“How to Fail Your
Research Degree”
An educational game for postgraduate students
Daisy Abbott
[email protected]
@DAbbottResearch
Academic Context
• GSA Core Research Skills programme
– Range of modules delivered to PG (taught) students
– Similar programme for PG (research) students
– Specific module: “Academic Skills for Masters Research”
• Challenges
–
–
–
–
Postgrads require more independent modes of learning
Subject can be seen as ‘dry’
Limited class size restricts access
Lecture-based delivery
Rationale for a serious game
• Game = constructivist/experiential learning
– Deep understanding of research skills
– Embed knowledge/skills into practice
– Risk-taking (in a safe environment)
• Memorable, enjoyable, high-impact
• Motivation/enjoyment of research
Game Design: Learning Outcomes
1.
2.
3.
4.
Understand the various risks affecting research and their
impact on projects
Recognise dependencies between tasks at different stages
of research
Understand the interrelations of different risks with the
activities to negate or mitigate them
Be aware of the time-critical nature of short research
projects
Iterative Development
Evaluation: Lessons
What did the game teach you (or reinforce in your mind) about
doing research?
90
80
The game taught/reinforced my
knowledge of the different types of risks
that can be faced during research.
70
60
The game helped me to understand the
impact of risks on research.
50
40
The game helped me to understand how
early activities can affect later activities
30
20
The game reflected the time-critical
nature of short-term research projects.
10
0
Strongly agree Slightly agree Neither agree
nor disagree
Slightly
disagree
Strongly
disagree
% who
agreed with
each ILO
statement:
93.8%,
90.7%,
95.9%,
80.4%,
respectively.
N=97
Qualitative Evaluation: Lessons
•
•
•
•
The interconnectedness/dependencies in research activities.
The importance of planning to mitigate risks.
The impact of both internal and external risks.
That the game would be most useful played early in the research
process/course.
– “I wish we could have done this or had it required at the beginning
of our proposals.”
• Familiarising students, novice researchers, and those with English as
an additional language with research terminology.
Evaluation: Experience
• Keller’s Attention Relevance Confidence Satisfaction (ARCS) model
• Uses an extensive review of motivational literature to cluster
motivational concepts into four categories
• ARCS Model (Keller, 2010, p.45)
Major Categories
Attention
Relevance
Confidence
Satisfaction
Definitions
Capturing the interest of learners;
stimulating the curiosity to learn
Meeting the personal needs/ goals of
the learner to effect a positive
attitude
Helping the learners believe/ feel
that they will succeed and control
their success
Reinforcing accomplishment with
rewards (internal and external)
Process Questions
How can I make this learning experience
stimulating and interesting?
In what ways will this learning experience be
valuable for my students?
How can I via instruction help the students
succeed and allow them to control their
success?
What can I do to help the students feel good
about their experience and desire to continue
learning?
Evaluation: Experience
How did you feel while playing the game?
70
60
The game gained and sustained my
attention.
50
The game felt relevant to my
situation.
40
30
The game helped to increase my
confidence about undertaking
academic research.
20
I found playing the game a
satisfying/rewarding experience.
10
0
Strongly
agree
Slightly agreeNeither agree
nor disagree
Slightly
disagree
Strongly
disagree
% who
agreed with
each
motivation
statement:
93.3%,
92.0%,
56.8%,
85.4%,
respectively.
N=89
Qualitative Evaluation: Experience
• “In a subtle way it teaches the essentials of research”
• “Thoroughly enjoyed playing.”
• “This game is extremely interesting. It can make me to
understand quickly.”
• “I think this was very accurate to myself”
• “I hope my classmates do this”
Longitudinal Evaluation
– “I think overall the game had a positive impact on my
approach to planning my research project, as I took a lot of it
into consideration when planning the next stages of my
project.”
– “It was a fun and engaging way to understand what the steps
for a research project are.”
– “It was a good laugh at the time but now, more than half way
through the dissertation project, I can appreciate the take
home message from the game more.”
Conclusions
• Succeeds emphatically in all four intended learning outcomes.
– Functions as a crash course in doing a research project
– Lessons appear to be retained over time
– Learning arises from ‘failure’ paradigm: e.g. “our experience
provided us with a relatively pain-free route to the thesis - it was
only seeing how other teams ran into difficulties that underlined
risks”
Conclusions
• Experience is very strongly positive in three of Keller’s four
motivational categories (attention, relevance, and satisfaction).
– Implies increased motivation for learning and embedding research
skills into practice.
Conclusions
• Slightly positive results for increasing confidence.
– Negative outcomes can have very strong learning potential (but can
decrease confidence)
– Knowing what you don’t know; removing ‘blissful ignorance’
– Frustration over pure luck/lack of control
Conclusions
• Unexpected outcome: much wider applicability than just being
used to teach Master’s students.
• Unexpected outcome: success relies heavily on tutor guidance,
interpretation, performance.
Further development
– Rules have been altered to increase player agency using a ‘work
late’ card
– Illustrations for cards
– Final release: FREE/print-on-demand
www.howtofailyourresearchdegree.com
Future work?
– Video to explain game rules
– Raise awareness (please tweet about it!) @DAbbottResearch
– Design and run comparative experiment?
Questions?
[email protected]
@DAbbottResearch