Slide 1
Digital Game-Based
Learning in WebCT
Bob Bramucci
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WHAT IT IS
 Audience
Analysis
 What’s a Game?
 Do Games Work?
 Why Not Games?
 What’s a Non-Programmer to Do?
 Game Taxonomy
 Software
 To Learn More…
 Future
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WHAT IT’S NOT
 Trying
to Sell Anything
 Training for Specific Software
 Exhibiting Games I’ve Authored
 Advocacy for Going “Game Crazy”
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Audience Analysis
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Statistics (from Prensky, 2001)
 Sesame
Street is over 30 years old.
 Pong, the first computer game, appeared in
1974.
 The IBM PC was introduced in 1981.
 MTV began in 1981, over twenty years ago.
 Students
18-22 have never known a world
without digital games (or rotary dial phones,
network-only television, or analog music).
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The Average Teenager:
 Watches
over 3 hours of TV per day
 Surfs the Internet 10 minutes to 1 hour per
day
 Plays 1-1½ hours of digital games per day
 By
the time they graduate from college, they
will have nearly as much experience with
electronic entertainment as they do with
school.
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What’s a Game?
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What’s a Game?
 Homo
Ludens: it’s play, and
– Play is something one chooses to do.
– Play is intensely and utterly absorbing.
– Play promotes the formation of social groupings.
 Starbuck
& Webster (1991)
– Games elicit involvement and give pleasure.
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Games Have:
Marc Prensky:
1. Rules
2. Goals and objectives
3. Outcomes and feedback
4. Conflict/competition/challenge/opposition
5. Interaction
6. Representation or story
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: “Flow”: absorption,
time distortions, loss of self (but it
reemerges even stronger afterwards)
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Do Games Work?
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Research
Games:
Improve
reasoning skill
Wood & Stewart (1987)
Serve as
performance
tests
Kennedy, Bittner, Harbeson, &
Jones (1982)
Enhance basic
literacy skills
Brownfield & Gretchen (1983)
Enhance the
ability to divide
attention
Greenfield, de Winstanley,
Kilpatrick, & Kaye (1996)
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Why Games Work

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




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Games are engaging, entertaining and fun.
Games motivate participation and persistence.
Games are interactive and utilize active learning
techniques.
Games use multiple modalities of learning
Games provide immediate feedback.
Games can provide a safe and inexpensive means
of simulating and practicing real-world experiences.
In contrast to exams, games are seen as stress
reducers rather than stress inducers.
Games help to calibrate comprehension---i.e.,
teachers can see strengths and weaknesses and
adjust accordingly.
Games capitalize on the virtues of (and universal
popularity of) play.
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Why Games Work: The Short Answer


Engagement
Interactivity
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Why Not Games?
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Statistics
 The
games business is BIG---at $7.5 billion
dollars per year, it’s about the same size as
the movie business.
 So is training and education (an estimated
$2 trillion dollars).
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Convergence
 Telephony
and Computers
 Movies and Video Games
 Computers and Appliances
 PDAs and Cell Phones
However, there’s not much talk about
convergence of digital games and education.
Why?
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Why the Resistance?
 “No
Pain, No Gain”
 Puritan Heritage
 Madonna/Whore Complex
 Tradition-Bound Culture of Higher
Education
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Higher Education
“Why, in spite of the fact that teaching by
pouring in, learning by passive absorption,
are universally condemned, that they are still
so entrenched in practice?”
--John Dewey, 1918
The lecture method is still predominant in
higher education.
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What’s a Non-Programmer
to Do?
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Criteria
Customizable
Content
No Programming
Suitable for Academic Content
Inexpensive
Tradeoff: not bleeding-edge.
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Game Taxonomy
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Types of Digital Games
 Email
 Adventure
 Puzzle
 Board
 Full-Motion
Video
 Arcade
 Shooters
Lots of other types (e.g., driving, flying, fighting) but
no educational examples.
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Software
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Email Games
Sample Game: “Quack, Quack, Quack”
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Text Adventure Games
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Adventure Games
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Puzzle Games
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Puzzle Games, cont.
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Board Games: Quiz Shows
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Board Games: Concentration
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Board Games: Jeopardy
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Board Games: Sqaures
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Board Games: Millionaire
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Full-Motion Video Games
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Arcade Games: Pac Man
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3D Shooter
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Game Creation Engines
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Games Created with Game Engines
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TO LEARN MORE…
Books
Web
Site
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Books
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WEB SITE TOUR:
http://faculty.fullerton.edu/
bbramucci/games/index.htm
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Book Summaries
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Software
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Training
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Links
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FUTURE
Slide 48
Future Plans
 Implement
games
 Build Communications Area (discussion
boards, listserv)
 Incorporate Simulations into Web Site
Next Year’s Projects:
 Geographical Metaphor for Navigation in
WebCT
 Development of Expertise
Slide 49
THANKS!
Email: [email protected]