Anytown Design_JREC copy

Running head: A LOOK INSIDE

A LOOK INSIDE A MUVE DESIGN PROCESS: BLENDING INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND GAME PRINCIPLES TO TARGET WRITING SKILLS

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Abstract The number of games, simulations, and multi-user virtual environments designed to promote learning, engagement with subject matter, or intended to contextualize learning has been steadily increasing over the past decade. While the use of these digital designs in educational settings has begun to show promise for improving learning, motivation, and engagement as noted in studies of MIT Media Lab’s Supercharged, Harvard University’s River City and Indiana University’s Quest Atlantis, research reports have been unable to capture the design processes required to develop these complex instructional spaces. With the intention of illuminating one particular design process that met with some success, this article details the process of design and development that supported the creation of the language arts-focused Anytown multi-user virtual environment. The objective is to illustrate the complexity of taking an interactive digital learning environment from the planning phases through to the 3-D development of the environmental interactions and provide and example of how designers may match the media affordances present in games with instructional goals and principles that are intended to guide learning.

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A LOOK INSIDE A MUVE DESIGN PROCESS: BLENDING INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND GAME PRINCIPLES TO TARGET WRITING SKILLS What was Anytown?

Initially, Anytown started as a hypothetical idea. Was it possible, using the existing Active Worlds and Quest Atlantis digital structures, to create an experience that was driven by narrative as well as visual cues? Over a six-month period, Anytown came to life. Amidst visual aspects of an existing environment, a town began to appear, replete with a mysterious burning cabin and the understaffed local newspaper. The small town environment, which later became Anytown, began to grow around these locations. One of the first design decisions was to assign the individual students, players in this case, to a role and orient them as new members of the community. Since the learning goals for this unit were in the discipline of writing and since both of the primary developers of Anytown had some background in journalism, the developers chose to have the learners play the role of budding reporters. Upon entering Anytown, they are hired by the local newspaper to assist with investigative reporting as well as bringing new life to the fairly traditional, closed community. From this decision, subsequent locations in the environment began to appear: a school, City Hall, farm, mansion and treacherous old mine. Some of the design was driven by the technical capabilities of both developers as well as the environment itself. While these constituted a design limitation, few decisions were determined to be impossible. Instead, using an iterative design process, the town appeared in cycles. The center of town served as a focal point and the majority of locations were added depending on their relation to city hall. The first major phase of development spawned the majority of the locations

A look inside 4 and architecture – virtually everything was built except for the lycanthrope refuge, haunted manse and the hidden areas associated with another mystery area called Dark Lakes.

The Anytown Research This paper is one of a number of papers focused on illuminating the design, development, and implementation Anytown, as well as the findings from multiple research methods used to examine its impact as a learning intervention. As with any respectably scaled project, it has been necessary to carry out the research and subsequently, the reporting of findings in stages. While the data for the study was collected over a fixed period, both the rigorous nature of research, as well as the ever-evolving lenses for viewing results, has helped shaped the collection of articles associated with Anytown and Quest Atlantis. Some of the cited works in this paper are related to Anytown. Referencing these works is a required after-effect of the existence of the multiple papers associated with the topic. While this paper is specifically related to the design of the environment, other papers focus on the implementation and use with emphases on narrative, instructional impact on students as well as the impact on instructional staff and teachers – all of which were influential to the design. The associated works are listed in the References section of this paper.

Phases of the Design With the physical 3-D environment was nearly completed in this period, the developers determined that while the back story of the town could drive much of the potential interactions, the characters needed to be able to represent themselves, exhibit some level of personality, and provide students with a depth of interaction not present in other digital environments. In addition

A look inside 5 to adding other physical locations, the second phase of development consisted of developing the instruction, learning objectives, and learning activities that would drive player activity in Anytown. Finally, in a third phase of the design, the developers created the characters through the scripting of their speech acts and development of conditions that would govern player interactions with learning objects, static objects, and pedagogical agents that took forms similar to those described by Baylor (1999; , 2005). Each phase took place in order to make learner interactions in the environment more authentic, address the creation of character personality and identity, and to help create depth of interaction between player and agent.

For example, when creating Kam Lee, the Anytown school principal, an existing digital character model was used. This 3-D model was then customized to make the character stand out and give the visual impression that he was a professional. Dialogue was then added making this character supportive of learning decisions made by the individual students as well as to guide and suggest direction. This second phase of development also consisted of identifying and implementing small modifications throughout the space; these included making a particular character bald and changing the river from a static water graphic to a more undulating version that simulated movement. Throughout this final phase of development, characters went from having a few scripted pieces of dialogue apiece to having nearly 100 pieces of dialogue each.

The dialogue was not only in-depth, but also coordinated with certain tasks and milestones that needed to be achieved by each student. At this point, the majority of the development was complete and subsequent phases involved more refinement and less creation of new locations.

A look inside 6 Problems Addressed by the Design of Anytown One challenge to using problem-based learning methods in K-12 classrooms are the time it takes to design a learning environment with sufficient resources to support students as they seek to solve challenging problems (Airasian & Walsh, 1997). A second problem that instructors face when employing social constructivist instructional methods stems from the time required for students to interact in groups and at their own pace with ill-structured problems to develop welldeveloped, defensible solutions (Matthews, 2003). The focus of the Anytown design and its accompanying studies was to determine whether game-design principles such as the inclusion of 1.) artificial conflict, 2.) win scenarios, and 3.) a rule-based system could be combined with instructional design principles to increase student engagement with literacy tasks and improve student learning. A secondary goal was to develop a reusable constructivist learning environment (CLE), which teachers could use for several years as a means to reduce the burden on the teacher of developing such an environment. By doing so, it was believed that such a design could allow teachers to act more fully in the manner of a social constructivist facilitator which calls for their main role to be a challenger of poorly developed knowledge constructs instead of as a font of directional and procedural knowledge for students. Further, by producing a digital environment that students could access at home as well as in the computer lab, we sought to increase the amount of time they could spend working with peers at a distance to solve the problems posed in the game as a means to address the issue of insufficient classroom time available student problem solving.

To address these issues, the Anytown digital environment was designed to include embedded instructional support scaffolds, paired learning and game outcomes, thematic minigames, narrative context, and explicit rules to support student engagement with writing. This unit

A look inside 7 was part of a larger multi-user virtual environment called Quest Atlantis (Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, & Tuzun, 2005; Barab, Warren, & Ingram-Goble, 2006); however, it was designed to be a self-contained unit that leveraged 3-D digital technology to establish an immersive experience for improving student writing skills. Use of the environment was intended to occur in two lab sessions per week for four weeks including student training on the active role of a reporter who acts as descriptive writer targeting who, what, why, when and how. Students composed feature stories relating their understanding of the evolving mysteries found in the town as they successfully connected to micro-, meso-, and meta-narratives and gathered rewards and clues. The results of a mixed methods study of the Anytown environment indicated that its use was accompanied by 1.) decreases in teacher time spent answering procedural and directional questions, 2.) increases in the amount of voluntary student writing activity, and 3.) improvements in standardized achievement scores on prompts that consisted of writing tasks similar to those that students participated in during the treatment (Warren, 2006b). However, it is important that the design process used to create the digital environment itself be described as a means for helping to explain why such findings were possible.

Student-centered Digital Design Process The design of the Anytown learning environment was a complex process that loosely followed an iterative ADDIE instructional design model as presented by Molenda, Pershing, & Reigeluth (1996) which includes the following phases: 1.) analysis of the existing instruction and needs of learners, 2.) design of the instruction in document form, 3.) development of the instructional system, 4.) implementation of the instructional system with targeted users, and 5.) evaluation of the effectiveness of this system. The process included five months of paper and pencil prototyping followed by an additional nine months of digital development punctuated by

A look inside 8 supplemental redesign as needs arose. The first half of the original design was mainly sketched out on paper from November 2004 through February of 2005 in order to develop a studentcentered analog design prior to moving into digital development. A prototype was developed by two instructional designers within the Quest Atlantis world code-named Language Arts from January through March of 2005. This three dimensional (3-D) layout of the learning environment included the creation and embedding of buildings, characters, and other necessary objects such as trees, buildings, signs, people, and old windmills, some of which are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Bethany Rhubarb and the Old Windmill location.

With much of the layout complete, the instructional design was completed by creating hundreds of dialogue pages and conditions for player and system behavior that specify how objects and characters communicate with students within the learning environment. Within these dialogue pages, html links allowed users to ask questions of characters, pick up objects, read through stories, or enter locked doors—actions that were contingent upon earning or collecting other key objects. In order for these actions to prompt appropriate responses from the system, access conditions were also designed so that various pages appeared depending on who and what

A look inside 9 students had already interacted with, which objects they had received, and at what stage in their experience they had reached.

The learning environment was also seeded with learning tasks called “Quests� in the language of Quest Atlantis. The original prototype included eight activities: an initial orientation task, three tasks centered on writing descriptive stories, two tasks centered on solving mysteries, and two tasks intended to engage students in metacognitive activities comparing the imaginary town with the student’s own. Once the prototype was completed, a pilot study was done to determine whether the environment as designed was tenable for the full implementation study.

Problems were identified through student and teacher feedback in interviews, informal discussions, teacher-led activities, in-space chat, and audio recordings of student interactions. As a result of this feedback, the design entered its next iteration, which included revision to clarify dialogue, repair of broken conditional links, and expansion of the learning environment to include many more learning activities. The new design included over 2,000 dialogue pages with which students could interact, over 150 access conditions that controlled these interactions, and 26 possible learning tasks in four categories, three of which were purely voluntary. The learning tasks included four creative writing tasks, six descriptive or comparison/contrast writing tasks, four metacognitive reflection tasks, seven pre-writing tasks, four mysteries to solve, and a slightly altered initial orientation task.

Identification and Integration of Learning Goals into the MUVE During the analytical and design phases of the instructional design, local teachers were interviewed and noted that many of their students were not engaged with the descriptive and persuasive writing activities that were part of the standard curriculum and that it was a struggle

A look inside 10 to get students to engage in sustained silent reading. As a result, the designers, with the help of these teachers, identified several primary standards and learning outcomes that correlated with the state of Indiana’s Core 40 standards that guided their No Child Left Behind Act (Education, 2002) mandated assessments. These would function as the main learning goals addressed by the design and development of the learning and support activities in Anytown. These included:

4.4.2

Writing Objectives – (1) Select a focus (topic), organizational structure, and point of view based on purpose, audience, length, and format requirements for a piece of writing.

4.4.3 – (2) Write informational pieces with multiple paragraphs that: A. provide an introductory paragraph.

B. establish and support a central idea with a topic sentence at or near the beginning of the first paragraph.

C. include supporting paragraphs with simple facts, details, and explanations.

D. present important ideas or events in sequence or in chronological order.

E. provide details and transitions to link paragraphs.

F. concludes with a paragraph that summarizes the points.

Writing Application 4.5.3 – (3) Write informational reports that: A. ask a central question about an issue or situation B. include facts and details for focus C. use more than one source of information, including speakers, books, newspapers, media sources, and online information.

Reading Comprehension 4.2.1 – (1) Use the organization of informational text to strengthen comprehension.

4.2.2 – (2) Use appropriate strategies when reading for different purposes Within the Anytown learning environment, the writing objectives were mainly addressed through student responses to learning activities called Quests in Anytown. These focused on descriptive, informational reports that were contextualized as news stories written for Jim Tuttle, editor of the Anytown News. Students received feedback on the structure of their writing from their teacher who takes on the role of newspaper editor. Numerous resources such as pedagogical agents who

A look inside 11 acted as interviewees, archived newspaper stories, access to clues, and visual information were conveyed to the students in the form of virtual objects so that they could increase the number of details in their writing even as they moved through the six steps of the writing process detailed to them through Pre-writing Quests which were offered by Bethany Rhubarb, a fictional peer reporter acting as pedagogical agent. Figure 2 provides an example of the requirements expected of students in a Writing Quest through which students were expected to investigate and gather evidence regarding a crime to support claims they made in their articles.

Figure 2. Anytown Writing Quest Two: Who is damaging the town?

A look inside 12 In terms of the reading comprehension goals, the dialogue texts of various characters, objects, and archival materials in the space required that students read for multiple purposes such as: 1.) identifying relevant information, 2.) developing context for their writing, 3.) entertaining themselves, 4.) observing modeled writing behaviors and structures, and 5.) investigating the unknown, and 6.) note-taking. As such, students were required to, sometimes rapidly, switch between reading purposes as they worked through the myriad Quests. Because the necessary information required to complete more than 80 percent of the Quests is embedded within the texts, students had to read or they could not succeed at either the voluntary or mandatory activities that made up the experience of Anytown. Requiring students to engage in reading also increased the amount of sustained silent reading that students engaged in over the course of their day; however, they self-regulated by taking breaks from reading as they engaged with three dimensional activities such as locating clues, writing, or off-task exploration of the space.

Student success at Quests acted as an indicator of student’s sustained silent reading, which has been difficult to ensure in traditional classroom silent reading periods (Marshall, 2002).

With the instructional objectives identified, the design and development of the learning activities were guided by game design principles identified in the game design literature. This instructional design followed Salen and Zimmerman’s (2004) definition which states that three major design elements are required for a game. These include (a) a rule-based interactive system, (b) a quantifiable outcome characteristic (also known as a win scenario), and (c) artificial conflict and play characteristics. However, while these were sufficient for a traditional game, they were not so for a game intended to engender learning (Dondlinger, 2007). As a result of analyzing a number of studies and theory related to the development of other forms of engaging instructional media, several other elements were identified that had been present as part of their

A look inside 13 success. These included: 1. conflict or problem (Savery & Duffy, 1995); 2. realistic context and narrative (Aldrich, 2003; Jonassen & Hernandez-Serrano, 2002); 3. rules or conditions for play (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004); 4. learning tasks stemming from the narrative (Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, & Tuzun, 2005); 5. criteria for achievement (M. P. Molenda, James; Reigeluth, Charles, 1996); 6. instruction by pedagogical agent (Baylor & Kim, 2005); 7. the means for providing hard, technology-embedded scaffolds and teacher developed soft scaffolds (Brush & Saye, 2001); 8. means of assessment and feedback (Bruckman, 2004); and 9. designed frustration points to engender cognitive conflict (Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Warren & Dondlinger, Under Review).

Instructional scaffolding as in-game guidance In Anytown, instructional scaffolding (Brush & Saye, 2001) used to support the larger thematic, interdisciplinary unit (Shanahan, 1997) in the digital environment was primarily delivered in one of four ways: (1.) student interaction with primary instructional characters, (2.) student interaction with secondary support characters, (3.) student interaction with peers within the digital or lab environment or (4.) interaction with environmental features such as signs, object clues, and other sorts of visual cues such as library books, burning buildings, and graffiti sprayed plaques. These visual cues progressed beyond the buildings themselves to logical associations with them. For example, one would expect to find books in a library; therefore, one should be able to peruse them for information to help solve in-space problems. In the same way, items in virtually every primary location maintained this authenticity while also adding to the overall scaffold. However, the primary means of scaffolding came from their interaction with characters and the ability to receive answers from the fictional characters to specific questions

A look inside 14 related to their current tasks, whether they were related to the steps required in writing a descriptive essay or to understanding the meaning of clues the students found in the 3-D environment.

The means by which students gained information contrasts with more traditional, face-toface learning environments in which students receive much of their context for learning from the teacher or textbooks. The teacher also often sets content and learning tasks for students in faceto-face environments. The following table provides a comparison of the learning in a more traditional learning environment versus the digital environment designed for this study.

Table. Comparison of Anytown delivery and assessment mechanisms with other instructional methods Role Behaviorist Collaborative Anytown ______________________________________________________________________________ Provider of context

Teacher through lecture or within text book readings

Teacher through lecture or within text book readings

System provides through: 1. character dialogue 2. graphic elements 3. objects

Provider of content

Teacher within lecture, learning tasks, or text book readings

Teacher within lecture, learning tasks, or text book readings

System provides through: 1. character dialogue 2. graphic elements 3. objects

Provider of learning activities

Teacher through lecture, work sheet or within text book

Teacher through lecture, work sheet or within text book

System provides these within pedagogical agent dialogue

Assessor of learning

Teacher

Teacher and peers

Teacher, peers, and/or system depending on task

Student roles

Complete assigned tasks

Complete assigned tasks in cooperation with peers

Choose tasks, work with peers, interact with system, complete tasks singly or with peers

______________________________________________________________________________

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Fictional characters as learning scaffolds While there were myriad ways for students to improve their writing, in Anytown, the fictional characters that made the town an interactive place were the most important. These characters were intended to act as pedagogical agents who guide in several ways. Based on the findings of Baylor (1999; , 2005) and separately, Baylor and Kim (2005), the Anytown learning environment used pedagogical agents to: •

Scaffold student understandings of procedure, location, and world

•

Entertain and provide the narrative through stories, puzzles, dialogue

•

Direct students to new tasks, games, and information

•

Help build a student’s embodied empathy for the complex system that is Anytown (Gee, 2004).

The interaction with the instructional characters came in the form of branching dialogue. For example, when students spoke with Jim, the newspaper editor, for the first time and begin their first descriptive Writing Quest, several options for asking Jim additional questions were provided to students. Depending on their selection, a new page opened that included Jim’s answer. If this answer opened further questions related to the topic that are appropriate for the student to ask now, these would appear below Jim’s answer. In addition, an option was always present that allowed students to return to the top-level set of questions.

Further, when students returned to Jim after having spoken to him for the first time, he would speak to them as though they had already met; however, the same question options remained open to allow further interrogation. If the student had already visited another character and received one of the available tools such as the camera, the option to ask Jim about that tool

A look inside 16 was removed. If the student had completed a particular task such as her first writing assignment, Jim’s dialogue changed again, prompting the learner to begin the next quest; however, the system maintained the option for students to ask questions related to Jim’s primary instructional purpose which focused on parts of a story.

Primary instructional agents. These characters functioned in roles similar to both Baylor and Kim’s (2005) conception of “mentor” and “expert” pedagogical agents. As such, they were expected to provide students with direction about their writing tasks, provide additional help regarding the solving of problems, or answer questions related to navigation and the logistics of getting around town. In order to keep the number of instructional scaffolding characters manageable, the larger meta-narrative of “a small town in trouble” informed the design of which characters would aid learners at different points in the linear storylines. The journalism metaphor that drives the primary Writing Quests set up the first instructional scaffolds with which students interacted. These included the Editor-in-Chief, Jim Tuttle; the Copy Editor Anita Gupta; and Wendell Pallisades, the friendly city desk reporter who guided the learner through the task, writing process, basic interviewing skills, and the goals of descriptive writing. These characters also provided specific instructional support regarding the parts of a story (essay), suggested optional learning activities, and conveyed information about other town inhabitants with which students would interact during the units. Further, the Copy Editor directed students to Armand Rousseau, the Librarian, for help with research in the space, and Irene Morningstar, the School Teacher, for scaffolding regarding basic grammar rules. The roles of the Editor-in-Chief (Jim), Copy Editor (Anita), and the School Teacher (Irene) are detailed in Figure 3, as well as other interactive relationships.

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Figure 3. Primary instructional scaffolding characters and roles By comparison, in more traditional classrooms the teacher is the sole provider of students’ learning activities as was the case in our comparison classroom (Warren & Dondlinger, Under Review). She acted in all roles, providing scaffolding, modeling appropriate behaviors, and giving advice regarding both the writing process and grammar. In addition, she provided direct feedback on student writing and acted to direct students to resources to improve their writing.

Instructional support agents. As in Baylor and Kim’s (2005) conception of a “motivating” pedagogical agent, the Anytown characters provided information, opinions, and/or evidence to students in the same way that a teacher would through verbal lecture, worksheets, or

A look inside 18 texts. Rather than providing direct instruction regarding writing, these characters engaged in dialogue with students to enrich the narrative, provided multiple perspectives, and directed students towards clues when they struggled or successfully followed the trail of clues. For example, Sarah Means, an agent with almost no role in the first two Mystery and Writing Quests, provided a valuable and necessary perspective on the problem focus of the second set of Quests, giving clues regarding puzzles, directing learners to other agents with relevant information, and acting as a resource for information. A second character, Tony Wyoming, contrasted with Sarah by providing an opposing viewpoint to hers while serving many of the same purposes of direction regarding the re-opening of the mercury contaminated, old mine. Through these characters, students engaged with the narrative, exploring alternate depictions of the town’s history and encountering the political and economic struggles of a small town.

By contrast, in more traditional classrooms, the teacher may provide directions as to what the students are to do with the information they gather through taking notes on their readings, experiences as they participate in the group writing process, or feedback provided on their individual writing assignments. In some instances, the teacher contextualizes student directions and activities within the narrative context of school or within the context of the story they are writing. If there is to be an entertaining facet to the learning activities, it is her responsibility to provide it. However, in both forms of curricula, peers also play an important role by providing alternative opinions, viewpoints, and perceptual details which can then be used to guide the writing.

A look inside 19 Environmental interactions and learning activities Before developing any of the instruction, one of the first design decisions concerning Anytown involved the overall type of “location;� this setting would drive all instructional decisions including the learning objectives and activities that would be appropriate to the place.

From internal discussions, the designers determined that a small town allowed for the greatest amount of diverse interactions while also bounding the experience. Hence, designers included certain locales with little use in the larger story except to add authenticity to the town itself. For example, the bank exists in Anytown because a small town would typically have a bank, not because a bank was required by the story.

In relation to the environment, certain learning activities were identified that would leverage the visual aspects to balance against the rich narrative elements.

The underlying digital environment learning objectives included the following: a. The learner will become familiar with the affordances of the digital environment (visual, auditory, spatial, informational) b. The learner will begin to explore the digital environment in addition to the guided exploration of the storyline c. The learner will identify standard features of the digital environment that are consistent and can be reliably used versus those that are temporary scaffolding which may be removed as they advance in ability d. The learner will use the digital environment as a means of reading to accomplish writing and game tasks e. The learner will use the digital environment to gain resources to support their writing objectives

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Example. The first experience that students had in the environment is an exploration of the Anytown world; each student creates his or her own map as a spatial scaffold for later investigation and interaction with characters. Figure 4 presents an image of the Main Street area where students began their time in Anytown.

Figure 4. Anytown’s Main Street in the Quest Atlantis system It included the kinds of locations that students could expect to find in many small towns across the United States such as a general store, a small newspaper, town landmarks, and a gas station.

To support activities such as virtual exploration, landmarks were added to add authenticity and serve as identifiers. When creating their own map, students typically used both the Compass Rose as well as the statue in the center of town as identifying landmarks and then placed other locations and people (on their maps) in response to these locations. Students were expected to

A look inside 21 speak to numerous characters, interact with various objects, explore the strange places in the space, and determine their favorite and least favorite places in the space. As they interacted with characters and explored, new options for Quest activity arose through their dialogue with the various pedagogical agents.

Voluntary writing and exploration activities Several exploratory and optional writing opportunities also existed in the Anytown environment. These paralleled the purely instructional or metacognitive activities that had been designed into the digital space. Some of these activities included the exploration of the richly developed environment, discovery of secret locations, investigation of mysteries, contextspecific ghost stories, and the accumulation of tools that allowed students to engage in play across other worlds within Quest Atlantis. While many of the locations served dual roles by embedding instructional and entertainment affordances within them, how students chose to proceed remained their own responsibility. Figure 5 depicts an example of the relationship between the entertainment-based and instructional Quests.

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Figure 5. Anytown Language Arts Unit linkage between Instructional and Mystery Quests

Designed frustration points and cognitive conflict Stemming from a need to provoke cognitive conflict in the learner as noted by Jonassen (1999; , 2002) in his constructivist learning environments, designed frustration points were created a means of aiding in the prompting of problem-based learning in a digital learning environment. These moments have been engineered into the learning environment with the purpose of (a.) generating cognitive conflict in the learner, (b.) engendering interdependence upon peers, (c.) fostering dependence upon the system affordances, (d.) weaning students from their dependence upon teacher-directed instructions and direction, and e.) providing the teacher with a predictable point at which she would have to provide additional support and evaluate learner’s knowledge constructs. The frustration points generally come in the form of Jigsaw-like instances in which one student discovers a piece of information that is necessary to the success of the whole group (Aronson, 2000). In this case, the pieces of information might not necessarily impact the whole group; instead, they impact the whole experience since the ‘group’ could be the

A look inside 23 learner and other imaginary townspeople. The constant shifting of perspectives (sometimes the learner is a learner and sometimes the learner is a citizen of the town) was intended to allow multiple layers of experience to be available. If students failed to synthesize sufficient pieces of the larger puzzle, their success was limited. One such instance occurred when students were required to pick up the Gas Can clue object to complete the first Mystery Quest involving the Burning Cabin.

In the Burning Cabin Mystery Quest, students were asked by the Sheriff to discover who set the historic cabin on fire while he waited for the fire department from a larger town to help put out the blaze. Students located a series of clues including a foot print that led them to the general store and information that all the kids in town wear the shoes that match it; a matchbook with the name of the nearby hardware store on it which they retrieved from witnesses; and finally, a clue from the hardware store owner that led them to a Gas Can half buried in the ground behind the Old Windmill. Through their interactions with all these characters, they also received information intended to lead them to believe that a particular child committed the crime.

However, before a student can retrieve the Gas Can, they must speak with the parents of the child in order to directly link the Can to the culprit and acquire sufficient evidence.

If a student simply skipped ahead to take the gas can without speaking to the parents because a peer told him or her about it, they encountered a frustration point in that they could take possession of the can. Not only did this scaffold the idea that there is a certain order in which evidence must be collected for it to make sense and be sufficient, it discouraged communication that may be construed as “cheating.” In every game, the concept of cheating exists. However, depending upon the designers’ intent, a concept called “gaming the system” exists and, within reasonable bounds, is acceptable. This may come in the form of constructing

A look inside 24 shortcuts to overcome opponents such as single key-presses that allow for multiple sequences of actions. For example, in World of Warcraft, the option exists to bind multiple actions to a single function key (i.e. F1, F2, etc.). Pressing F1 would then result in a “jump-run sideways-strafe with gun-send pet to attack” sequence that is especially effective in player-versus-player combat.

However, in Anytown, there was no reward for skipping ahead to the end; in fact, if players did so, they were stymied and compelled to speak to friends through system chat, e-mail, and telegram in order to discover what they had done incorrectly. This benefited the design by encouraging student use of the system’s digital communication affordances. This experience helped enforce the idea that it was permissible and even encouraged to aid peers properly; however, outright “cheating” resulted in unwanted experiences. Further, such behavior could result in failure to have one’s Quest accepted because a player neglected to gather all the information that was required in order to write the informational report for the Sheriff.

These designed frustration points encouraged student reliance on the system by making it difficult to complete the game-like tasks in the space without the aid of others. The fact that students in the lab who have the information that an individual needs are often quite distant and it is inappropriate to shout across the room, results in students discovering and making use of the communication affordances of the learning environment. When using the term “affordances,” we mean them in the same sense as Gibson (1977) which Greeno (1994) reiterates to be: “(i)n any interaction involving an agent with some other system, conditions that enable that interaction include some properties of the agent along with some properties of the other system…whatever it is about the environment that contributes to the kind of interaction that occurs (p. 338).” The affordances of the Quest Atlantis/Active Worlds system allowed students to send universally viewable messages or those intended for private discussion. In addition, much of the information

A look inside 25 that students required was also found if they interacted with an appropriate pedagogical agent who could direct them to the correct answer or clue. By giving students different options for information gathering, the system gradually helped to replace the teacher’s role as direct provider of answers, directions, or procedure. The hope was that this would free the teacher to spend more time giving additional feedback on student writing or working with students who required additional time in order to improve their writing. This freedom was expected to come from the reduction in time spent answering the same or similar questions about “What am I supposed to do?” or “How do I get the Gas Can?” If the teacher has been trained well prior to an implementation, they may also view it as their task to redirect students to the system, especially early in the instructional sequence when students are still overly reliant on her for directions and help. In this instance, it is the system and peers who act as teacher and provider of direction and information, not the classroom teacher.

Thus, the teacher can engage more actively in her role as facilitator, informal and formal evaluator of student knowledge constructs, and challenger of improperly constructed knowledge.

This role can be engaged through the system by using the formal feedback process or through questioning students as she facilitates learning in the room, evaluating their understanding and challenging them as difficulties are discovered.

Writing practice in Anytown As designed in the environment, the benefits for writing practice were expected to come from the increased writing practice that students would engage in as part of an intrinsic need to learn the outcome of the story that drives the writing in Anytown. Tuzun’s (2004) research argues that the use of a multi-user virtual environment has the following thirteen benefits for motivating student learning:

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1. Allows student identity presentation to others 2. Increases opportunities for learner social relations 3. Allows playing activities with peers 4. Improves willingness to learn academic content 5. Leads to increased student achievement 6. Provides students with both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards 7. Provides an immersive context different from school 8. Engages students in a fantasy narrative 9. Allows uniqueness of student learning experience 10. Encourages student creativity in writing and developing solutions 11. Allows students to engage with their natural curiosity in a safe place 12. Provides students with control and ownership over their learning, and 13. Gives learners a context of support from peers and adults for learning These motivational aspects of the learning environment itself were part of what was expected to improve student writing in the space. However, additional motivating elements were embedded in the space beyond those present in the multi-user virtual environment that Tuzun observed. For example, as students completed writing tasks, new game tasks and pieces of the narrative unfolded, allowing students to piece together additional parts of the meta-mystery that is the central scaffold upon which each of the sub-narratives rest. The more Quests students completed, the more they were rewarded for their perseverance on the game and writing tasks; more clues were revealed, additional narratives intersected, and characters began to open up, providing additional information. This unfolding of the story is part of what drives learner motivation in

A look inside 27 other inquiry learning environments such as River City (Dede, 2006; Dede, Ketelhut, & Ruess, 2006), Whyville (Foley, Jones, & McPhee-Baker, 2002). Similar to writing related to science inquiry, the writing practice in Anytown encompassed the use of social studies, science, health, and mathematics content knowledge revealed through the emerging story. This design feature included data students could use to explore, analyze, and interpret complex societal issues (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000; Ryder, 2001; Zeidler, Sadler, Simmons, & Howes, 2005).

As in science inquiry environments like River City, students in Anytown were channeled to investigative activities that give them opportunities for discovery, reading followed by analysis of written, mathematical, and science content, and connections to real world work roles involving writing and science that they can aspire to: a journalist in this case. Research by Linn, Clark, and Slotta (2003) has found that such roles can improve student understanding of the relationship between the work they are doing in the learning environment and future work for an adult career. In Anytown, the writing that students completed was modeled for them by the pedagogical agents, as found effective by Baylor and Kim (2005); the written artifacts embedded in the space as hard scaffolds, a technique employed by Brush and Saye (2003); and through written artifacts left by other students who have engaged in Anytown activities. Further, the writing activities, clues, and non-human objects in the environment included embedded hard scaffolds to help students through more difficult game and writing tasks which have been found

by Brush and Saye (2001; , 2003) and Linn, et al (2003) to be required as an aid for students when they encounter largely unstructured, open-ended activities like written response. These scaffolds were embedded in the form of character advice; instructional references on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and the writing process; as well as those that are embedded within the task language itself that acts as a guide for appropriate content and structure.

A look inside 28

Design Findings As a result of the separate quantitative (Warren, Barab, & Dondlinger, In Press) and qualitative findings (Warren, 2006b, 2006c; Warren & Dondlinger, Under Review) of the study, we noted several outcomes related to the instructional and game design elements within the Anytown environment noted in the previous sections. We present first the design elements that were successfully implemented and their linked results as noted in the research along with recommendations for revision to further improve student experience. Secondly, we present those elements that were either less successful or unsuccessful, the context surrounding their lack of success, and recommendations for improvement.

Successful design elements Several instructional design elements present in the Anytown game met with success upon reaching students in the classroom (Warren, Barab, & Dondlinger, In Press; Warren & Dondlinger, Under Review). These included 1.) using game design principles as a means of motivating students; 2.) including tutorial learning tasks to acclimate students to the structure of the game; 3.) basing content, narrative, and learning activities on state standards to develop learning objectives; 4.) using a multi-arc story narrative to drive multiple forms of learning and game tasks in the unit; 5.) leveraging rewards as a result of successful task solution; and 6.) employing designed frustration points to engender cognitive dissonance as a means to foster knowledge construction. Each is discussed further in the following. •

Game design principles. The Anytown environment included game elements suggested

by Salen and Zimmerman (2004); specifically, these were 1.) artificial conflict, 2.) win

A look inside 29 scenarios, and 3.) a rule-based system that could be combined with instructional design principles to increase student engagement with literacy tasks and improve student learning. According to the quantitative data related to the voluntary tasks present in Anytown, students engaged most in the game tasks that were present in the system.

Further, more than 80% of the dialogue in the chat and e-mail system was focused on solving the game tasks: students asking directions about how to find necessary characters or clues to solve each. In the future, we will include learning tasks that structurally function much more closely to the game tasks to capture student motivation. •

Tutorial learning tasks. Those tasks present in the tutorial that preceded student entry into the system as well as the first ill-structured learning problem within Anytown were reported by students to be necessary to their success at completing the game and learning tasks that followed these (Warren, 2006a; Warren & Dondlinger, Under Review). In the future, we would include more robust tutorial experiences and build in an additional two to three days for students to learn how to use the game and its functions prior to implementing a learning game intervention.

•

Standards-driven learning objectives, activities, and outcomes. By starting with the Indiana state standards (ISTEP), we were able to ensure a symmetry among our choice of learning objectives that drove the design and development of the ill-structured problem activities as well as student knowledge construction in the game. These objectives also informed the selection of appropriate outcome measurements in the form of writing prompts specifically designed to address the descriptive writing goals at the heart of Anytown. In the future, we would reduce the number of learning objectives that would be addressed by the design of the environment while at the same time reducing the amount

A look inside 30 of game content that would target student players in this age group to better focus them on individual objectives. •

Multi-arc story narrative to drive learning. As noted by Jonnassen & HernandezSerrano (2002), stories can be effective at scaffolding student problem-solving in a constructivist learning environment. The findings of our study were similar with students finding that the story helped them make sense of the problems they were solving (Warren, 2006b; Warren & Dondlinger, Under Review). The story driving Anytown had multiple arcs tied to larger themes, which students followed in different directions, depending on which most interested them. Again, with this age group, we would likely reduce the number of available storylines as they were sometimes confusing for students or were overly developed for the amount of time and focus that students could spend.

•

Leveraging rewards. Students engaged heavily with the reward structure of Anytown as they were rewarded often for both completing ill-structured problems as well as the game tasks. Some of the game tasks rewarded students with clues or items that could be used to gain access to new spaces, could be combined with others to make new items, or indicated their progress within the linear piece of the game structure as a means of identity building while concurrently acting as a means of gate keeping. Without the reward, students could not progress to the next game or learning task. This structure functioned well, and we would keep this intact with few modifications, perhaps improving the graphic quality of the rewards.

•

Designed frustration points. As noted earlier, designed frustration points are structures that are designed a means of (a.) generating cognitive conflict in the learner, (b.) engendering interdependence upon peers, (c.) fostering dependence upon the system

A look inside 31 affordances, (d.) weaning students from their dependence upon teacher-directed instructions and direction, and e.) providing the teacher with a predictable point at which she would have to provide additional support and evaluate learner’s knowledge constructs. These points, especially, the Gas Can clue noted above worked well and the teacher was prepared to help students overcome their frustration by redirecting them to get help from their peers and the game system itself. In the future, we would include these in the tutorial to prepare students better to overcome them with less teacher direction to conserve her time.

Less than successful design elements Increased system engagement outside of school. By developing an online game that students could access at home we sought to increase the amount of time they could spend working with peers at a distance to solve the problems posed in the game. We hope that this would help resolve the dilemma that there is commonly insufficient classroom time available for student problem solving. However, upon conducting interviews with students during and at the conclusion of the design intervention, only three students reported having spent time in Anytown outside of the computer lab time at home. In future, we would create structures within the game that would reward players for engaging in play outside of the school time by providing tools and information that are only available during particular time periods such as four to eight o’clock PM. Too much content. Given that the intervention was only intended to last for eight class periods which is about eight hours, the designers were inefficient in their planning and overdesigned the game to include about fifty hours of possible content if players engaged in all of the non-required elements. As a result, players indicated that they were frustrated by the end of the

A look inside 32 implementation that they did not have enough time to engage in the more exciting elements of the haunted cave and the mad scientist’s lab. In future designs, we would reduce the amount of content present to better fit the intervention and have a larger number of smaller games with individual game and learning outcomes rather than a large game with a large number of learning and game outcomes throughout an emerging story as student attention with this fourth grade audience was insufficient to maintain their interest over the long term.

Teacher training. While we provided an hour of training in the 3-D world prior to the implementation of the intervention and a teacher’s guide with text, images, explanation of the teacher’s, role, and description of the unit and its goals, an hour was found to be insufficient. The teacher did not have time to work through Anytown prior to her students’ use of it due to time constraints both at work and home. This resulted in misunderstanding of the functions and intention of the system and led to the teacher imposing her own rules and restrictions that superceded those designed into the system, design features that would have resulted in student self-direction and increased teacher feedback from the beginning of the implementation (Warren & Dondlinger, Under Review; Warren & Dondlinger, In Press). In future iterations, we will make sure that the teacher spends at least 5-10 hours using the learning game system alone and with the designers prior to implementing the system with students. Further, we would ensure that students use the larger Quest Atlantis system and its accompanying tutorial prior to using any of its thematic sub-worlds, whether that is Anytown or the science inquiry-based Taiga (Barab et al., In Press).

Methods for researching the design. The research methods that were employed in this design were far too obtrusive and interfered with student use of the system because they were constantly aware they were being watched. In addition to three video cameras, numerous digital

A look inside 33 audio recorders, and two researchers using TechSmith’s Camtasia to capture student interactions in the 3-D space, there were four or more human researchers present in the classroom writing down observations in addition to the teacher, pre-service teacher assigned to the class, and technology specialist. The sheer number of people in the room likely skewed the findings negatively and in the future, we will try to use far less obtrusive measures such as ingame video capture, pre- and posttest quantitative measures alone, and follow-up structured interviews to capture data and minimize our impact on the intervention.

Implications As a result of these design findings, we have identified five implications for future designs of learning games using MUVES or other digital platforms. Whether these designs are intended to impact student literacy or simply employ a similar model for design to target other content areas such as science or social studies, many similarities in those elements must be present for a learning game design to meet with successful student learning. These implications focus on a.) the technological system, b.) the instructional design elements, and 3.) the game design elements present in such games.

Choose a system that will allow the designers to easily build a game. Instructional designers should focus on finding a system that allows them to blend instructional and game elements. If the definition of the term game says that the design must include 1.) a win scenario, 2.) conflict, 3.) player/learner feedback, and 4.) an interactive rule system, then designers should choose a system that allows them to include these elements easily rather than forcing them into a system that does not readily allow it. If they system presents difficulty for including the game elements, then it will be extremely difficult for designers to link them together with the

A look inside 34 instructional design methods that they are working to use and the content that they are trying to deliver.

Choose a system that is engaging to students. If the technological system has poor quality graphics and sound at the outset, it may turn off learners who have better games on their mobile phones. This may prevent them from ever getting to the fantastic game and instructional content that designers painstakingly built because the students have run off to a more engaging space. If graphics and sound effects that appear at the outset are high quality, they may be able to hook students in long enough that they are willing to continue their engagement even if the quality degrades later in the game.

Align instructional methods and media affordances. When choosing an instructional theory or method, designers should always take into account how necessary the media affordances of the game system are to the instructional goals. If a designer can develop the instruction more quickly and cheaply without involving a video game, or the game does not make the instruction a.) more efficient, b.) more accessible to students, c.) more engaging, d.) replicable while reducing the teaching load, or e.) result in higher levels of learning, then designers should spend the time using another approach that will not take the large number of hours (2000+ in most cases) to develop. The visual, audio, and other media affordances can only take you so far in terms of increasing engagement, so make sure the time is worth the benefits.

Write a compelling narrative. As the authors can attest after more than twenty years of playing video games, many games have horrible, disengaging stories. Designers must explore the genres and topics that are most of interest to their target audience. This will likely mean research before development involving interviews, surveys, or questionnaires. Very little can rescue a game once the designers have chosen to write a poor quality narrative about an uninteresting

A look inside 35 subject. Designers should spend thoughtful time developing the plot using graphical tools and try to get feedback from members of the target audience before it is complete and the designers become invested. Just because it is interesting to a 30 year-old graduate student, does NOT mean that a sixth grader will want to engage with a story about a global conspiracy.

Develop interesting characters. Designers should ensure that the audience can relate to and even like the heroes and villains in the story to help get them invested in the game and learning tasks. If they are supposed to dislike a character, the villain should be iconic and ruthless. If they are supposed to help the character, they should feel empathy towards it so that they want to go through the necessary work to improve the plight of the character. It helps to plan the characters' personalities and histories with character sheets like those that are used to develop non-digital role-playing game characters, which can easily be found online.

Conclusion Social constructivist learning environment principles as well as game design principles resulting from analysis of several video games informed the design of the Anytown multi-user learning environment. The game-like learning environment, while limited by the underlying Active Worlds and supplemental Quest Atlantis systems, was designed and developed to balance the tension between ensuring that the learner had sufficient instructional and task scaffolding while concurrently engaging the student with frustrations that built interdependence with peers and the instructional system of Anytown. While the findings of the initial quantitative study of the use of this learning environment by elementary school students is reported elsewhere (Warren, Barab, & Dondlinger, In Press), the statistically significant gains noted in the study indicate that this form of development shows promise for impacting learning.

A look inside 36 The goal of this design was to allow the teacher to engage in fewer repetitive teaching behaviors such as giving directions regarding a task. In order to accomplish this goal, characters were designed to function as pedagogical agents within the learning environment. These characters associated narratives were structured to help reduce the teacher’s burden while still including instruction as well as an avenue for the teacher to provide adequate feedback to the learner. Simultaneously, the design was intended to engage students to complete learning activities on a volunteer basis without teacher mandate. This was accomplished through the revision of the design to include additional game-like activities in the form of Mystery Quests.

In thinking about the future design of environments such as Anytown, a few key limitations are worth discussing: 1. The limitations imposed by the system itself; 2. The limitations of time and funding 3. The limitations of practicality First, the system itself, Active Worlds, was never meant to support dialogue. The dialogue system, added separately, was constantly in a state of flux, primarily due to its being designed and implemented simultaneously. In future projects, it would be to the benefit of the project to determine the required specifications for any support software during the larger design phase and then allow sufficient time and funding to implement.

The second key limitation was time and funding. Since it was an add-on to the existing Quest Atlantis project, Anytown design and development often had to take a backseat to larger QA concerns. Having its own funding may have made it possible for Anytown to not only be designed more swiftly, but also in a more iterative way. The final and perhaps most important limitation is practicality. One of the key struggles of the design team was determining how much

A look inside 37 detail was enough and where certain detail needed to be. The design of an environment, even a small town, is easy; however, making that small town come alive is a very complex process. The moment the designer decides to give dialogue to one character, a decision needs to be made whether to give that level of dialogue to ‘every’ character. This is listed as a limitation because concerns of a practical nature typically work in direct conflict with innovation and creativity – two things that the design of a learning environment need in abundance.

Ultimately, Anytown was successful, both in its design as well as the implementation of that design for research and learning purposes. With that said, future learning environment design would be well-served to take more time to consider not ‘what needs to be designed?’ but instead to have more time and resources to look at the question of ‘what could be designed?’

The potential rewards of narrative-based learning environments are compelling even beyond the appeal of massively-multiplayer online games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft (Dickey, 2007) and those based on sound research show tremendous promise (Barab et al., In Press; Steinkuehler, 2004; Tuzun, 2004). Nevertheless, determining the next innovation will always need adequate support and resources.

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A LOOK INSIDE A MUVE DESIGN PROCESS: BLENDING INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND GAME PRINCIPLES TO TARGET WRITING SKILLS Author Biographies: Scott J. Warren, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Learning Technologies College of Education University of North Texas 1300 Highland Street, Matthews Hall PO Box 310530 NT Station Denton, TX 76203-1335 Phone: (940) 765-2799 or (940) 369-7489 Email: swarren@unt.edu or sjwarren1@yahoo.com Bio: Scott Warren works as an Assistant Professor of Learning Technologies at the University of North Texas. He holds a PhD in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University. His current research examines the use of emerging online technologies such as podcasting, immersive digital learning environments, digital video, and open source course management tools in complex systems. Prior to working in higher education as a research, Scott taught both social studies and English in urban and suburban settings which led him to his current interests.

Richard A. Stein, M.S. Doctoral Candidate

A look inside 44 Department of Instructional Systems Technology Indiana University- Bloomington Instructional Designer Option Six stein@optionsix.com Option Six, Inc. 320 West 8th Street, Suite 220 Bloomington, IN 47404 Work phone: (812) 330-0606 x.216 Work fax: (812) 337-9705 Bio: While currently working as an instructional designer at a top e-learning firm, Richardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research interests extend far beyond e-learning. In addition to a heavy background of both teaching and researching in games and simulations in instruction as well as a general interest in the preparation of college teachers, Richard is well-versed in instructional theory, methodologies and instructional strategies. As an e-learning specialist, Richard has been involved in the design and development of web-based training solutions for companies such as Microsoft and Prudential Financial.

Mary Jo Dondlinger, M.A. Doctoral Student Department of Learning Technologies University of North Texas Instructional Designer Richland College mdondlinger@unt.edu Phone: (940) 369-7489 Fax: (940) 565-2185 Bio: Mary Jo Dondlinger is an Instructional Designer at Richland College and a doctoral student in Educational Computing at the University of North Texas.

Sasha A. Barab, Ph.D. Associate professor Departments of Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems Technology, and Cognitive Science Indiana University-Bloomington sbarab@indiana.edu Phone: (812) 856-1553 Fax: (812) 856-0862

A look inside 45 Bio: Sasha Barab is an Associate Professor in Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems Technology and Cognitive Science at Indiana University. He also holds the Barbara Jacobs Chair of Education and Technology. Dr. Barab holds a PhD granted by the University of Connecticut.

His current work involves the research and development of rich learning environments, frequently with the aid of technology, that are designed to assist children in developing their sense of purpose as individuals, as members of their communities, and as knowledgeable citizens of the world.