderated discussion and quick exchanges between students without teacher interference.

The teacher’s views

They allowed us as teachers to transition more easily towards roles of moderator and facilitator, as students interact with the simulation and with each other without input or instruction from the teacher.

Students worry that the simulations somehow divert from the “actual” material they are supposed to learn from the course, which means additional effort has to be put into developing desired learning outcomes and appropriate theoretical teaching materials.

“Andreas and Gustav have demonstrated that engaging students with technology doesn’t have to be daunting or cutting edge, a simple tweak can dramatically change the learning experience for students. To make this step even easier, they have written a ‘how to’ guide for any teachers who want to create simulations for small class teaching. The guide covers every aspect from defining the learning objectives and creating the slides through to teaching plans and evaluation. It’s a great resource.”

Sarah Leach

If you are interested in using technology to support teaching, learning and assessment like Andreas and Gustav, then please get in touch with LTI to discuss your ideas. Take a look at LTI’s SPARK! Grants for more information.

April 20th, 2017|Digital Literacy, Ed-Tech news and issues, games, innovation, LTI Grant Winners, LTI Grants, Projects, Reports & Papers, Student projects, Teaching & Learning, TEL Trends, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Playful learning

In February I was lucky enough to attend the ‘RemixPlay’ event at Coventry University. Hosted in the amazing ‘Disruptive Media Lab’ the day featured some really interesting speakers (Ian Livingstone (CBE), Bernie DeKoven, Professor Nicola Whitton and Dr Sebastian Deterding). There are already some great write-ups about the event which I won’t replicate here, instead see the blog post by Daryl Peel from University of Southampton and The Flying Raccon’s write up of Remix Play.

For me the conference highlighted the positive aspects of play and I left thinking that we should do more to invite ‘Playfulness’ in Higher Education. Creating a playful environment/community encourages exploration, collaboration, creativity and gives people agency to try things out and have the freedom to fail, all key conditions for learning. There is an abundance of literature on learning through play and it’s importance see ‘Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation’ by Patrick Bateson, Bernard Suits book ‘The Grasshopper – Games, life and Utopia’ and the ‘How We Get To Next’ reading list on the Power of Play especially the video’s at the end.

Some nice examples of a playful environment given by speakers at the event:

http://www.musicalswings.com/about/

http://www.thefuntheory.com/piano-staircase

As Jordan Shapiro et. al. note in Mind/Shift Guide to Digital Games + Learning (Joan Ganz Cooney Center/KQED, 2014)

“Play is exploration. It involves imagination. It means investigating the world of the game and feeling the frustration, flow, and excitement that goes along with playing it.”

Games designed to enable learning are becoming more popular in Higher Education. Games are a more structured version of ‘play’ and allow players to problem-solve and often involve collaboration and peer learning. Although they often involve rules and winners, games give autonomy to the players and provide a safe environment to fail and to try and test things out. They are often about making decisions and then seeing the consequences and receiving feedback on your actions. As Professor Nicola Whitton stressed, students need low-impact opportunities to experience failure (micro failures); it’s how they get feedback, learn and improve.

Games at LSE

As part of an LTI grant, I have been working with colleagues in LTI on the LSE100 course to create a board game which was played in classes this term. One of the key difficulties when designing the game was to get the balance between play and content right. Too much content, and it’s not a game anymore, it’s a lecture and it’s not fun. Too much concentration on the game, and the learning outcomes are not as obvious and it’s harder for students to make the links between the concepts that you are trying to illustrate. We are now evaluating the game collecting and collating feedback from students and staff, so look out for updates on this shortly.

LTI has awarded several grants to projects involving games, including ‘Capture the Market’ board game mentioned above and an Ethnographic point and click video game, more info and resources can be found on our website.

Game workshop

If you are interested in exploring the use of games in education, we are running a workshop on ‘Designing quick and effective games for learning’ with Alex Moseley on Wednesday 26 April. Alex has been involved with games in education for 8 years and has lots of experience with designing games for learning. You can read an interview with Alex on this blog and you can book a place on the workshop on Eventbrite.

Spark grants

Applications for LTI spark grants are now open http://lti.lse.ac.uk/lti-grants/ with the deadline of Friday 5 May. If you are interested in finding out more, check out the LTI website and contact us to discuss your idea.

March 21st, 2017|Conferences, Events & Workshops (LTI), games, innovation, LTI Grant Winners, LTI Grants, Projects, Teaching & Learning, TEL Trends|Comments Off|

Designing quick and effective games for learning

Workshop on game based learning in HE
Wednesday 26 April 14:15-16:15
Led by Alex Moseley, National Teaching Fellow, University of Leicester
This workshop is open to LSE academics, students and external participants: Book a place

Simulations and complex digital games need time, money and design/technical expertise to develop. Many educators have great ideas for games yet lack the resources to put them into practice (either technically or in game design terms).

Alex Moseley and Nicola Whitton have therefore created a fast, fun, ten-step workshop for educators, built around the same design process that games designers use, to allow small teams to quickly develop games for learning: either as fully-fledged traditional games, or as prototypes for simple digital games.

Workshop participants will leave with a skill set for identifying, applying and designing games for learning; and with ideas to apply to their own subject areas.

Book a place

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Ahead of the workshop we interviewed Alex to find out more information about his experience with games

1.How/why did you first become interested/involved in games based learning?

It all started when a card dropped out of my Sunday newspaper. On it was a slightly cryptic, but interesting puzzle – that led me into the centre of an alternate reality game (ARG) called Perplex City. A few months later, I found myself fully immersed (spending hours researching naval signalling flags, and other odd behaviour) and also noticed that many others were as immersed in the game as me, many even more so. Comparing this to the interest shown by my students in my History 101 class, I decided it was worth finding out what engaged the Perplex City players so completely in learning-related tasks. I interviewed the 50 most engaged players, and from that developed a set of key features that I thought could work in education to increase engagement with learning.

2. What type of games have you used in your own teaching?

My first games-based teaching flowed directly from this. I applied the key features from ARGs to my History module, developing an online problem solving game that kept students fed with a constant supply of new challenges, was wrapped in a ‘mystery’ narrative, and saw students battling with each other on a public leader board to win one of a number of prizes. Eight years on, the game still runs each year, and sees students work far more than they need to, pass with an average 2:1 mark, and develop key skills and make key friendship groups to last them for their whole programme.

I have since developed versions of the game for Archaeology and English, and also regularly run workshops with Museum Studies Masters students who develop games for museum education contexts. My latest work is in medical education: working with the Wellcome Collection and healthcare departments internationally to develop simple card games to help medical students to apply knowledge and develop narrative skills in a fun, creative way.

In staff training contexts, I have developed a board game to help programme teams test curriculum designs, and for many years now have been developing play- and game-based approaches to engage conference attendees with the themes or aims of events (running increasingly more encompassing activities for up to 600 participants at ALT-C, Museums and the Web, FOTE, etc.).

3. Gamification and game based learning seems to becoming more popular in higher education, why do you think this is? What do games do that is different to traditional teaching formats?

Games appear to offer a solution to two of the most recurring themes in higher education: student engagement and teaching innovation. Sadly, this often leads to an assumption that any game-like activity will be both engaging and innovative – whereas of course games are just like an academic course: if they’ve been designed well for that context, there’s a chance that students will engage with them. In recent years, it’s been great to see an increase in simple, traditional or low-fi web games for learning; or playful activities that promote creativity and exploration. It’s much easier for a lecturer to see someone use Playdoh in their teaching and think “I could do that!”; or play a card game and then have a go at creating their own.

4. What advice would you give to teachers thinking about introducing games into their teaching?

Think small, cheap, and fun. The most difficult part is deciding what you’d like your game or playful activity to cover: is it a key concept, or a set of ‘knowledge’? Then draw on your own experience of games/sports etc. to see if there are elements that work particularly well with this chosen theme: simple examples might be to use a dice roll to represent randomness in genetics; or top trumps to compare characteristics of chemical compounds, or representing creative writing through a piece of folded paper (write one line, and the starting word on the next, then fold and pass on to the next student)…

Then try it. It probably won’t work too well the first time, but you’ll get ideas of how to improve it (often from the students themselves). Add depth or complexity as needed over time, but keep that core simplicity at its heart.

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Those interested in gaming may also be interested to know about two other events

17-18 November Playful learning Special Interest Group meeting – This group is Chaired by Alex and hosts meetings around the country with the upcoming event being hosted in London. It’s free to attend, whether a member of the group or not, simply apply on the event page.

30 November Copyright Community of Practice – The monthly meeting for November will be a chance to play several copyright games. The Copyright Community of Practice group is an informal forum for LSE staff interested in discussing copyright matters for more information go to the Staff training and development system.

November 3rd, 2016|Announcements, Events & Workshops (LTI), games, LTI Grants, Projects, Teaching & Learning, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Michaelmas Term Training Opportunities

Now that term has started and you have (hopefully) settled down, why not take this opportunity to refresh or develop new skills?

Michaelmas Term workshops

Check out our programme of workshops around digital literacy and teaching with technology

On Demand and bespoke

Workshops listed below will run on an on-demand basis when at least three people have expressed their interest via LSE’s training system.

On-demand training

We also offer bespoke training to groups of academics and departments to meet specific requirements. Just choose which one(s) you are interested in from both scheduled and on-demand and contact s.ney@lse.ac.uk to arrange for sessions.

And much more!

Stay tuned for more information on our upcoming exciting event on gamification and playful learning in November!

October 13th, 2016|Announcements, Blogging, copyright, Digital Literacy, Events & Workshops (LTI), games, innovation, Social Media, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Game-based learning: teaching how to conduct a research project using a board game

In January, Dr Kay Inckle was awarded an LTI Grant for her “Game of Research” project. She received funding and help from staff at LTI to design and create a board game to help social science students understand the “essential components for a successful qualitative research project”. Findings from her evaluation of the first stage of this project give us some interesting pointers as to how games can be used to support teaching and learning.

June 14th, 2016|games, innovation, LTI Grant Winners, LTI Grants, Projects, Teaching & Learning, TEL Trends, Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Do games improve learning? Jane tells us more…..

Everyday people rely on Google for answers to their most personal, important and most trivial questions. How do you know if the information is reliable? A good place to start is with an information expert. This post, from LTI’s Copyright and Digital Literacy Advisor Dr Jane Secker to investigate “Do games improve learning?” was originally posted by CILIP as part of their Ask a librarian series. It’s been re-posted here as LTI are currently funding a number of projects to investigate the value of games in learning as part of their IGNITE and LTIG funding streams.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on whether games improve learning, partly in the run up to LILAC 2016, where I’d rashly agreed to take part in the games competition Lagadothan, organized for the first time by the conference committee.

My interest in games and learning goes back several years but really started in earnest when I worked with Chris Morrison from the University of Kent, to help develop a game to teach librarians about copyright and the new exceptions to UK copyright law in 2014. It was a card game, you might have heard of it? You might have played Copyright the Card Game? I use this in the Introduction to Copyright workshop at LSE that I run each term and it’s changed the way I think about teaching people about copyright, for the better!

The game been downloaded over 2500 times, and the general consensus seems to be it’s a fun and engaging way to learn about copyright. But has it led to people retaining more knowledge about copyright and can they transform what they have learnt into practice? These are important questions to consider on the real value of games in learning.

There has been a lot of interest in the last few years in games-based learning in two of my fields of professional interest: learning technology and information literacy. I started off thinking that games were all about livening up your teaching, and finding a way of engaging students in what could otherwise be a rather dry subject. However, following the keynote at this year’s LILAC from Alex Moseley and Nic Whitton, I felt the time had come to do some serious research into whether games improve learning and why that might be.

I’d been intrigued to hear about the idea of a ‘magic circle’ where new rules can apply and failure is acceptable. I’ve also learnt that designing good educational games is really hard work, and takes a lot of time and effort. So are the rewards really worth it? I decided to turn my attention to what Google can find for us on this topic:

$Screenshot of Google search for \"Do games improve learning\". Results include articles from telegraph.co.uk, rochester.edu and neuronethlearning.com$