Is FarmVille Educational?

This blog has followed social gaming juggernaut Zynga’s progress for a couple years now. One of its most popular gaming apps is FarmVille, which runs on Facebook and touts an estimated 70 million players, making it one of, if not the, most popular games ever. Testaments to the game’s popularity abound. On the radio station I listen to on the way to work, the morning guys brought up the game recently. One complained he introduced his mother to Facebook, and now she spends hours playing FarmVille. Another said he avoids Facebook specifically so he won’t get caught up playing games like FarmVille all day.

Many players have noted the “work” in FarmVille seems somewhat educational. This, in fact, is what intrigues educators about video games in general. They are so interactive and require focused attention to progress. So, the thinking goes, if we can have students play with educational elements perhaps they’ll absorb some pedagogical content in ways they can’t through books or television.

Could FarmVille be a tool leveraged for classroom use? In November I was invited to sit on a panel of school district tech directors at a regional technology conference to discuss the educational value of social networking. One fellow tech director indicated her school board suggested the district open their network to Twitter, Facebook, and other social tools to students as well as staff. She described the various issues involved, how teachers treated the new access as a classroom management issue, and ways in which the tools were being incorporated into the school day. Then, she said the high school Ag teacher was investigating ways to bring FarmVille into the classroom.

So, is FarmVille educational? Can it be used effectively in the classroom to teach useful things? I turned to the net to see what the hive has to say and also try to find some academic research on the issue.



Math and Organization Skills
Like many games, there are things you can count in FarmVille, and a modest amount of math skills might prove helpful in the game. An eHow article offers six steps in using FarmVille to teach math. Here’s a sample:

Teach fractions using the Chicken Coop and Dairy Barn. There are 4 windows in each building and each building can hold 20 animals. For every 5 animals a head pops out a window. So you can show them how 4/20 is 1/5 of the animals.

CommonSenseMedia.org, which purports to rate video games for parents and teachers, notes that FarmVille requires “simple math and organizational skills.” Later in the review author Carla Thornton writes:

The game itself is clean, safe, and loads of fun, if not especially educational. In FarmVille players plow, plant, and harvest crops to earn virtual coins, raise animals and improve their farmsteads with fences, windmills, and other objects. The more Facebook friends a player can convince to become FarmVille neighbors, the bigger and more successful the farm will be.

Lisa Russell, writing over at the home schooling section for Suite101.com, shows how players can exert a little more math effort to figure out the fastest way to earn money in the game:

Initially, the only seeds available are strawberries, eggplant, wheat and soybeans. Strawberries cost 10 coins and after 4 hours are harvested for 35 coins, a ROI (return on investment) of 25 coins, or 6.25 coins an hour. Using the same method of calculation, it can be seen that the eggplant is worth only 1.31 coins per hour, the wheat breaks down to only 1.1 coins per hour and finally, the soybeans are worth 2 coins per hour. Clearly, the strawberries are a better investment for the player who has time to return in 4 hours to harvest.

Later, she offers a formula for the calculation:

H=harvest value

C=initial price

T=time (in hours)

ROI=(H-C)/T

Players can use a similar formula for comparing the value of their trees (both purchased and gifted) as well as their animals. … FarmVille may have absolutely nothing to offer on a scientific level. In fact, if an entire generation of humans were to learn farming skills from this game, humans might starve to death. However, for math skills and virtual applications of algebra, as well as estimation and strategic planning, FarmVille is more than just fun and games.

So the general consensus seems to be, FarmVille requires a little math skill and some attention to organizational details, but it was made more for fun than education, as are so many popular games.



Academic Interest
As far as academic consensus, a lot of the research interest in FarmVille has revolved around the game indirectly. It crops up in lists of popular social games in academic papers, for instance, but specific studies focusing on the game itself are rare if not non-existent.

A great example of FarmVille serving as a framework for a presentation is one loaded onto Slideshare.net by Sidneyeve Matrix over at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It is titled Pedagogy Inspired by FarmVille, or Seeds of Engagement, From Social Games to the Classroom: Educational Design Inspired by FarmVille.

In it, she highlights three videogame design principals that can be extrapolated for classroom courses. They are derived from a discussion at the recent Social Games Seattle meeting led by Amitt Mahajan, who is part of the core team and lead designer for FarmVille.

First, instructors should design games with broad appeal. FarmVille succeeds because playing farm is something many kids have grown up doing, sometimes using plastic toys provided by companies like PlaySkool. In the classroom or lecture hall, Dr. Matrix suggests this can translate to humanized case studies, current events, and pop cultural references to widen the appeal of the subject matter to apathetic students.

Second, FarmVille uses something Mahajan called “microsociality,” meaning social connections become painless. Players don’t have to go out of their way to keep up with contacts; they’re all easily accessible in the game. This has become “a viable alternative to offline face-to-facetime,” according to Dr. Matrix. So, for classroom incorporation she suggests instructors build or use existing social sites where students can share and divide workloads and resources.

Finally, FarmVille succeeds because it adds “visual pleasure.” There is a certain graphic appeal to the game, common among most successful commercial titles, that enhances player engagement. Instructors should be sure and incorporate visually appealing graphics in lectures and discussions to help focus attention on the subject matter.

Conclusion
All told, FarmVille is a major hit, sure to be popular for years to come. Educators, as well as perhaps classroom students, can certainly learn a thing or two from the game. But, ultimately, it was designed more for fun than for teaching essential knowledge.

CFP: Apply Serious Games 2008, London

Martine Parry, CEO of ANGILS.org in the UK, noted on the Serious Games listserv recently that Apply Serious Games 2008 is open for “presentations, live demos, speakers, sponsors and more.”

Here are the tag lines from their website describing what the conference is all about:

Premier Conference & Expo Now in the Third Year Leading the Debate About Innovation & Key Issues Around the Real-World Use of Serious Games

Europe’s leading conference continues to focus on the key issues for the serious games community, show-casing the best in the market. ASG 07 was the first conference in Europe to focus on virtual worlds and include a shoot-out between Second Life ™ and OLIVE virtual world platforms. Our key themes include: Web 2.0 , 3D Web, Tools & Techniques, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds – all with a twist

Speaker submissions now open. Keynotes to be announced soon.

Apply Serious Games is now in its third year, following on from the success of ASG 2007 and the linked masterclasses that had around 250 attending in total, representing the serious games community from across the world (see delegate break-down figures and feedback below).

Once again this year we are focused on the issues that make a statement of where the community is when we talk about serious games – what’s the latest buzz, where’s the reality of the application? There are also plenty of opportunities for networking over lunch and breaks throughout the day – and we are expanding out with even more activities. Stay tuned for those. We are adding more of the activities to this page and the programme and schedule.

The conference runs July 9-10, and Martine notes the Wimbledon finals are on July 6, so it would be easy to mix business with pleasure in a single trip. Here is the official CFP:

Call for Papers – Now Open

Please make contact with us if you would like to:

• Speak at ASG08. If so, then please send us a synopsis of no more than 100 words with your contact details and what the audience ‘take-away’ is from your session.
• Join the conference committee. If so, then please send us your bio and a short note about what you can bring to our programme and agenda.
• Sponsor the conference or take part in the expo

Don’t hold back – if you have a great presentation please send synopsis to:

martine <at> applygroup < dot> com

Many thanks.

Are Social Sites Good for Educating?

After examining the convergence of MMOs with social networking sites and their game-like similarities, we are faced with the question: Should schools leverage social sites for academic purposes? In a report released this summer, the National School Boards Association indicates that school districts “may want to consider re-examining their policies and practices and explore ways in which they could use social networking for educational purposes.” The discussion continues in an online chat at NSBA’s website with Will Richardson over at the Weblogg-ed blog and Connective Learning entitled, “What are the Educational Benefits of Social Networking for Students and Teachers?”

The report released by the NSBA, “CREATING & CONNECTING//Research and Guidelines on Online Social — and Educational — Networking” came out in July, 2007. The report compiled results from three surveys. The first was online, with 1,277 students aged 9-17. The second involved 1,039 parents and was also online. Finally, 250 school district decision makers were surveyed by phone. Grunwald Associates directed the study while Hypothesis Group managed the field research. Funding for the studies was provided by Microsoft, News Corp., and Verizon.

Researchers looking for statistics of online social networking among children will find a goldmine of info here. The 12 page report is filled with charts and graphs detailing online activities and preferences among young netizens in MySpace and Facebook showing that online activities are approaching parity with television watching among the nation’s youth in total hours devoted to entertainment.

But the recommendations at the end of the report have caused social sites opponents and those against use of the Internet in classrooms to cry foul. In particular, the following recommendations have ruffled the most feathers:

- Consider using social networking for staff communications and professional development.

- Find ways to harness the educational value of social networking.

- Reexamine social networking policies [in schools].

- Encourage social networking companies to increase educational value.

The funding element has led the focus for most of the criticism. In an L.A. Times article, reporters Alex Pham and Alana Semuels note that the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston cast aspersions on the report due to its funding by Microsoft (part owner of Facebook), and News Corp. (owner of MySpace).

But because the report was funded in part by companies behind two of the most popular social-networking sites, the school board group should disavow its recommendations, said Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood at the Judge Baker Children’s Center, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School.

“The report reads more like a public relations tool designed to allay educators’ concerns about social networking than a serious investigation of the complex issues raised by introducing new commercialized technology into the classroom,” Linn wrote in a letter to Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the school group.

In response, Bryant indicated the funding entities had nothing to do with conducting and writing the report, and that to ignore the educational potential of social networking sites is tantamount to “putting one’s head in the sand.” The reporters conclude by suggesting most of the angst with social networking in schools revolves around online advertising on the sites.

The tug-of-war between those desiring greater access to technology and Web 2.0 tools in the schools versus those who do not, continues. As Miguel Guhlin pointed out last week, it extends down to the tech director level, showing up in various levels of attitudes. As more and more luminaries and national organizations come out in support of the idea, though, will resistance fade or strengthen?

References:
Creating & connecting//Research and guidelines on online social — and educational — networking. (2007, July). National School Boards Association. Alexandria, VA.

Pham, A., & Semuels, A. (2007, November 19). Educators weigh merits of social network sites. Los Angeles Times. [Online.] Retrieved November 24, 2007 from http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-fi-schools
19nov19,1,5428223.story?

Update:

Thanks to the folks at the LifeLongLearning Lab for pointing out the link to the report changed. I’ve updated it.