Sunday, February 26, 2017

Affinity Space - Jumping off the Deep End

For years I've played RPG's from DnD & Traveller, to Hero, Gurps, Call of Cthulhu, and Shadowrun; but my favorite has always been World of Darkness, especially Vampire - The Masquerade. I was there in Seattle when it was born, playtesting on the sly with people that had a sneak peek, playing endless weekends and avoiding the LARPers. It's been years since I played. As I tried to mull over what affinity space I should join, I kept returning to the camaraderie I had with fellow players during all the games I was a Storyteller for Vampire, all the fun we had, the in depth philosophical what-if converstations; I want to recreate that for the digital age. 

Inspired by the new text based Prelude game that Whitewolf has released, I decided to create my own space for this. And so was born, VTM-The Aftermath.

I am planning to have the players be both face to face and virtual, incorporating facebook, messenger, the website, blogs, and maybe even twitter, to bring the affinity space alive in multiple ways. It may not be a typical affinity space, but I think it will be something organic and expanding. 

Inspired by my fellow Cthulhuians at the HPLS, I'm hoping to post stories from the games and get the characters/players to really invest both in character and out of character. I'll also add discussion elements to our meetup.com site, Denver Classic VTM as well to really join the disparate platforms together. So far, I already have 6 members via the meetup.com initial site and a face to face meet up scheduled for Friday.

More on how it goes to come. You can email me via the site if you happen to be interested in Classic VTM. 

Happy Gaming!

Reflection #1 - Why I don't like chocolate covered broccoli


As an art teacher, finding that balance between content relevance and engagement is a high-wire act often without a net. I have it better than classroom teachers, but I have my own issues to contend with and creative my way around, not the least of which is integrating things into my content that are decidedly NOT my content, i.e. why I don't like chocolate covered broccoli. One of the things most intriguing within this course content is how to use gaming to integrate or transform one of the more difficult parts of teaching any subject, student buy-in. I am looking forward to learning much more about this and how to tie it in to what I do currently.

This month has been hectic for many reasons, not the least of which is playing games and logging a journal about them. As a gamer, so far, the readings in the course have not really changed the ways I've thought about games, merely validated what I've thought all these years, RPG's, videogames, and board/card games are wonderful ways to engage anyone in learning. There has been more flares of irritation at the public school system for not getting with the times and ditching outdated factory/corporate influenced notions of what people need to live and thrive as they get older. There is still a stigma on gaming in general that I still face when I say I like role-playing games. As the Cheng article I reviewed stated, I tend to say I like interactive storytelling. 

My preconceptions about games, play, and learning have not really changed due to the course activities thus far, with the exception of affinity spaces. As an introvert, I have not really done much more than lurking or the occasional participatory question or answer in the past. This course has really pushed me to be much more interactive with the community of the games I play. It has been uncomfortable as well as informative and fun. In addition, I've made more connections to my Behavioral Science background in Cycle 3 than I have before, especially between gamification and operant conditioning. Maybe this is why I've been reluctant to really incorporate it into my own classroom other than community and table points?

A question I have for myself about play and learning is exactly how important is it to have an affinity space within which to interact? I am still answering this, but I have learned a few things thus far. One, participating in an affinity space within a game instead of merely lurking provides an opportunity for a much deeper understanding of the game being played. For example, I formed a co-op (like a guild) in a resource gathering game I play online on my phone. I didn't anticipate I'd have more than a few people to join; however, as I started finding answers for questions asked by the two people that did join in the beginning, I started to get more requests referred by those that I had helped. I found I could be a more quiet leader, which was a novel concept for me. 

Networking has been the real challenge for me this course. Again - introvert. I had not used Twitter, so I had to learn about using it. I'm still not completely comfortable and the small amount of characters available for use annoys me. I think this is really grooming people to be too short in their thoughts and less thoughtful of what they put out there for public consumption. I'm still used to following when people tweet and have to rely on my email to notify me. 

I have gone off in a deeper direction with the affinity space project. I am forming my own group for a few months of interactive storytelling. I am still hesitant to post it on my professional site due to the flack generated by playing RPG's as an educator, but I am working on that. I will be trying out several new things as I create a totally interactive affinity space for the group from the ground up, including a website, emails, messenger, and a combo of real-time and virtual meetups. I am hoping to really see what it takes to get an affinity group going and keep it going for an extended period of time. This is also the subject of my ongoing curiosity. I'd really like to see how, eventually, I can design a space for students as well. Pursuit of these interests will be through said affinity space/gaming site. More updates to come on this.

Chocolate Covered Broccoli - Critique on The World According to Edu-Larps: The Analog Learning Games

"Kids can see through games that are made for educational purposes, games made for class work." — Ian Harper, game developer

I am a gamer. I have played video-games since Pong (dating myself here), and Tabletop RPG's since the first edition of D & D. What I love about games could fill a novel. If I could have played games in school, I would have been overjoyed; however, I loved learning just as much, reading particularly. I learned, though, because I was expected to learn. It is just what you did. My parents emphasized the importance of school. I didn't question why I was learning what I was learning until high school. Now as a teacher, I find I have to figure out how to create chocolate covered broccoli - hiding learning in something more palatable, something that seems desirable. I am not the only one. 

Something I noticed, though, in the years I've been playing and running analog (tabletop or pen and paper) RPG's, I tend to research, a lot, scads, when I am developing a game or a character. I have to utilize everything I know about organizing, presenting, acting, dreaming, etc. in order to create a believable world or a playable character. I have to know what they know, or at least know where to find that information. Hey, isn't that self-paced learning? Roleplaying Games in this sense are narrative media, interactive simulations that require the highest order of learning, synthesis.

In the article I chose to review, The World According to Edu-Larps: The Analog Learning Games, Sande Chen discusses the use of LARPs, or Live Action Role Playing (games) in an education setting. While this article is more a synthesis of others' research, it struck me as being well organized and researched, as well as well written encompassing the gambit of ideas surrounding improving educational environments through game-play including making them more informal and conducive to creative thinking and problem-solving.

Cheng places an emphasis on the components that take place outside of the game itself and posits a differing experience between analog and digital game experiences for learning based on differing social interaction opportunities with the games. Overall, games provide an environment where the "self-directed drive to learn" or intrinsic motivation, is more easily cultivated by teachers if students are within a non-coercive learning environment, more similar to an after-school program than a classroom. However, there is a missing component in most video-game playing that is present in analog gaming - peer communication and easier access to what she refers to as the meta-game or the "active discussions and social interactions between players outside the game," also known as affinity spaces. 

In addition to the self-directed learning components, Cheng also cites exactly what I have experienced myself as a rpg player, the acquisition and improvement of soft-skills--leadership, teamwork, confidence building, agency, and learning empowerment. While these occur somewhat within video-game play, they are far more engaged within tabletop play and interaction.

The combination of "improv theater with the game mechanics of tabletop rpg's" allows for narrative character progression and interactive storytelling. However, as Cheng discusses, this can be a hard sell to the education system. One of the key problems she discusses is the inability to do hard assessments. Video games are much more conducive to this assessment aspect of the education system. 

Particularly meaningful in this article was the evidence that the edu-larp curriculum seemed particularly beneficial to children with ADHD, Autism, and other challenges. Today's learning world is vastly different from the one I started in. Raw, easily regurgitated and assessed information is not the most important indication of learning, nor is it what is needed in the real world. Rethinking what indicates valuable, meaningful learning and the methods we use to assess needs to change and is the take-away from Cheng and those research sources referenced in this article. Though less dry of a read and more enjoyable to process than the last two articles, this was much harder to really evaluate. 

On a side note: She gives a great resource for card games designed with learning in mind.
Some of these look amazing.

Article Location



Sunday, February 12, 2017

MMORPG's,WOW, and Scientific Habits of Mind

Critique 2: 
Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds by Constance Steinkuehler and Sean Duncan

‘Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house' John Dewey

John Dewey lists the Scientific Habits of Mind as:

1) Logical thinking

2) Quantitative analysis

3) Deductive reasoning

4) Proper questioning


5) Reliance on sound evidence

I find this list to be reminiscent of the list I use for teaching Studio Habits of the Mind: Engage/persist, envision, observe, express, reflect, explore. Both of these lists, commonalities and all, are the foundation of critical thinking and inquiry. We would not have science nor the arts without them. For this reason, this article really struck home some of the fundamental ideas I've been struggling with as a teacher. These things cannot be successfully evaluated on a standardized test, we're testing only the heap stones. 


Premise: Constance Steinkuehler and Sean Duncan propose that games-based learning and the communities they stimulate may be a viable alternative to create the scientific citizenry we need. Their research based empirical evidence from studying the MMORPG, World of Warcraft, concerns the potential for video-games and their forums to successfully foster and encourage the in-depth development of Dewey's Scientific Habits of Mind.  

Data Collection: good data sample and data scrubbing (extraneous info removed, with subject specific tags listed on spreadsheet) 1087 different posters.

Methods of Analysis: Steinkuehler and Duncan used a combination of a priori assumptions about the forms of scientific reasoning such virtual spaces ought to generate. Their goal was to focus on the actual scientific processes used not the "stones," hence they eliminated aspects that were content knowledge specific, and concentrated on looking at Scientific discursive practices (social knowledge construction, idea building, counter argument use, data/evidence use, alt explanations of data, and ref outside sources), systems and model-based reasoning (systems based reasoning, understanding feedback, model based reasoning, model testing/prediction, mathematical mod and computation), and tacit epistemology (Absolutist, Relativist, Evaluative knowledge types). From the data graph listed in the article, the most frequently used aspects of discursive thinking were Social knowledge Construction, Building on other's ideas, Use of counter arguments, and the Use of data/evidence. Systems based reasoning & understanding feedback were the most frequently used categories for systems/model based reasoning. Finally, the Evaluative thinking, where knowledge is processed by evaluation and open argument, was the tacit epistemological method most often used by the forum posters. 

Comparing the results of the study to Dewey's list, the forum posters engaged in all of the five habits. From my own forum discussions, it would be impossible to be taken seriously without this. Heated debates are the norm within these groups, mirroring the sort of tenacity and logical debate found in most philosophy debate clubs. 

A look at the data: According to Steinkuehler and Duncan, most conversations in the data set forum begin with a theoretical question (about game mechanics or game play), followed by an offering of evidence and a series of responses to discuss this theory. Often there is also an offering of an alternative hypothesis which is then discussed and debated by the group - the epitome of scientific discovery. Ironically enough, gamers sound a whole lot like scientists when in a heated debate about their content. 

In conclusion, this article gave academic evidence to what I've experienced within the totality of the gaming community, (not just video-gaming): Gamers, on the whole, love to debate and will debate fiercely, with evidence, provide alternative theories with evidence, question, deduce, and give you hours of quantitative as well as qualitative analysis on the latest game they are playing. Gamers can be a very discerning lot, refusing to shell out that wad of cash for a substandard game. These players rely on the forums to not only get better, but to delve as deep as they can to experience a virtual world. Observation is as necessary as breathing within these realms unless you want to be called a newbie for the next month. Evidence is king on the forums or you will be trolled unmercifully. All in all, the article is well written, if a little dry, scientifically evidenced with solid data and data collection methods, and I can see it being easily replicated with another game. A good piece. Even the hubby enjoyed this one. See you in the forums.

Full Article: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.405.1850&rep=rep1&type=pdf