FETC 2008: Merideth DiPietro Presentation & Tabula Digita’s Dimension M

Two of the big instructional gaming presentations at FETC 2008 came from U. Florida grad students Merideth DiPietro and Jeff Boyer. Both are studying under Richard Ferdig at UF. I was unable to attend Boyer’s presentation because it coincided with the panel discussion I served on; however, I did attend DiPietro’s. She did an excellent job, and delivered an informative session. I’m going to list the references she gave in her slides, though I haven’t had time to offer a complete citation list.

DiPietro’s presentation was titled “Using Educational Games to Develop Students’ Content Knowledge.” She started by sharing a nice roundup of the recent research on games in classroom education. Games have been found to offer self esteem boosts (Divec, Dziabenko, & Kearney, 2005). Games have been found to promote boosts in skills (Blumberg, 1998; Henderson, 2005). Finally, there is an educational benefit from gaming (Pelletier, 2005; Kadakia, 2005).

Next, DiPietro outlined good game characteristics. They have a clear purpose; contextual learning experiences; they are multi-modal (i.e., not just textual); they have a flexible/adaptive design; there is an appropriate level of challenge; and they offer positive feedback.

She cautioned the audience that there is not yet a “best practices approach” to using games in the classroom. However, practitioners should ensure games are used in an instructional context (although the instructional content may be blurred within the games), and teachers should offer upfront expectations before playing and debriefing afterwards (Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002; DeFreitas & Oliver, 2005).

Finally, she introduced offered a brief presentation of Tabula Digita’s product over at dimensionm.com. Dimension M was an impressive game, centered on Algebra skills. The quality is akin to a good off-the-shelf game students might play at home. It offers a three dimensional virtual interactive environment in which players solve tasks involving math and do battle with robots out to thwart their way. Thus, traditional game play elements are leveraged in an instructional environment.

I thought the opportunities for transference from the video game world to traditional pencil and paper tests had a good chance with this game. The segment she showed us had a brief (and exciting) introduction, where the player is dropped on an island and must find four weather stations in order to download information. The island is marked out on a grid in the upper corner of the screen. Yes, the grid is a traditional X Y graph, and the weather stations have coordinates on the grid. I was able to investigate Tabula Digita’s products further later in the conference, and hope to report more on it soon.

DiPietro summed up by pointing us toward some additional resources, and discussing the ongoing work on gaming research at U. Florida. It’s always refreshing to see a well thought out, and well delivered presentation such as this one. Judging by the audience reaction, and the number of people who stayed behind to discuss things with her, I’d say DiPietro made quite an impression.

Academic Achievement Through Game Development

I’m on THE Journal’s mailing list, and I noticed a new article today on videogame development for educational purposes. I decided to check it out later and perhaps post about it. Imagine my curiosity when I saw hits coming into this blog from the very same article. It turns out authors Richard Ferdig and Jeff Boyer over at U. Florida listed this blog as a resource in the article.

Dr. Ferdig published a paper of mine in a special edition of the Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia on educational videogames, which he edited. I’m honored that the authors included this blog in their article for THE Journal.

The article, entitled, “Getting Started with Videogame Development,” continues a series the duo started last week. Previously they wrote an article addressing the question of academic achievement through developing videogames. That article, entitled “Can Game Development Impact Academic Achievement?” offers an introduction to theory underlying the notion of using videogame development as a learning tool, and examines some of the research behind the idea.

It’s important to make a distinction between playing a game, which is what most people think of when discussing educational gaming, versus leading students in designing and developing videogames. Developing a videogame is a whole other apple cart, requiring programming skills, logical thinking, and a big dollop of creativity. Fortunately, a variety of tools are available that allow an easy entry point to game development. Like so many other things, while the entry points may be easy, students must still work to produce quality products, and here is where good teaching can flesh out useful pedagogical chunks.

Today’s article continues the series, and the authors point out a variety of tools available that allow teachers to take videogame pedagogy into the classroom. These include such things as Scratch from MIT, Gamemaker from YoYo Games, and RPG Maker XP. They also note that Microsoft has released the XNA Developer Center, offering tools to individuals for creating games that play on the Xbox.

The authors conclude by throwing out a ton of highly useful links for teachers interested in game development as a pedagogical tool. Journals, sites, and software suggestions round out the list of resources. THE Journal has always been one of the highest read and highest quality practitioner periodicals out there, and this article adds to a long history of useful columns.

References
Ferdig, R. E., & Boyer, J. (2007, November 1). Getting started with videogame development. T.H.E. Journal. [Online]. Available: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21510

Ferdig, R. E., & Boyer, J. (2007, October 25). Can game development impact academic achievement? T.H.E. Journal. [Online]. Available: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21483