handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in ... · center for research on learning and...

Handbook of Research onEffective Electronic Gaming in Education

Richard E. FerdigUniversity of Florida, USA

Hershey • New YorkInformatIon scIence reference

Volume III

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Handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in education / Richard

E. Ferdig, editor.

p. cm.

Summary: "This book presents a framework for understanding games for

educational purposes while providing a broader sense of current related

research. This creative and advanced title is a must-have for those

interested in expanding their knowledge of this exciting field of electronic

gaming"--Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-59904-808-6 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-59904-811-6 (e-book)

1. Simulation games in education--Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Electronic

games--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Ferdig, Richard E. (Richard Eugene)

LB1029.S53H36 2008

371.39'7--dc22

2007052787

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Chapter LVIIConceptual Play Spaces

Sasha A. BarabIndiana University School of Education, USA

Adam Ingram-GobleCenter for Research on Learning and Technology, USA

Scott WarrenUniversity of North Texas, USA

Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

AbstrAct

In this chapter we provide a framework for designing play spaces to support learning academic content. Reflecting on our four years of design experience around developing conceptual play spaces, we provide guidelines for educators to think through what it would mean to design a game for supporting learning. Conceptual play is a state of engagement that involves (a) projection into the role of a character who, (b) engaged in a partly fictional problem context, (c) must apply conceptual understandings to make sense of and, ultimately, transform the context. We provide four elements that one must balance when designing a conceptual play space to support the learning of disciplinary content; more specifically, ensuring the learning of academic content and supporting legitimate participation while, concurrently ensuring interaction with gaming rules and engagement with the framing narratives through which the play takes on meaning. Our goal is to communicate the potential value of play spaces and to provide an illuminative set of cases for others.

It is our belief that video games pedagogies and technologies bear considerable potential for trans-forming learning even in the context of schools. Though many academics have little first-hand experience with them (Frasca, 2002), two genera-

tions of adults have grown up with video games, and a multi-billion dollar industry has developed alongside these players (Herz, 1997; Jones, 2003). Indeed, considering how much time youth spend with video games (Jones, 2003; Roberts, Foehr,

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Conceptual Play Spaces

& Rideout, 2005) coupled with research reveal-ing the richness of the learning interactions and social networks that video games inspire (Gee, 2003; Shaffer, 2006; Squire, 2006), educators should be keen to command such a force. Game play has the potential to immerse the player in a rich network of interactions and unfolding story lines through which she solves problems and re-flects on the workings of the design of the game world, and the design of both real and imagined social relationships and identities in the game- and non-game worlds.

According to Gee (2003), video games support a form of empathetic embodiment for a complex system, something that school curriculum should aspire to but has difficulty in achieving. Empa-thetic embodiment is a process of being immersed (experiencing a sense of “presence”) within a virtual environment through which one comes to develop an understanding of or appreciation for one or more particular aspects (narratively, interactively, perceptually, and/or socially) of the context (Heeter, 1992). This sort of projective identification with an individual, a group, or even a system occurs in games as the player comes to identify with their game character and the larger system within which their character interacts.

So far in history, for most people, complex sys-tems have not been the sorts of warm and fuzzy things with which most people could or wanted to sympathize, let alone empathize. But good games create a strong empathetic identification with the game world as a system. (Gee, 2004, p. 2)

Further, video game play and particularly multi-player gaming usually takes place as part of discourse communities that elicit complex cogni-tive and communicative practices, much the way participation in scientific communities has been shown to produce complex cognitive processes (Squire, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006).

At one level, curriculum developers and instructional designers can only marvel at the

diverse ways these games support complex learning, thinking, and social practices. Multi-player role-playing games (MMOs) afford rich opportunities for achievement, communication, collaboration, fantasy engagement, problem solv-ing, character development, hypothesis genera-tion, and reflexivity, with the potential to enlist membership and identity in ways that occur only in the most advanced curricular designs. However, even if one did want to integrate the technologies and methodologies of video games into K-12 curriculum design, there is little understanding of the principles and tensions regarding how to develop a play space that shares common design features with these kinds of games while falling within societal norms and school-sanctioned behaviors. Doing so is a challenge, but one that we believe is possible, worthwhile, and neces-sary. In designing games for academic learning, it is easy to create a distinction between play and learning, setting up the game structure so that it is separate from the content to be learned. The goal of this manuscript is to offer a theoretical and design framework that facilitates academically meaningful collaborative play.

This argument is situated in the context of our Quest Atlantis Project. Quest Atlantis (QA) is a learning and teaching project that uses a 3-D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-15, in educational tasks (http://questatlantis.org). Building on strategies from online role-playing games, QA combines strategies used in the com-mercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation (Barab, Dodge, Thomas, Jackson, & Tuzun, 2007; Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, & Tuzun, 2005; Barab, Zuiker, et al., 2007). It allows learners to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities (known as Quests), talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. While QA as a virtual environment consists of dozens of virtual worlds, each with their own themes and design priorities. The two examples presented here were chosen because they usefully contrast

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and illuminate the challenges and opportunities of designing what we refer to as conceptual play spaces.

conceptuAl plAy spAces

Defining Play. While defining play is not a simple task, researchers have described play as: (1) intrinsically motivated and self-initiated, (2) non-literal and pleasurable, (3) process-oriented, (4) exploratory and active, and (5) governed by rules (Fromberg, 1998; Wardle, 1987). Similar in emphasis, Huizinga (1950) defined play as, “a free activity standing quite consciously out-side ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly… It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings, which tend to sur-round themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguised or other means” (p. 15). What is common across both these definitions of play is a belief that play refers to activities that are somehow “outside of life,” and “not serious.” Such a view of play makes it difficult to appreciate how it can be leveraged toward academic ends. Vygotsky (1978), instead, argued that “the influence of play on a child’s development is enormous…it is a novel form of behavior liberating the child from constraints” (p. 94-95).

Vygotsky and others describe play as a scaf-folding activity that expands the children’s zone of proximal development (ZPD)1, engaging them in issues, concepts, and interactions that are not addressed directly through participation in society or even through the normal curriculum of schools (Barab, Arici, & Jackson, 2005; Leong, Bodrova, Hensen, & Henninger, 1999; Leont’ev, 1974). This sentiment was also advanced by the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), who stated that “play—a dynamic, active, and

constructive behavior—is an essential and integral part of all children’s healthy growth, develop-ment, and learning across all ages, domains, and cultures” (Isenberg & Quisenberry, 1998, p. 15). Many people have preset beliefs about what con-stitutes play and its relevance to academic learn-ing, with some treating it as a frivolous activity that at best should be relegated to the elementary years, if it is to occur in K-12 schools at all. Others believe that it should simply be used as a reward structure for other, more meaningful activities that directly relate to the accepted curriculum within recognized content areas.

In elementary school, a different attitude towards learning regularly emerges; school-based learn-ing is often something that must be done before a child is allowed to go out and play—an activity distinct from play and explicitly labeled “work” (schoolwork, homework). Much like eating one’s vegetables before getting dessert, schoolwork be-comes a chore rather than reward. (Barab, Arici, & Jackson, 2005, p. 5)

A core conviction underlying our work is that meaningful curriculum can be designed that sits at the intersections of real and fantasy, or of mandatory and voluntary participation, or of working and playing.

Defining A Game. Before advancing our theory of conceptual play spaces, we should briefly outline what we mean by a game since this has strongly influenced our notion of how to design conceptual play spaces. Just as complex as the notion of play, we have also found that producing a comprehensive definition of games to be challeng-ing undertaking. For some, games are activities to be undertaken for pleasure and are explicitly designed to escape real-world concerns. For others, life is as a game. In our work, we have at times treated our intervention as a game and at other times describe it as a curriculum (Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, & Tuzun, 2005). We even had

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an instance where one student interviewed at a school referred to it as “a game” and when the same child was interviewed at an after-school location he referred to it as “school work”. Ac-cording to Salen and Zimmerman (2004, p. 80), “a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that re-sults in a quantifiable outcome.” This definition highlights four features as constituting a game: system, rules, artificial conflict, and quantifiable outcome—the latter term referring to a measurable goal state upon which the player and the system can evaluate progress.

Gee (2004, p. 2) has argued that a game is a complex system: “this complex system is an emergent property of the (sometimes not fully understood) rules that the designer has built into the game and the (never predictable) interactions of the player (in his or her gamer identity) with this rule system.” This description is similar to ideas discussed by Winn and Heeter (2006) who suggested that within a game there are two types of storytelling: the designer’s story which is built into the game and the player’s story which emerges in response to playing the game. In a game, what unifies the different aspects of play is some overriding coherence or, in the case of MMOs and many popular video games, is an overriding narrative through which the vari-ous components, rules, and interactions take on meaning. Salen and Zimmerman (2004, p. 35) suggest that: “Meaningful play occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game.” While some games have fairly impoverished internal narratives (e.g., poker, craps, jacks), many are steeped in rich narratives that provide semantic meanings to the actions defined by the rule sets (Squire, 2006).

Conceptual Play Spaces. For us, conceptual refers to both disciplinary content and practices, as well as an appreciation for those situations in which these understandings and practices have

value. In terms of disciplinary content, we are referring to the core facts, concepts, methods, instruments, and processes that underlie any discipline. For example, the concept of “erosion” would be a core environmental science concept in the context of an ecosystem. Knowing domain concepts and content is in part what it means to be literate with respect to the discipline. Osten-sibly, this content is core to a domain because of its value for domain practitioners; however, for schools and for textbook companies this content is usually defined for a domain in terms of academic standards rather than a real-world context and need. As reaction to such positioning of content, Lave and Wenger (1991) introduced the notion of legitimate participation which emphasizes using conceptual understandings as tools to address authentic situations in which the conceptual un-derstanding has value—as opposed to the learning of academic content as facts to be exchanged for a grade on a test.

On a related note, different individuals have different opinions on how students should best learn core disciplinary content. For example, two opposing positions have been described in the academic literature as aligning to an acquisition metaphor or a participation metaphor of learning (Sfard, 1998). Central to the former metaphor is a view of school as a place for collecting or acquir-ing knowledge, which makes instruction about determining the best means of transmitting this information. The opposing view treats knowing as distributed across people and contexts through which core content gains meaning (Barab, Cher-kes-Julkowski, Swenson, Garrett, Shaw, & Young, 1999). In a similar vein of thinking, the sociologist of science Bruno Latour (1987), distinguished between acquiring ready-made knowledge and participating in knowing-in-the-making. For many, learning through engaged participation results in a very different kind of knowing than a more didactic pedagogical approach (Barab, Hay, Barnett, & Keating, 2000; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Cognition and Technology Group

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at Vanderbilt, 1990; Lave, 1988). We argue that science learning should occur as part of participa-tion in (embodiment with) rich contexts through which the science content takes on meaning.

A pedagogical shift to this sort of engaged participation could occur through well designed learning games. In particular, our focus is on supporting conceptual play. Conceptual play, according to Barab (2006) is a state of engage-ment that involves: (a) projection into the role of a character who, (b) engaged in a partly fantasti-cal problem context, (c) must apply conceptual understandings to make sense of and, ultimately, transform the context. Additionally, a conceptual play space should (d) provide opportunities to examine one’s participation in terms of the impact it had on the immersive context. An essential aspect of conceptual play is that the individual is experientially situated within the play space in which she has a legitimate role. For example, a student involved in Quest Atlantis—described later in the chapter—might play the role of an environmental scientist, examining the quality of the green, murky water in a virtual river in order to determine why fish populations are declining resulting in the virtual park no longer attracting fisherman. Similarly, such spaces serve to situate disciplinary content. For example, the student-scientist must make use of their understanding

of the related disciplinary concepts (i.e., algae blooms and eutrophication) to correctly describe the problem situation and advance a successful solution.

In our work on the Quest Atlantis project (described more fully later), we have designed and researched numerous conceptual play spaces to better understand the challenges of designing and the potential benefits of using such contexts to support learning in 4th-8th grade classrooms. We have found that a core challenge in designing conceptual play spaces is the balancing of four core elements into a meaningful experience (see Figure 1). More specifically, ensuring the learn-ing of academic content and supporting legiti-mate participation while, concurrently ensuring interaction with gaming rules and engagement with the framing narratives through which the play takes on meaning. While it is possible to develop game rules or even a rich narrative, and while it is possible to design a space to support academic learning or even legitimate participa-tion, it is quite challenging to develop a concep-tual play space that both fosters Gee’s notion of empathetic embodiment and supports the learning of discipline-relevant practices. The goal of this manuscript is to both communicate the value of such curriculum and to provide an illuminative set of cases such that others might create their own conceptual play spaces.

Figure 1. Core elements that need to be balanced in developing a Conceptual Play Space

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IllumInAtIve exAmples

Above, we outlined four key aspects to be bal-anced when designing conceptual play spaces. To further illuminate what we mean by conceptual play spaces and the challenges that confront the design of these environments, in this section we will share two designed curricula, both situated in the Quest Atlantis learning context. The first curriculum is the Black Rhino Unit, which was designed to aid students in discovering that real-life issues of science, ecology, and habitat are often inseparable from other issues such as soci-ety, politics, and economics. This unit includes a real-life narrative context and engages learners in legitimate practices, but has few game rules. The second example is a unit called Anytown that leverages language arts, reading, social studies, mathematics, and science content; participation is embedded within a rich, enmeshed narrative around meaningful practices that elaborate ex-plicit and implicit game rules. Within this unit,

students take on the role of a professional journal-ist as they uncover evidentiary clues, interview complex, evolving characters, and solve game-like mysteries as part of their writing practices across content areas.

To understand these units, one has to first ap-preciate the meta-context of Quest Atlantis within which these activities are situated. The core ele-ments of QA include: (1) a 3-D multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) (see Figure 2), (2) inquiry learning Quests and unit plans, (3) a story line, presented through an introductory video as well as novels, comic books, online Web logs, and trading cards which involves a mythical Council and a set of social commitments, and (4) a globally-distrib-uted community of participants. At the writing of this manuscript, we have over 15,000 students and over 1,000 teachers from five countries us-ing Quest Atlantis. At its core, Quest Atlantis is about participating in a narrative about Atlantis, a world in trouble that has fallen into the hands of misguided leaders. Through videos, novels,

Figure 2. Screenshot from Quest Atlantis, showing a scene from a village on the left and the homepage for a student on the right

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and an unfolding back story, children learn that an effort to save their civilization, a small group of Atlantians came together to form the Coun-cil to seek knowledge from other civilizations. This knowledge is primarily gathered by having children complete Quests, which require them to investigate Council-posed problems usually involving the investigation of real-world issues on Earth and then sharing what they learned with the Council. To support this sharing the Council developed the OTAK, a virtual environment that serves as a technological portal between Atlantis and the Earth.

Participation in QA entails a personal and shared engagement with this narrative, as children complete Quests to contribute information and ideas based on real-world experiences. Signifi-cantly, it is this central narrative that provides the meta-structure of QA; the online technology is simply one of the ways in which participants are immersed in the narrative (Barab, Zuiker, et al., 2007). This larger frame, the meta-game narrative, is the umbrella structure that gives unity and meaning to the underlying participant structures. While students earn points, navigate characters through virtual worlds, collect virtual and real artifacts, and can “Luminate” (a.k.a. “level up”) their virtual character by completing Quests related to different disciplinary foci (e.g., environmental awareness, diversity affirmation, creative expression) and to the project social commitments (Barab, Dodge, Thomas, Jackson, & Tuzun, 2007).

At its core, Quest Atlantis is less of a game and more a form of dramatic play (Leong, Bodrova, Hensen, & Henninger, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978). In this way, QA as originally designed had fewer game elements and was therefore more story-driven; this was a story in which children were both readers and authors, using their own experi-ences as part of the content of the core narrative. The mythical back-story of QA, which crosses the boundaries between the Atlantian world and local contexts, is intended to motivate students to devel-

op answers to social issues beyond their typically available life experiences (Barab, Thomas, et al., 2005). In particular, as they engage with Quests, investigate local issues and upload responses of various types (e.g., word documents, PowerPoint presentations, excel graphs, etc.) students hold the expectation that this response will be reviewed by the Council of Atlantis and that these repre-sentatives of a distant planet will provide useful perspective on the Atlantian problem. Students and teachers most often engage the myth, with approximately 90% of our over 30,000 reviewed responses having been signed by teachers who role play one of the Council members.

The Black Rhino Unit. The Black Rhino Unit, beyond a simple collection of Quests, established a simulation context in which students investigated the socio-political and environmental dynamics surrounding the creation and maintenance of a game reserve located in the East African country of Tanzania. As part of the simulation context, children investigated and adopted multiple roles (i.e., conservationist, veterinarian, plantation owner, director of wildlife, import/export trader, meat company manager). Regardless of their particular role, children were required to develop a rich understanding of the issue at hand, a task that required them to learn about various scien-tific and economic aspects of the reserve and the Black Rhino, and then make recommendations about the best use of the land. As part of their participation in the project, participants use their digital avatar to navigate around the virtual space and interviewed characters who allowed them to gain access to the multi-media materials so that they could defend their positions and prepare a scientific report. The unit contained three Quests and four classroom discussion activities.

The unit as a whole took approximately six 50-minute class periods to complete. In addi-tion to learning about the reserve in Tanzania, students also had to identify and investigate an issue in their local community. Similar to their

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investigation of the virtual reserve, they were required to write a scientific report, prepare a persuasive argument, and develop a public docu-ment to promote awareness of this issue. The unit was problem-based (Savery & Duffy, 1996), beginning with a text-based appeal from a local tribesman followed by the provision of a series of Web-based resources that students used to learn about the Reserve, its associated issues, and stakeholders’ differing perspectives. The project resources, for which we developed over 50 html pages, contain factual information based on dif-ferent stakeholders (indigenous families, the local warden, government officials, and other experts) and their conflicting interests. This information is distributed throughout a virtual world, contain-ing of all the core components of the reserve and the virtual people who represented the actual stakeholders. As students explored the virtual space, they clicked on objects such as a person, a hut, a rhino, or even a tree, which allowed them to accumulate and sort through the information which was presented on the linked html pages (see Figure 3). Students used the information to

make a case for or against the continuation of the reserve and then to develop an ecotourism scenario and brochure with the goal of balancing and improving conditions for both the animals and humans in the area.

In terms of narrative and, to a lesser extent, the rule sets, the Black Rhino unit represents a significant change in our QA design work. Up to this point, the virtual worlds in QA were not simulations of real-world places but rather were fictitious worlds. Instead of simply reading Quests that were only situated in the larger project nar-rative, all the content in the Rhino world was embedded within the virtual environment, which allowed students to learn and conduct research entirely within this world, without having to leave for access to the Internet, library, or real people and problems in the world. Children and teachers alike commented on how engaging it was to be immersed in a thematically connected space, where they could walk around to view and learn about the virtual animals and interview the various stakeholders, all of which represent real people, scenarios and conflicts.

Figure 3. Screenshot from Rhino world, showing the juxtaposition of the real and the virtual

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We specifically examined student learning in four classrooms. In all four classrooms, there were significant learning gains from pre-test to post-test. There were significant gains from pretest to post-test at the New York site (PreM = 12.14, PostM = 18.74; t(27) = 12.17, p < .01), at the Indiana classroom site (PreM = 6.82, PostM = 13.65; t(16) = 9.23, p < .01), at the California site (PreM = 2.66, PostM = 11.27; t(29) = 12.66, p < .01), and at the Indiana after-school site (PreM = 6.12, PostM = 11.38; t(7) = 10.45, p < .05). The fact that student learning occurred over six class periods may not be so surprising, but the types of comments we received from teachers were quite compelling. Teachers continually commented how useful it was to take this “virtual field trip,” thereby situating children in the Tanzanian con-text. One California teacher stated:

The last four weeks of school will be memorable for me, because it was a shining example of what great things can come from students if you engage them in learning not just curriculum … because the students really cared about the Black Rhino, the Maasai Tribe, or the farmers. They were mo-tivated to really understand these perspectives in order to discuss and debate the perspectives of the poachers, and government officials.

While they are not meant to be exhaustive for all children, some illuminative comments from children are presented in the following. And while not all students in the four research sites that we examined Rhino World being implemented made such comments, we did not receive any negative comments from children.

• I love the whole theme of Tanzania and Africa. It seems so life-like … I actually feel like I’m halfway around the world!

• I think this unit was important so we could learn to save an environment in a virtual world, so we would know how to do it in the real world.

• When asked if this was more like a game or more like school, one girl responded: “This is more like a game than school.” When asked if she plays video games, “No, I think video games rot your mind! This is different. This is fun because it teaches you something.”

Clearly, these comments indicate a sort of engagement with the narrative. Also of interest were the blurring of boundaries of what was play and what was real.

This latter tension highlights an important fea-ture of games, what Salen and Zimmerman (2004) refer to as the “magic circle.” The magic circle is the metaphorical border between the game and the world outside of the game. In the Black Rhino Unit we treat this circle as porous, introducing a game-based narrative that involves real people and a real-world issue taking place in Tanzania. As such, students had little trouble appreciating the relations between the virtual and the “real” world. In this way, rather than establishing a world unto itself, we designed a virtual environment that had direct ties to non-virtual happenings. For us, blurring this distinction is an important element of successfully designed conceptual play spaces in that our goal in designing these spaces is to simultaneously immerse students within a rich fictional world and helping them make linkages to core meanings and concepts such that they perceive their relevance to other narratives. A question that might arise is whether Black Rhino a game or a simulation? At some level, this experience might be better described as a simulation than a game in that it was designed to model a version of reality such that the player can experience events other-wise not possible. However, for us, the distinction between a game and a simulation is less useful in that our focus is on supporting conceptual play. With that said, it is our belief that by building the context in a way that does not feel overly “real,” we enlist a playful component that is more likely to draw in the player, to enlist experimentation, and to support the type of play that theorists have

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argued make play such an important learning and developmental experience.

At one level we are designing a game and at another we are designing a simulation. In either case, if we do not draw meaningful links to educational content and core domain practices (even if the virtual world is entirely fantastical) then we have failed to develop a successful con-ceptual play space. With that said, Rhino had definite elements of a simulation, but had very few elements of a game. In fact, there were almost no embedded rules that gave the experience an element of game-based, as opposed to simply, narrative play. In our thinking, rules provide game-based parameters that delineate the types of interactions that the user will have when they perform actions in the game. For example, in the computer video game Neverwinter Nights, based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons™ fantasy series, the interaction is between the player and the other virtual people (non-player characters) and beasts in the game, which the player encounters as she attempts to end a horrible plague that is devastating the entire land. Sometimes fellow travelers will help, sometimes they will fight; but the important point is that they can be acted upon and they act in certain ways. Likewise, in a flight simulation, the interaction is between the user and the airplane controls. Clicking the wrong button or using the wrong combination of keystrokes can send the plane out of control and to possible destruction. In both cases, the system reacts to the user’s actions based on some kind of algorithm. Further, how the system interacts is dependent on what the player has accomplished previously; that is, the game play evolves based on user choices.

Rules provide the formal structure of the game, specifying how the system functions. In contrast, the Rhino Unit had a rich narrative but almost no rules governing the interaction. Basically, we had a virtual context in which a player could move their avatar to a location and click on a virtual (non-player) character, providing the student with

a text statement from the character and a list of possible responses from which to select a follow-up question. There were no interactive rule sets and the system did not change based on student choices. Further, while there was an outcome, the system did not know whether a particular player reached the outcome; instead, it just awarded individuals points if the teacher judged the three submitted reports as adequate. Upon acceptance of a Quest, students would receive points and lumins (in QA students luminate on project social commitments such as environmental awareness or creative expression as they earn lumins). Students could then use the points they gained from completing the work to earn trading cards and other game paraphernalia, and through their luminations they could unlock more opportuni-ties in QA. However, besides online rhino trading cards, the rewards and interactions were generic to the QA system and had no particular meaning to the Rhino unit.

The Anytown Unit. Within this unit, students engaged a rich narrative about a small town that is facing economic and criminal challenges such as flagging tourism, closing businesses, graffiti, and arson (Warren, Barab, & Dondlinger, in press). The unit’s underlying focus is on improvement of reading and writing, as well as science learn-ing. The student’s role is one of an investigative reporter for the local newspaper. However, as soon as students engage with their first major writing task, the multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of the town’s problems, solutions, and available student tasks is presented through a series of evolving, linked mysteries that students can solve. Similar to Rhino, new information and content area guidance is provided through various non-player characters (NPC) who act as pedagogical agents to present as well as help evolve the intertwining narratives that are present throughout the Anytown experience.

The developed NPCs provide students with multiple perspectives on problems as the central

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narrative and its several branches progress, draw-ing students into the ecological and economic problems that the town is facing. Objects such as books, toys, paintings, plaques, keys, and trees also take a more active role, providing students with game tools for solving mysteries. The stories told by the characters and objects were used as a means of engaging students with their role (re-porter). We also included a number of “frustration points” upon which student knowledge constructs could be challenged and student dependence upon the system as well as interdependence with peers could be fostered. A designed frustration point is intended to support what Gee (2003) referred to as pleasurable frustration and what Csikszentmi-halyi (1990) referred to as the state of flow. Such points establish academically-relevant dilemmas that require students to use information they learn

from the system and from peers to succeed at their task.

This experience takes place in the Anytown world, and students, similar to other worlds in QA, use their digital avatar to navigate around the world as they investigate news stories assigned to them by the editor. Some of the salient features of Anytown include a mine, old mansion, nature preserve, and farm. The world is presented as a digital, simulated town that also includes busi-nesses, school, library, newspaper, a gas station, and city hall. Investigations assigned to the player, in their role of investigative reporter, are scaffolded by NPCs such as Jim Tuttle, the editor-in-chief of the Anytown News, as well as by objects within the environment that provide feedback and redirec-tion to other tasks. Students were initially asked to write a newspaper story about a nearby historic

Figure 4. Design document from Anytown that illuminates the interactive complexity to the Anytown context. Anytown Part Two shows what happens if the learner chooses the Raintree trajectory instead of the Dark Lake trajectory, and the impact this has when combined with the standard evidence that comes from the mandatory reporter's investigation

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cabin that has mysteriously caught fire. Once their investigation begins, students are asked by another NPC, Larry the Sheriff, to investigate the cause of the fire, which in turn provides students with more information for writing their news story. Student investigations yield clues such as a footprint, a book of matches, and an old gas can that someone attempted to bury in the earth. Each clue provides embedded information that can be used to lead students to information sources in the form of NPCs. Once a student accrues clues, character dialogue changes, and relevant information is offered that leads students to new clues and information. However, as referred to earlier, some objects such as the gas can act as designed frustration points. If a student fails to follow the trail of clues and build their own case, they often went straight to the gas can that they could only pick up once they had other clues or information that warranted taking it. Without all the evidence that stemmed from the clues and characters, students would become frustrated as they made many attempts to get the gas can. This frustration then led to student re-examination of their evidence, return visits to speak with relevant NPCs, and use of peers to discover steps or clues they had missed. See Figure 4 for an overview of the Anytown trajectories, illuminating the interac-tive complexity to the Anytown experience.

Once a clue loses its usefulness, it is “given” to a relevant NPC such as when the evidence of a crime is given to the sheriff. This serves two purposes: (a) reduce the amount of clutter that students have to work with as they work on Quests and (b) to make the unit more about participation in the process of investigation and report than in acquisition of objects. While most of the play is single player, because students make different choices and therefore collect different clues, we observe much conversation among students as they exchange facts and understandings—even trading some objects across characters to unlock different storylines. Each of the four Mystery Quests included a designed frustration point that

ranged from following directions (Quest One) to using ciphers that were embedded in other clues in order to gain items (Quest Four). Writing and Creative Writing Quest activities required that students engage in the development of progres-sively more difficult pieces that covered the gamut from descriptive and compare and contrast to poetry and short fiction. A final category of Quest called Reflection Quests ask students to link their experiences in Anytown to their personal experi-ence, comparing and contrasting or choosing a viewpoint and defending it.

As a means of illustrating the main two Quest trajectories, we offer a brief description of the Mystery and Writing Quests, pointing out the intertwining of the writing and investigation activities that students engage in as they work in Anytown. As already briefly described earlier, the first dyad of Mystery and Writing Quests in-volves students in: (a) writing a short descriptive piece about the historic Burning Cabin concur-rently with (b) investigating the cause of the fire. While they investigate, students encounter both characters that have useful, factual information to tell them related to the story or crime as well as NPCs that have little to say and can sometimes be rude when they are interrupted at work. For example, when students interact with Freddie, the mayor’s son, he provides students with little information, but passes along the important Matchbook clue that contains information about who they should talk to for a lead on the next clue. The scaffolding of the clues and characters presents students with a system of rules such as some characters have good information, some do not, and talk to everyone which students can use to guide their investigation and overcome the central conflict which is that they do not know who or what caused the fire. Such inclusion of irrelevant information is important to allow for students to become critical consumers, making choices of which information is worth their time to examine. The clue trail leads students to ac-cidental arson and a problem that stems from

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pollution because of old building materials such as tar. However, students must deduce who was responsible and apply this knowledge because the criminal does not confess.

Once they have solved the first Mystery and written their first news story for the editor, the second set of activities requires that students write about and investigate graffiti that has emerged around town since they last spoke to the sheriff. As a result, the learning environment changes when two historic plaques are defaced with spray-painted slogans that foreshadow future conflicts while introducing a new, current conflict. The rules by which students interact with characters continue to be revealed, introducing new charac-ters with information, while old game characters fall silent. Some of the clues include receipts that students can present to store owners. However, they must first puzzle out the cost of items using addition and subtraction skills before determining which game character will be able to help them solve the mystery. The collection and analysis of clues, discourse with characters, and reflection allows students to solve the mystery and name the graffiti artist as well as the civic concern that led him to deface the artifacts. In this instance, the criminal confesses his crime as a means of social protest, similar to the concept of civil disobedience outlined by Thomas Payne prior to the American Revolution, thus introducing a social studies focus.

The final two activities require students to build a case for or against reopening the mine in town at the behest of its wealthiest citizen. This request sets citizens against one another, setting up the overarching conflict in Anytown. As students talk to the NPCs in town prior to the third dyad of Mystery and Writing Quests, each states their opinion and any supporting evidence. The Mys-tery Quest that students engage with next allows students to use the stories they have heard from characters, combined with those in objects such as books and paintings, in order to solve puzzles. The solution of these puzzles eventually results in

students gaining important information that can inform the writing of their news story, possibly causing them to question their initial hypotheses stemming from discussions with the Anytown-ians. Once students write up the information they gain from the townspeople and Mystery Quests, another round of information becomes active in which a second mystery provides further informa-tion and evidence and a second set of facts and opinions from the townspeople.

It is the combination of all the informa-tion that students collect from the four Quests combined that allows them to complete a final meta-task requiring that they write an editorial for the newspaper, stating the opinion of the edi-tor supported by the evidence they have found. These Quests require students to discriminate fact from opinion, interpret the intentions of the NPCs, solve puzzles using ciphers, learn science content, learn about the history of the town as a means of contextualizing their own understand-ings, and begin to understand what questions a reporter should ask in order to write a good story with the characteristics of good writing. In this case, a pedagogical agent helps them consider the necessary components of good writing and a convincing essay. Further, students are required to pay attention to what they read and take good notes in order to present a solid argument and solve the puzzles that arise. Finally, based on student choices, the system and characters change to provide consequential feedback about the impact of student choices.

Anytown is still going through revisions as part of our design-based research methodology (Barab & Squire, 2004), but an examination of the data from the most last implementation provides insights into its effectiveness. In particular, our initial analyses have focused on learning outcomes related to writing process. Achievement scores were assessed using a standardized writing prompt used by the state of New Jersey. This prompt is open-ended and a standardized rubric is then applied to their writing responses to the prompt.

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For this study, a comparison, traditional curricula was made focusing on the same process writing skills, and two equivalent 4h grade classrooms were identified for this study (Warren, 2006). We found a statistically significant increase in pre-post learning gains on the essay items for both classes, with the class using the Anytown unit showing significantly more improvement (F (1, 40) = 4.32, p < .05) than the class using the traditional curriculum.

We also examined teacher time spent on administrative tasks such as providing repeated directions about the nature of the task and pro-cedures for task completion, voluntary activities completed during the implementation, and a more general qualitative take on how the teaching of the different forms of curriculum unfolded. The first item, teacher time spent on administrative tasks, was a measure of the amount of time that the teacher spent answering questions about the task directions, recommended procedures for completion of tasks, and teacher expectations of learning outcomes. This was interesting be-cause it was an indication for us of how much time the teacher devoted to giving redundant directions, directing or redirecting students to complete specific activities, and about how the teacher wanted students to complete voluntary or mandatory learning tasks. For this question, a paired-sample t-test was conducted on the teacher time spent answering scores to see if the mean for the teacher using Anytown was significantly different from the mean for the teacher using more traditional methods. With the alpha set at .05, the paired-C-sample t-test showed that there were significant differences (t(15) =5.95, p = .043) between treatment (M = 12.12, SD = 6.70) and comparison (M = 28.41, SD = 3.91).

In terms of voluntarily writing, equivalent activities were designed for both classes and students were told that they were free to engage these activities at any point. With the alpha set at .05, the paired-sample t-test showed that there are significant differences (t (40) = -16.41, p =.006)

between the treatment (M = 1.09, SD = .29) and comparison class (M = .00, SD = .00). Finally, there were qualitative differences in how the classes unfolded. One major qualitative difference between the classes came in the form of student choice of activities. The Anytown treatment al-lowed students to explore and direct their own learning within the environment, noting locations, people, and items such as clues or puzzles that they thought were of interest and might return to as the story unfolded. Students also interacted with human and non-human characters that acted as pedagogical agents, identified interesting Quests through face-to-face (FTF) sharing, and helped each other understand the rules and locations of the various Quests. This contrasted with the comparison class in which student activities were predetermined by the teacher and choice was limited to one learning task. The teacher was the primary arbiter of where students were allowed to go, both in the classroom and in Quest Atlantis during computer lab time. Also of interest, was that the students in the treatment class spent time in the hallway and at lunch discussing the Anytown curriculum, and we witnessed no moments of this in the comparison condition.

conclusIon

In this manuscript we described two virtual worlds that students might experience as part of their participation in the Quest Atlantis project, offering both as examples of conceptual play spaces. At their core, the findings of these stud-ies suggest that bringing together game-based methodology and inquiry-based pedagogy in the context of supporting academic content can be a fruitful venture. Reflecting on our four years of design experiences centered on the development of conceptual play spaces, we also provide educa-tors with anchor points and examples for thinking through what it would mean to design a game for supporting learning. In particular, we provide four

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elements that one must balance when designing a conceptual play space to support the learning of disciplinary content: one must balance academic content, legitimate participation, a framing nar-rative, and the use of game rules to establish a play space for learning academic content. We then purposively selected these two worlds because of how they differed in terms of the extent to which they balanced these four elements, and we have also compared them in terms of the rigidity of the magic circle of the game (see Table 1). Salen and Zimmerman (2004) discussed the idea of a magic circle, referring to the conceptual bound-ary that surrounds a particular game and gives it its meaning.

First, we described the Rhino Unit, which, while situated in the larger QA context, was self-referentially sufficient because it had its own back-story and core practices. A core element of this context was also that the framing narra-tive was not just fantasy-based; it had elements of reality in that it models a real park and the various stakeholders within it. Clearly, this unit blurred the magic circle. In contrast, the activi-ties in Anytown provided a much more fantastical context and included many more game-based rule structures. In fact, Anytown evolved from game tasks similar to those included in games such as those in the Myst series, The Longest Journey, or Syberia in which investigation is the primary task given to the player because it was a match with the content to be presented. More generally,

the Rhino unit much more closely resembled a problem-based learning environment (Savery & Duffy, 1996) in which players were given a problem and then explored various information to determine a solution. The space, while adding a layer of perceptual immersion and involved first-person characters, was not very interactive and did not meaningfully respond to player choices as did Anytown.

The user experience in Rhino was participa-tory but was designed to have them acquire our pre-determined narrative, potentially emphasiz-ing the designer story over the player story. Now, while this has educational merit in the context of schools, it is our belief that Anytown allows for more student agency and authority, as well as provides an authentic layer of conceptual conse-quentiality in that the system responds to student actions—as opposed to the consequences simply being that the student turned in a report that re-ceived a reasonable grade. Gee (2004, p. 3) notes that through “embodied movement in the game world… (the player) can achieve an empathetic embodiment for the complex system.” This is to say, the player can achieve a level of empathy with the entirety of the complex system, rather than simply being an individual embedded within the system. A key component is that the environment is designed in such a way that the learner, through their interaction with the rule sets and underlying narrative, develops a sense of empathy for the complex system that is the game. In the examples

Table 1. Breakdown of different curricular units in terms of the elements of conceptual play spaces

Rhino Unit Anytown Unit

Academic Content Low Med

Legitimate Participation High High

Framing Narrative High High

Game Rules Low High

Magic Circle Porous Solid

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presented here, there were obvious differences in the potential of the respective designs to estab-lish this empathetic embodiment. In Table 2 we compare the two units in terms of four potential scaffolds for supporting conceptual play: narra-tive, perceptual, interactive, and social.

Looking across the two instructional trajecto-ries we see clear differences on the four forms of scaffolds, which leads to, we argue, different levels of empathetic embodiment. Before contrasting the four environments, we should briefly define what we mean by a conceptual play scaffold. For us, a conceptual play scaffold is a designed structure intended to engage a user more deeply into a particular context such that users develop an understanding of a particular phenomenon. Beginning with a narrative scaffold, we are refer-ring to the enlistment of a particular story line to draw in a user and make contextual details more apparent. At some level, all problem-based learn-ing environments leverage this type of scaffold. A perceptual scaffold, while usually connected to a story line, refers to making observable the particular context with which the learner becomes embodied; for example, using 3-D development tools to allow users to virtually enter a park. In-teractive scaffolds can be thought of as rule sets, allowing the player to interact with objects with which one is embodied. So, for example, having people in Anytown collect clues, bring them to

the lab to be analyzed, and interpret what they mean creates an interactivity with the system that supports both embodiment and learning. Lastly are social scaffolds, which occur when through interactions with others one becomes more deeply immersed with the play context. While we have discussed these as four separate elements, it is important to mention that they are interrelated; for example, a user might find a narrative more interesting if it occurs in an environment that provides meaningful interactions while perceptu-ally surrounding them.

Returning to our two examples, the Black Rhino Unit involves rich narrative engagement in that player actions are tied to a larger meta-nar-rative that drives the learner’s tasks in the space. Additionally, there is a customized virtual park that was designed to support a form of perceptual embodiment. However, nothing in the learning environment reacts to learner agency (there are no rules, just narrative), and the complexity of the system is not exposed in meaningful ways that allow a learner to develop empathetic embodi-ment for the system—just for the story line. The environment remains static and the stories do as well; there is only a single possible trajectory of learner experience and one outcome. The charac-ters within the space do not react to the player or to each other. Anytown, however, begins to reach the goal of empathetic embodiment for a complex

Table 2. Breakdown of different curricular units in terms of four types of embodiment scaffolds

Rhino Unit Anytown Unit

Narrative Embodiment

Med High

Perceptual Embodiment

High High

SocialEmbodiment

Low High

Interactive Embodiment

Low High

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system. It provides learners with a rich environ-ment in which the non-player characters tell stories that contribute to a meta-narrative similar to the way that they do in video games like Oblivion and World of Warcraft. Characters tell their stories as a means to convey the complexity of the virtual space, weaving the problem to be solved within their own stories even as they convey “The Story of the Park.” The stories told by the non-player characters that the actual players meet as they explore Anytown are intended not only to help students care about them as individuals, but also to care about the fate of the town itself. There are also interactive and social embodiment scaffolds, with students even having to work with others to gain full insight into the happenings of the town. The characters within Anytown reveal new infor-mation and expanded pieces of their story, and therefore the story of the town, in response to the actions of players and those of other characters in the 3-D space. For example, when players complete the game-like Mystery Quest related to graffiti, the dialogue of all characters in town changes substantially because characters with little to say about that issue become much more important as students investigate the possibility of reopening the old mine.

Illustrated in Figure 4, completion also opens up two new trajectories of player action that may be pursued: investigation of Raintree Manse to save Toshii the scientist or seek the truth about the foreshadowed Dark Lake. If a player chooses to save the scientist, the other trajectory is now closed to them. As a result, this player’s outcome will be different from that of a player who chose to work on the Dark Lake Quest and therefore, what they learn may also be different because their overall experience was different. The envi-ronment itself also changes to allow students into places that had previously been closed in response to their actions, such as virtually using a shovel and pick to pull down the boards that had closed off a mine tunnel.

ImplIcAtIons

We began this article suggesting that video games pedagogies and technologies bear considerable potential for science education. In particular, they afford an empathetic embodiment with a complex system at the same time situating the learning of particular domain formalisms within a rich context of use. The work described here suggests that it is possible to develop spaces that are both entertaining and educationally useful. In general, schools have had difficulty engaging children in the process of learning for reasons beyond scor-ing highly on tests, with research revealing a significant decline in academic motivation from grades three through nine (Lepper, Sethi, Dialdin, & Drake, 1996). This inability to engage students can be attributed to multiple factors, some within our control and some having more entrenched societal roots. A core commitment of this work was to develop a space that was both entertaining and, at the same time, educational. At one level, simply situating the curriculum in the 3D-MUVE was engaging to students. However, it was not our intention to just have children walk around an aesthetically fun environment, but to design the space in a way that at the same time one is having fun they are engaging deep learning. The challenge was to design the entertaining aspects in a way that they are engaging participants in academic learning. Our work suggests that such a goal was indeed possible.

In this way, we did not simply want to support a form of empathetic embodiment but wanted them to develop empathy with particular domain knowledge. As educators, even those espousing inquiry and emphasizing legitimate practices, we have a responsibility to support students in understanding particular facts, concepts, and principles. Toward this end, we have advanced the notion of conceptual play spaces and have provided two examples that differ in their “game-ness” but that both have usefulness in supporting engaged learning. However, balancing gaming

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elements and pedagogical goals is a challenging endeavor, one that involves infusing open-ended play with academic content such that learning naturally follows from rich participation. It is toward the goal of advancing theoretical work that integrates education, entertainment, and social commitments, that our work on the Quest Atlantis project has been targeted. While on the surface, Quest Atlantis might appear to be a 3-D, multi-user virtual environment, or game, it was designed to serve a much deeper purpose; to provide a meaningful context for significant academic learning. As an illuminative case, the designed space has provided a fertile context for generating, testing, and evolving theories of par-ticipation that work to preserve the joy, meaning, and educational value of learning.

Beyond a proof-of-concept or the presenta-tion of illuminative cases for others involved in this type of work, we have purposively selected these cases so as to illustrate what we mean by conceptual play spaces as well as illustrating the challenges in developing them. The promise of games for education, from our perspective, lies in their ability to transform learning from the rote acquisition of facts and concepts to a more meaningful type of literacy—one that is steeped in legitimate practices as part of rich contexts. While we believe this to be a potential affordance of games, we need to recognize that this same potential must be balanced such that we can both situate students in a rich world, at the same time ensure that they are appreciating the value of their experience in other contexts. In this way, enlisting games as curricular contexts is not simply port-ing content into this powerful media but, instead, involves developing a new genre of participation that brings together games and education to es-tablish an embodied curriculum through which students become immersed in doing learning. It is our hope that this discussion meaningfully extends this dialogue of possibility.

AcKnoWleDGment

This research was supported in part by a ROLE grant from the National Science Foundation #0411846, as well as grants #06-88658-000HCD and #07-90694-HCD from the John D. and Cath-erine T. MacArthur Foundation. Also, special thanks to Anna Arici, George Newman, and Natasha Matic for their support.

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Key terms

Acquisition Metaphor: A view of school as a place for collecting or acquiring knowledge, which makes instruction about determining the best means of transmitting this information.

Conceptual Play: Conceptual play is a state of engagement that involves: (a) projection into the role of a character who, (b) engaged in a partly fictional problem context, (c) must apply conceptual understandings to make sense of and, ultimately, transform the context. Additionally, a conceptual play space should (d) provide oppor-tunities to examine one’s participation in terms of the impact it had on the immersive context.

Conceptual Play Scaffold: A designed struc-ture intended to engage a user more deeply into a particular context such that users develop an understanding of a particular phenomenon.

Empathetic Embodiment: Empathetic em-bodiment is a process of being immersed (expe-riencing a sense of “presence”) within a virtual environment through which one comes to develop an understanding of or appreciation for one or more particular aspects (narratively, interactively, perceptually, and/or socially) of the context.

Game: According to Salen and Zimmerman (2004, p. 80), “a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.”

Interactive Scaffold: Rule sets that allow the player to act with consequence on the game environment, thereby influencing the unfolding story line and game dynamics.

Narrative Scaffold: The enlistment of a particular story line to draw in a user and make contextual details more apparent.

Participation Metaphor: A view of knowing as distributed across people and contexts through which core content gains meaning.

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Perceptual Scaffold: Usually connected to a story line, a perceptual scaffold refers to making observable the particular context with which the learner becomes embodied.

Play: Play is described as having the fol-lowing elements: (1) intrinsically motivated and self-initiated, (2) non-literal and pleasurable, (3) process-oriented, (4) exploratory and active, and (5) governed by rules.

Social Scaffold: Occurs when through in-teractions with others one becomes more deeply immersed with the play context.

enDnote

1 The zone of proximal development pertains to the difference between one’s actual and potential level of cognitive development, or between what one can achieve on her own versus what she can accomplish with assistance or scaffolding. Vygotsky (1978) believed that the context of play can provide important scaffolding.

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