New 3D Learning Book by Karl Kapp

Karl Kapp is a longtime friend of this blog. His first comment was on a post comparing Second Life to World of Warcraft for educational purposes, way back in 2007, and his blog, Kapp Notes, has been on my blogroll ever since. Dr. Kapp is a full professor of instructional technology over at Bloomsburg University, and is a prominent thought leader and author in the field.

One of the things several researchers in educational gaming picked up on early was the facilitation immersive worlds featuring human-like avatars offered for teaching and learning. This idea has come to be generally termed “3D learning,” because the virtual gaming worlds in which it takes place are rendered in three dimensional graphics. It feels like you are in the world instead of simply playing a board game.

It seems to be a powerful learning tool, and has attracted a lot of attention from educational researchers. Perhaps, researchers suspect, there is something to the notion of transference, where players feels like they are experiencing what their avatar in the 3D virtual world is going through and go on to transfer knowledge from that virtual world to real life applications. Perhaps it is conducive to Csíkszentmihályi’s flow theory, where time becomes irrelevant in the pursuit of passionate tasks. Regardless, it’s an intriguing idea that researchers continue to investigate.

Karl Kapp’s latest book, co-authored with Tony O’Driscoll, explores the ramifications of teaching and learning within these immersive virtual environments. Aptly titled, Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration, provides a blueprint for corporate and educational professional development personnel when embarking on efforts to include this type of training in their organizations. Recently, Dr. Kapp made a digital preview of the book available to several bloggers, and embarked on a “virtual book tour.” I was honored to be included on the list, and found the book to be impressive.

I think one of the key contributions to the field this book makes is its insistence that 3D learning is a valid and valuable tool for both corporations and universities. For instance, the whole idea of role playing within virtual 3D environments is supported and reinforced in the book. Business personnel have long known the value of role playing within training regimens. I recall a conversation with someone familiar with the training program for the sales force of a Fortune 100 company. An artificial office environment was created, complete with cameras and recording equipment. The trainee would enter the office and attempt to sell the company’s products to another employee posing as a potential client. Trainers would later review the recordings and help the trainee hone techniques. This entire process is greatly facilitated through 3D virtualization, as the book makes clear.

On an entirely selfish note, I was glad to see the acronym “VIE” included, something I introduced to the field in 2007 in an article in the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. I called it a virtual interactive environment, while Kapp and O’Driscoll use it to mean virtual immersive environment. Regardless, it amounts to the same thing, and I’m glad to see the idea spread. Education and corporations can use a lot more VIEs.

Games In Education: An Interview with Eva Zadeh

Earlier in the semester, I was contacted by grad student and freelance writer Eva Zadeh and interviewed by e-mail for a paper on which she is working. I thought Zadeh’s questions were good ones on the topic of educational videogames, and she agreed to let me put my answers in this blog. Here, then, is the interview. (I’ve since brushed up my responses, but the content is substantially the same.)

Q: Why is it important to put video games in classrooms?
A: The question is still out as to whether or not video games are important for classroom use. Certain media hold advantages over other media, depending on the situation. For instance, books are good for preserving dense information. Lectures are good for transmitting brief information quickly. Videogames are good for simulated experiences that can be pedagogical in some way.

The best place for videogames may well be in after school or extracurricular programs where time is not as limited and there is less concern about traditional testing. This is backed up in Squire’s dissertation, and elsewhere.

Q: For how long have you been working on educational video games? Is it something new?
A: I’ve centered my doctoral work around educational videogames. In that regard, I’ve been in the field personally only a few years. I think Marc Prensky helped popularize the idea of instructional videogames with his book in 2001. I think James Paul Gee helped popularize the idea in the educational research establishment with his book in 2003.

Some might say that instruction through videogames has been occurring since videogames first appeared. They were introduced (although via tube technology and not true vector graphics that some folks define as video) at the Brookhaven Nuclear Laboratory in the 1950s.

Personally, I think the notion of instruction through gaming received its biggest boost when Microsoft introduced Windows Solitaire. This game “trained” computer users on a mouse. Up to that time, PC users mostly navigated without a mouse. Windows required a mouse for some activities. Folks who had never used a mouse before became quite proficient after a few rounds with Windows Solitaire.

Q: I read in one of your papers that it was “widely believed that much more learning can take place within active environments.” How widely? Numbers? Since when?
A: This is a key question for which we are awaiting more empirical data. As frustrating as that might be, one of the even more fundamental questions yet to be resolved is, What should we measure? If we are going to measure test scores, I suspect that videogames won’t show any more improvement than any other program or product. My personal theory on improved test scores is, it doesn’t matter what product is used. What matters are the teachers, and what they do to get students to learn. The product matters little, in my opinion, other than to help promote an initial burst of enthusiasm.

Now, the idea that active environments promote learning more than static ones falls back on constructivism, and that opens up another can of worms altogether. Constructivists will always come down on the side of active environments, with or without empirical data to back them up. There may well be some research on what students learn through active environments as opposed to static ones. I recall a survey of students who went through an interactive museum exhibit versus those going through static exhibits. If memory serves, the interactive group enjoyed their experiences more, although they came away with knowledge of fewer facts.

I believe the quote in question was a synthesis of arguments by Squire and Jenkins, from the Insight journal, around 2003. Since then, much more attention has been paid to the field, with multiple journal articles and research in both education and the medical field. One of the better summaries of papers detailing benefits of educational videogames down through the years can be found in Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen’s article, “Third Generation Educational Uses of Computer Games,” in the latest issue of Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia. See Table 1 for his list.

Q: Video games are said to be more engaging. Where does that theory come from? Situated learning? Or something else? Role of the teachers and books?
A: I would argue videogame interaction is self evidently more interactive than sitting through a lecture. I have proposed a means of estimating the higher thinking potential of any game, in a paper published in January this year in the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. This involves a melding of Bloom’s Taxonomy to videogame interaction. The article is entitled, “Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games.”

As for the roles of teachers and books, some of the largest ongoing experiments have used both extensively with videogame environments. Indiana’s Quest Atlantis makes heavy use of hybrid learning, and the virtual world itself is quite text intense. In fact, I have discussed this with one of the lead developers, Dr. Scott Warren, now at UNT. My premise: Quest Atlantis is really a highly digitized, interactive text environment. If memory serves, Dr. Warren agreed, although he noted that much more than reading is involved with Quest Atlantis.

Nonetheless, text plays a key role in many of these games, which require reading and typing in order to engage in the environment. Books and teachers will never relinquish their key roles in the classroom. Videogames will increasingly offer supplemental educational vehicles, giving teachers additional resources to use in and out of the classroom.

Q: How do you measure the efficiency of video games in classrooms?
A: Again, efficiency of what? Efficiency of increasing knowledge? Higher test scores? Do videogames fall under the same media umbrella that other media do in Clark’s “delivery truck” argument, where he asserted media is immaterial in delivering the content? Or, do the interactions within games result in higher engagement and additional intrinsic motivation to discover new knowledge inside and outside the game, and school?

Q: Have scientists worked on the impact of learning through video games on the kids’ brains?
A: The major work in the hard sciences have centered around visual plasticity (Green & Bavelier) and glucose levels (Haier). Prensky is best known for postulating the digital natives / digital immigrants divide, but showed little in the way of experiments to back up the claim. Rosser showed that hand-eye coordination from videogame play has real world applications in modern surgery. Farrace-Di Zinno demonstrated that boys diagnosed with ADHD were more still and focused while engaged in videogames.

So, something is going on in the brain. Measuring the impact is somewhat difficult. Haier’s work with PET scans dates back to 1992, so at some point somebody will probably build on that work and give us a more detailed look at what is going on inside the brain during game play.

Here are the citations to the works above:
Farrace-Di Zinno, A.M., Douglas, G., Houghton, S. Lawrence, V., West, J. & Whiting, K. (2001, November). Body movements of boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) during computer video game play. British Journal of Educational Technology 32(5). 607-618.

Green, C.S., Bavelier. D. (2007). Action-video-game experience alters the spatial resolution of vision. Psychological Science 18(1), 88-94.

Haier, R. J. (2003). Positron emission tomography studies of intelligence: From psychometrics to neurobiology. In Nyborg, H. [Ed.]. The scientific study of general intelligence — Tribute to Arthur R. Jensen. 41-52. New York: Pergamon.

Prensky, M. (2001a, September/October). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Prensky, M. (2001b, November/December). Digital natives, digital immigrants, part 2: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-6.

Rosser, J.C., Lynch, P.J, Cuddihy, L., Gentile, D.A., Klonsky, J., Merrell, R. (2007, February). The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st Century. Archives of Surgery, 142(2). 181-186.

Q: What perspectives do you see for the future? Do you see any evolution in the field?
A: A defining groundwork, where everybody agrees to the same set of definitions, will help. I think we’ll see much more empirical data come out of the medical literature, with applications for education. Finally, we need a really killer app for education that meets the needs I spelled out at AECT 2005: a product with an appropriate cognitive load for students, aligned to standards, with problem solving germane to the subject; probably built on a rich 3D environment, and easily customizable by the teacher. I think we see a lot of this already in teachers tweaking the Neverwinter Nights engine for their own classroom use, but it takes an inordinate amount of time programming that game. If something out there could be offered that was easier for teachers to use in the classroom, I think considerable interest among educators and researchers would follow.

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Zadeh’s questions were good ones, and I enjoyed having to think about the topics she brought up, and justify some of my positions in the field. All told, it was a very thoughtful exercise, and I appreciated the opportunity to respond.

Lee Wilson’s Article in Technology & Learning

Fellow Texan Lee Wilson, education consultant and the man behind Education Business Blog, has written the first in a two part series on video games in education that has been published in the latest edition of Technology & Learning magazine. “Getting it Wrong: Slaying Myths About Video Games, Part I” explores the various misconceptions surrounding educational video games.

Wilson begins by describing his own odyssey into advanced video games and virtual interactive environments. He explored World of Warcraft with his kids, and soon discovered that video games had progressed far beyond the simpler titles of yore, offering powerful pedagogical possibilities. Here’s a key quote:

I have since discovered a very vibrant community of academics, educators, students, and business types who agree that video games have a powerful potential for learning and training. As well, there is a growing body of practice, products, and research to support the notion that games are a valuable addition to the set of tools teachers are using in formal education.

Following his introductory comments, Wilson explores two myths surrounding video games related to their potential as educational tools. First, Wilson states it’s a myth that all games are arcade in nature and tend to eschew higher order thinking. He’s spot on with this, and I whole-heartedly concur. This is a deeply ingrained misconception that is popular among folks who have never played the latest in modern games. My paper in Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, “Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games” offers a means of measuring higher order tendencies in games, and suggests a way by which teachers can judge the benefits particular games may hold insofar as encouraging thought processes. This is an important distinction to make since games that are strictly arcade in nature are typically worthless as academic products.

Second, Wilson addresses the myth that video games are all about sex and violence. Again, he’s spot on. The pop culture aura surrounding video games is probably the biggest hindrance to their adoption as serious classroom tools, in my opinion. Not every game is concerned with titillating content, and to back up his point Wilson explores several serious games that were designed as teaching or training tools.

Finally, Wilson offers a list of online resources for educational gaming, and I’m honored he included this blog in the list. Technology & Learning is a widely disseminated periodical by NewBay Media that goes out to education professionals. You can access the latest version online in Flash format here. Wilson’s article begins on page 16. The remaining three myths in his list are slated to be published in T&L’s October issue.

References
Rice, J. W. (2007). Assessing higher order thinking in video games. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. 15(1). 87-100.

Wilson, L. (2007, September). Getting it wrong: Slaying myths about video games, part I. Technology & Learning, 21(2). 16-18, 20, 23.

Update:
If you don’t want to wade through the flash version of the whole magazine, TechLearning.com has posted the story in regular HTML here.