Manchester Metropolitan University
Learning and Teaching Unit
Learning and Teaching in Action
Issue Two: Information Technology
July 2002
ISSN 1477-1241
Of Mice and Pen
John Pal and Mark Stubbs, The Business School
Faced with increasing student numbers and the need to provide flexible modes
of delivery in a cost–efficient manner there has been a move towards testing out
the Internet as a means of reconciling these pressures. This article reports on
the processes and outcomes of the development of a web-driven game
(theRetailGame) as part of the assessment package to be used on a number of
retail courses run in the Business School.
The article is in three main parts. The first part by John Pal reflects on the ideas
behind the game, and the actions and experiences of trying to develop the game
on his own. This is a non-technical section. The second part of the article
outlines some of the technicalities associated with the development of the
various interactions that were developed, and is reported upon by Mark Stubbs.
The third part of the article by both authors outlines the key learning points from
the development of the game and the associated collaborative work.
Designing theRetailGame (the non-technical bits) [John]
Watching my children over a number of years using SimCity, Civilisation and
Topsy and Tim Go Shopping it became quite clear that there was much more to
their playing of these PC games than just a bit of light entertainment. Indeed,
the term edutainment has been one that has been banded around quite
frequently in the last few years, and this is what I was seeing before my very
eyes. And does the title of ‘game’ present any problems because of its
potentially childish connotations? Well, given the recent publication in one of the
world’s leading business journals extolling the virtues of playing board games
(Orbanes, 2002) there can be no better justification for testing out this approach.
So taken together perhaps there was something more here and this is what
spurred me on to consider the use of computer games in enhancing learning
opportunities.
This part of the article reports on some of my experiences in designing
theRetailGame to be delivered over the Internet which has been developed as
part of a one year Teaching and Learning Fellowship (T&LF). At the time of
writing the game had not been fully launched and was in the final phases of
testing. This part of the article provides a chronological account of the
development of the game.
Initial work
Prior to applying for a T&LF I had been searching for material on operations
management and had been allowed use of the Strathclyde Business School’s
Distillery simulation. It appears that since my trial of their game they have
developed a whole range of other products (see www.simul8.com). Whilst this
simulation focused on production management I sensed that there could be
something in the way that the team at Strathclyde had designed their game that
could benefit students of retailing. Likewise, viewing freely accessible material
from both Edinburgh (http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~oplan/web-demo/gpdt.cgi) and
Huddersfield Universities
(http://www.hud.ac.uk/schools/comp+maths/servicewatch/swhome.htm) also
provided further food for thought. Contacting the respective games developers
to establish what platforms they used for writing their programmes and asking for
any advice for a pure novice in the area provided a useful list of do’s and don’ts:
DOs and DON’Ts OF DEVELOPING A WEB-BASED GAME
DOs
DON’Ts
Try to use existing material
Try to learn too many packages in one
go
Use software with which you are
familiar
Try this if you don’t have blocks of time
free over a long period of time
Search for similar games that may be
freely available
Be too ambitious in terms of the
interactions you may want (simple can
be good if linked to clear learning
outcomes)
Be prepared for lots of frustration
Think the web is only useful for
multiple-choice questions.
Be prepared for slow progress
Put too much text on a page
Try to find a collaborator with technical
expertise
Put too many flashy graphics on a
page with a long download time
Have a clear idea of what you want
Rely on testing in just Internet
Explorer; other browsers such as
Netscape have to be tested too and
different versions of these also have to
be tested.
Be realistic in what can be achieved
Think it’s over when the last page is
written; the testing has only just begun
Make use of the many free resources
around e.g. MMU seminars and
presentations
Forget to put your name on every page
with a © symbol adjacent to avoid
being ripped off.
Search out little pots of money, they
can ease the way
Try using a database driven web site: it
allows easy updating of material
Have a guide (toolbar) to the site so
students know where they are and
where they are going
Somewhat closer to home, participation on a one day taster of a MMU-run
WebCT course, attendance at an E-Learning Trade Fair hosted by the SMILE
Project in the Geoffrey Manton Building and talking to Mark Stubbs, (a colleague
in the same building as me!), all provided me with confirmation that what I
wanted to do was both do-able and useful. Most impressively one of the
presentations at the E-Learning Trade Fair in April 2001 showcased a
presentation from a Stockport-based company. This small organisation was
developing a SimHospital-type application for the University of Mexico’s Medical
Faculty using a number of Macromedia authoring packages with a database
running in the background. Also presenting at this two-day event was Matthew
Southern of Liverpool John Moores who reported on the use of video games as
a learning aid. I subsequently found some useful ideas of his (Southern, 2001).
Gaining support from the ‘Towards a Healthy High Street II Project’ (a European
Social Fund-supported initiative run from the Department of Retailing &
Marketing) enabled me to attend the annual conference for the Society for the
Advancement of Games and Simulations in Education and Training (SAGSET)
held at Leeds University over the summer of 2001. Here, I witnessed some
pretty impressive games ranging from the simple card game (a no cost process)
to the full singing and dancing of Nottingham University’s concurrent engineering
game. The difference here is that Nottingham University commissioned
programmers to write the game and had a budget in the region of €1 million!
Placed somewhere in between were a computer–driven product promotion
package demonstrated by an independent training consultant, and a Hull
University Chemistry lecturer outlining a forensic science case study. What
became clear was that whilst there were certain basic rules in creating games
that are not unfamiliar to educators the technologies were many and varied. It
was time to make the choice, take the plunge and get on with it.
After the initial casting around as to the best way to develop my idea for use on
our retailing programmes I decided to use a database-driven web-based
approach. The ESF Project paid for the purchase of the appropriate software as
the game would also be used on the Towards a Healthy High Street programme
aimed at small independent retailers. The next steps were the painful ones of
having (or at least trying) to learn how to develop web pages and how to link a
database to the site. Macromedia’s UltraDev with a Microsoft Access database
working in the background were the applications chosen.
The summer period was spent working through self-instruction manuals such as
the 750 page Dreamweaver UltraDev in 21 days (some joke that!) and after
much frustration I switched to Dreamweaver UltraDev for Dummies (Harris,
2001) which proved much more useful. However, no matter how I much I tried
using the books, working through the tutorials, going to UltraDev help pages or
the technical pages on Macromedia’s web site, I still found that a bit of hands-on
explanation from Mark to be a clinching factor in my ability to start developing a
usable product.
Having mastered some of the basics, and more importantly learning about the
capabilities of the programmes, I was able to start developing the web pages.
Being a member of the Institute of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
provided me with access to their fortnightly article service that alerted me by email about potential sources of information in just the area I was working in.
Armed with this information I was able to sketch out how the web site should
function, and also what steps a putative designer such as me should take. I
trialled a non-interactive web site with students on the BA Retail Marketing
degree and soon saw the benefits of the technology, such as being able to
update material quickly. Appreciating the need to ensure that the pages would
work in both Netscape and Internet Explorer soon became apparent, so too did
the need to think quite carefully about issues such as font size, colours and
ensuring that all the links in the site made sense and actually worked I used
some ‘how to’ type books and articles to provide me with a list of things to do in
designing the web site (e.g. Joliffe, 2001; Tearle and Dillon, 2000). I was on my
way.
Clambering up some pretty steep learning curves meant that I was able to start
developing my interactive retail game in bursts rather than in a neatly planned
manner. Using the layout steps suggested by Joliffe (2001) I sketched out the
various stages I envisaged for the game (see Figure 1). The three main
components of the web site are the provision of an overview of the learning
event, providing information about the fictional store proposal and a series of
interactive task pages.
Figure 1: Simplified view of theRetailGame web site
Web-side (student view)
Database (hidden from student)
Bad log in
Log in
Check registration
Good log in
Welcome screen
Goals
Skills
Overview of
learning event
Learning styles
Resources
Outcomes
Assessment brief
The locality
The company
Learn about
store proposal
The competition
The products
The costs
Trading patterns
Searchable
database
• products
• space
• financial measures
• staffing payments
• etc.
Staffing options
Devise strategy
Select products
Task pages
Allocate space
Plan staff
Help page
E-mail tutor
Database
calculations
• turnover
• profit
• margin
• staff costs
• etc.
Choose stockloss
measures
Print results page
Reflective
essay/report
Once I’d done this I started collecting, synthesising and presenting raw data in a
useable manner so that I could then progress to the interactive elements of the
game. One useful product of the collaborative work with Mark Stubbs (a nonretailer) meant that I had to explain in layman’s terms how a retail operation
functioned. I had to be clear about the learning objectives, the presentation of
appropriate data and ensure that there was a balance between reading pages of
material, pointing and clicking, and carrying out tasks. Further reading around
the topic of web design alerted me to the need for a common template for each
page including having a link on every page to a help file, and the start of the
whole web site (Joliffe, 2001). Incorporating these was easily done and I also
added in an ‘e-mail the tutor’ button on each page. It is envisaged that with the
development of the Business School intranet that Mark Stubbs has developed
that students may engage in discussions with each other. The intranet could
also provide an additional and alternative means of communicating with students
working on the game.
theRetailGame explained
Put simply theRetailGame involves students undertaking a series of linked tasks
based around a framework I devised as part of my ‘normal’ teaching programme:
‘The 5 Ss of Retail Operations’. Students are required to put themselves in the
position of a retail manager for a new store opening in a small town. Having
searched the web site database they are faced with developing a strategy for the
products to be offered and the service level to be provided. These strategic
decisions are sent to, and stored on, a results page for printing at the end of all
the computer-based tasks. But rather than just let the student move from one
task to the next Mark informed me that it was possible to store students’
qualitative reasons for choice of decision too. It was therefore decided to build
this into the design of the game and store their input on a final report page. This
would avoid the pitfalls regarding point and click that I had read about that was
becoming prevalent in much computer-based teaching material (Stanton et al.,
2001).
Additional tasks for the students to tackle are that they have to decide which
specific product lines to stock and what space to allocate to each within specified
minimum and maximum parameters. This is where a robust database design
came in useful, and something I had to learn about by working through a series
of self-paced tutorials. Providing rudimentary data on key performance
indicators for each of the products enables (and indeed requires) students to
make an informed choice and again they have to justify their decisions at the
time. Other issues to be addressed are the customer service policy, and the
proportion of permanent and temporary staff to employ which together then
drives a series of screens related to staff rostering. Decisions on a stockloss
prevention plan also have to be made. (see screenshots at end.)
On completion of the tasks the student prints off their results page, which
contains their decisions, and justifications they made at the time, together with a
blank store plan. The print out includes their planned store performance in terms
of net operating profit. The students can then compare this key performance
indicator data to ‘real’, easily accessible, data in the public domain for similar
companies.
The assessment of the exercise is a written report that justifies their decisions
and accompanies their computer printouts. This allows them to review their
initial decisions and either further corroborate their choices or indeed point out
any weaknesses. Furthermore it also requires students to show the location of
products, fitting rooms, display points and cash desks on a blank store plan.
In order for the students to engage fully in the game there is an expectation that
they will work outside the confines of the web site. Providing them with links to
articles and web sites, and a basic reading list will equip them with further
resources. These are all in addition to the formal teaching that underpins the
game. Taken together these activities should help students to make informed
decisions when they undertake the various tasks in the game. It is on this that
the students will demonstrate their learning through a reflective essay that also
asks them to show the links between theory and practice. Naturally enough the
tutor feedback will also play an important part of the learning process.
Furthermore, the time freed up in the seminar programme, where many of the
tasks have been used in a paper-based format, will allow me the space for
students to do a short presentation and be questioned on their proposals. Not
only that but the flexibility afforded by the game will allow students to work
independently on it at their own pace and have as many attempts at it as they
want. I am also considering allowing students to work on it collaboratively. In
addition I expect some healthy competition as students attempt to maximise
profit and turnover from their proposals.
With our commercial clients, who undertake a series of short intensive
residentials, the game could be used in a slightly different manner. Having the
participants working in small groups and putting them under the type of pressure
more akin to their working environment tends to go down well. Due to their
higher level learning needs a process of cross-examination by their peers has
also proved successful when teaching these groups and this could still be
applied in the context of the game. Subsequent reflection will, however, still be a
key part of the learning process and this would, as with other students, be the
main assessment vehicle. In addition, and here’s the beauty of the whole game
design where Mark developed a series of very clever actions in the site, the
product choice can be changed, made more complex and the product types
altered from fashion to food to any other product simply by my manipulation of
the database without having to alter any of the web pages
Developing the interactions [Mark]
Our project adds something extra to that magical union of top-down commitment
and bottom-up enthusiasm so often cited (e.g. Hall and White, 2002) as the
genesis of e-learning development: a chance meeting of paths that created the
requisite blend of knowledge, ability and energy. The story of my involvement
takes in a back injury; a regular train journey that I do not take; a desperate need
for coffee after a particularly tortuous meeting of undergraduate course leaders;
and a broken video camera! The detail is less important than the point that
developing e-learning materials requires a range of knowledge, skills and
abilities that are unlikely to be found in a single individual. People with
complementary skills can come together by chance; conferences, workshops
and seminars might increase the odds of discovery; but shared enthusiasm is
vital if partnerships are to be productive. In this we were particularly fortunate.
At our first meeting, John showed me a paper version of the game he had
developed over several years with his retail students. The game format made it a
promising candidate for e-learning as the key interactions were between
students and a distant expert. Each student was directed towards useful reading
then given the chance to make some initial decisions about retail strategy. The
consequences of those were fed back. The game progressed with more reading,
more decisions, more consequences, and so on. The drawback of the paper
game was the manual calculation of decision consequences, and the inevitable
delay in feeding them back. Varied and inter-related decision factors with
complex consequences put the application outside the range of simple multiple
choice or hypertext ICT environments (such as WebCT). A spreadsheet
application was viable, but to maximise opportunity for student participation a
web-based solution was preferred. Also, whilst the rules used for calculating
consequences were reasonably static, the actual values (staffing costs, product
prices, overheads, profit margins, etc) were more dynamic, and needed to be
maintained by a retail expert (John), rather than an ICT developer. A databasedriven website was emerging as the preferred platform.
An IT background, teaching, research and consultancy interests in e-Commerce,
and a commitment to building a dynamic, personalised intranet for over 5000
members of the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School for next
academic year (more of this in a later issue), ensured that I had the technical
skills to transfer John’s paper game to the web. The challenge was to do so in a
way that maximised the potential of the medium to support the student learning
experience, and to ensure that all John’s desired learning outcomes could be
met. To provide a focus for our discussions I followed a RAPID
PROTOTYPING approach as web pages allow possible screen layouts to be
mocked up quickly and easily. Our regular e-mail exchanges were supported by
infrequent but important face-to-face meetings, in which my lack of retail
knowledge prompted John to make explicit his tacit experience.
Our efforts progressed on three distinct fronts: DATA (structuring the underlying
information of the game); RULES (articulating the key performance indicators
and their interrelations); and CONTROL (the things that would appear on screen
to enable students to enter and visualise the consequences of their decisions).
However, it was only some way into the project that I realised that the overall
STRUCTURE and FLOW of the interactions between student and game were
also central to the learning experience. John was keen to make students aware
of the importance of considering strategy, space, staff, and stock in retail
decisions; so I decided to package the interactions under these headings, and
make it clear to the student that s/he was progressing through these important
considerations towards an overall conclusion. This decision pushed the web
page design towards a frameset approach in which the top of the screen
became a progress bar and the main part of the screen allowed the student to
enter their decisions and visualise the consequences. The frameset approach,
in which a parent web page determines the contents of the top and bottom
frames that appear within it, prompted another emergent design decision: a total
re-write into Javascript to allow the student to move both forwards and
backwards through the decision sequence quickly and easily. The ability to
practice in a safe environment is a much-vaunted possibility of e-learning, and
we hope that moving forwards and backwards, testing assumptions about the
underlying rules of the retail game by trying different decisions will prove a
powerful learning device for the students.
After an initial download of the latest prices, stock and staff data (which are all
stored and therefore easily maintained in database), all the Javascript code
require to calculate and display the strategy, space, staff, stock, and final report
sections for any decision the user might make is stored in the user’s web
browser. As all the processing takes place on the user’s PC, decisions can be
altered and consequences seen without accessing the web server. Waiting for
decision consequences to download over a slow network link could be a barrier
to the spirit of ITERATIVE PRACTICE and REFLECTION we hope to foster
amongst users of the game, therefore the so-called “client-side” Javascript
approach suits our needs. The decision to use it will be reviewed; but at this
stage in the game’s evolution it strikes a reasonable balance between ease of
development and speed of operation.
For others thinking of following our approach, it is important to highlight the
increased testing costs that a “client-side” Javascript approach brings. Without
dwelling on the technical detail, browsers like Internet Explorer and Netscape
Navigator are in competition and are constantly evolving. Javascript code can
behave differently on browsers from different manufacturers or on different
versions of the same browser. Awareness of these differences and thorough
testing is essential to ensure that a “client-side” solution is robust for all those
who might wish to use it. We will doubtless learn more as the game is rolled out
to a wider audience.
Conclusions
At this stage, it is worth summarising those aspects of our approach we would
commend to others contemplating similar projects. For us, rapid prototyping
provided a concrete focus for discussion about project development possibilities,
and we would use it again. Our balance of domain and technical expertise made
for genuinely creative dialogue, with the experience of using the paper-based
game ensuring our efforts were blessed with a sense of audience. We imagine
that both would be critical success factors for running e-learning projects. For
technical design, we would advise explicit consideration of data, rules, controls,
and the overall structure and flow of interactions. Our underlying pedagogical
model emphasises discovery through iterative practice and reflection - a learning
style that appears to fit well with e-learning. The quality of our design decision
will inevitably be tested as theRetailGame is used more widely, and we look
forward to the feedback.
By the time this article goes to press we will have presented the game to three
different audiences: to our ESF Partners, in a Retailing & Marketing
departmental seminar and at the Business School’s Learning and Teaching Day.
Our next steps include writing about the experience in suitable retail and
educational journals. The latter area of publication is new to us both and so we
have been browsing a useful site that lists all the relevant journals in the area
(http://www.leeds.ac.uk/bei/journals.htm). In addition we will undertake some
structured evaluation of students’ use of theRetailGame with a view to reporting
on that in appropriate journals.
Being realistic in setting out the aims of the project has meant that we have
managed to get together a clear output that will be of benefit to undergraduates
and also will be used for participants on one of our ESF small retailer projects.
Scaling the project up for our postgraduate retail clients such as Sainsbury and
B&Q will prove easy given the flexibility of the technology and the relatively
painless way of adapting the database that drives the game. Use of the Kolb
experiential learning approach has underpinned the design of the game, with the
need for students to justify their choices, reflect on their decisions and support
these from the academic and trade literature. It is envisaged that these activities
will all provide a valuable and complementary learning experience to those
undertaken on other parts of the retail education programmes students
undertake with us.
References
Atkinson (2001) “Creating online virtual environments for inquiry-based learning,”
http://www.educause.edu/ep/ep_item_detail.asp?ITEM_ID=73 (date accessed
31 October 2001)
Hall, W. and White, S. (2002) “Strategic implementation of computer-based
learning at Southampton,” (ILT members only web site)
Harris, S (2001) Dreamweaver UltraDev4 for Dummies Foster City CA: IDG
Books Worldwide
Joliffe, A (2001) The online learning handbook: developing and using webbased learning London: Kogan Page
Orbanes, P. (2002) “Everything I know about business I learned from Monopoly”
Harvard Business Review, March, pp. 51-57
Southern, M. (2001) “The cultural study of games: more than just games,”
(www.igda.org/endeavours/articles/msouthern_printable.htm) date accessed 6
December 2001
Stanton, N., Porter, L. and Stroud, R. (2001) “Bored with point and click?
Theoretical perspectives on designing learning environments,” Innovations in
Education and Teaching International, 38 (2) 175-182
Tearle, P. and Dillon, P. (2000) “The development and evaluation of a
multimedia resource to support ICT training: design issues, training processes
and user experiences,” Innovations in Education and Teaching International,
38 (1) 8-18
Examples of web-based games/simulations
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~oplan/web-demo/index.html
http://www.hud.ac.uk/schools/comp+maths/servicewatch/swhome.htm
http://www.simul8.com/index.htm
John Pal
telephone 0161 247 3988
e-mail [email protected]
Mark Stubbs
telephone 0161 247 3739
e-mail [email protected]
Screen shots
First decision page
First part of the results page