Implementing games-based activities

The authors of both Environmental Detectives and Savannah describe their learning activities as games, and indeed they do feature a number of characteristics of games that we describe in Section 2.3 above. However, there are some core features of games, as identified in multiple sources, that are not included in the learning activities of either Environmental Detectives or Savannah.

Let us consider the core aspects of games that we have previously identified: goals and objectives, outcomes and feedback, conflict/dynamic opposition, interaction, and representation or story. In looking at these aspects from a high level perspective, it seems that all of these elements are present in Environmental Detectives and Savannah. However, these aspects imply other features that are not in fact present, or are not present in meaningful ways.

For Savannah, a key problem (as identified by the authors) was a lack of sufficient challenge to engage the players in the task. The children were accustomed to much higher degrees of challenge than were presented in the Savannah activity, so in fact opposition was not present to the ideal degree in this activity. In Environmental Detectives, there appears to be a high degree of challenge, but a core element of gameplay is missing, one which is in fact predicated by the presence of opposition: the possibility of failure. As noted by Squire (2004), failure is a core component of

gameplay Ð one of the first things that happens when someone plays a game for the first time is that they fail. This failure, and subsequent feedback and reflection on what caused the failure, leads to intrinsic motivation to try again, leading to learning (Malone, 1980).

Games require these failure states so that players have to try again Ð this is the nature of challenge within gameplay, there is always a way to fail. Without this possibility, there can be no second or subsequent attempts, and hence no learning. When a player fails to achieve a goal within a game, relevant feedback is essential so that they can see how close they came to achieving it, and this modify their strategy appropriately.

The role of failure is also acknowledged within the constructivist theory of learning: PiagetÕs (1929) original descriptions of the process of accommodation demonstrate that failure can be a core component of learning. If we perform an action and the result is not as we expect, then we must accommodate that result by modifying our understanding of our actions and their effects on the world.

The role of failure in learning has been acknowledged in specific domains such as mathematics (Kapur, 2009), and in physics tutoring systems (VanLehn et al., 2003). VanLehn et al. found that for learning to be successful, students had to reach an impasse, a point where they could not see how to proceed. Impasses were seen to cause the successful learning of a physical law, whereas students who did not reach impasses rarely learned the concept. Other work by Kapur has also showed that despite apparently ÔchaoticÕ results in the form of complex group discussions, productive failure was in fact a highly effective form of learning for students (Kapur, 2006; Kapur, 2008).

Allowing unstructured events such as failure, that might otherwise be considered unproductive, has previously been seen as desirable (Dillenbourg, 2002; Kirschner et

teaching and learning goes against current general principles, and as such would require a paradigm shift (Clifford, 1984). This shift has not occurred in general education, but the role of failure in effective learning is widely acknowledged. Schank et al. (1993) also assert that failure is a crucial part of the learning process Ð learners must form expectations and encounter failure in order to learn, and must see exceptional cases in order to engender failure. Squire (2005) concurs, and describes a an extensive study of Civilization III in learning history and geography, describing how, in games, you start with failure Ð the task is to overcome it, not through explanation but through action. Squire describes the occurrence of failure as a Òcritical precondition for learningÓ. Similarly, Shaffer et al. (2005) discuss epistemic frames and events characterised as Òexpectation failureÓ (Schank, 1997) Ð these are critical incidents that engender learning because learners see that their frames, their ideas underlying their understanding, do not fit with what they are seeing and so they must transform these frames to proceed. This process is widely acknowledged to take place within video games, but has barely been touched upon in the field of simulation- based learning. As has been noted, short term performance failure may lead to longer term gains for the learning process (Clifford, 1984; Schmidt and Bjork, 1992). As suggested by Kapur (2009), we should resist the urge to Ôover-structureÕ learning activities and instead investigate how instructional design might give rise to productive failure events instead, allowing learners the space to make mistakes and learn from them.

Whilst Savannah did provide opportunities to fail (through hunger or failing to catch prey), there was limited feedback to indicate to the players how well they had performed. The transition between a win state (being alive) and a failure state (being dead) appeared to be fairly rapid from the descriptions given, with little information being provided to the learners about how well they had performed. To be fair to the designers of Savannah, the activity was intended to be supported by teachers and other

facilitators and provide reflection within the separate Den space. We are highlighting this lack of feedback as an illustration of how the potential of games to support learning in the field has not yet been fully exploited.

Feedback was even more conspicuously absent in Environmental Detectives. Students in the field had to choose actions and interpret data, with no indication from the system about how close they were to a solution. The in-game action of taking samples meant that they could test hypotheses about the source and spread of the virtual toxin, but because there was no way to fail within the task they could learn from their mistakes and then go on to have a second attempt. In fact the authors state that one of the primary aims of Environmental Detectives was to provide a context where students could test out ideas Ôwithout fear of failureÕ (Squire and Klopfer, 2007, p400). In this regard, Environmental Detectives is more of a simulation than a game, and this is indicated as the original intention, but again we highlight this issue to show how games might be further exploited to support students in the field.