L O C A T I O N -‐ B A S E D M O B I L E G A M I N G A T H E O R E T IC A L W A L K T H R O U G H A N D D IS C U S S IO N O N D IG IT A L G A M E -‐B A S E D L E A R N IN G A N D L O C A T IO N -‐B A S E D M O B IL E G A M IN G
ABSTRACT Many theorists believe that the learning system is not working ideal. Students do not learn efficiently, because it is boring and they have many opportunities to direct their focus on the computer screen instead. Something should be done, and one of the hypes is digital game-‐ based learning. Learning through games sounds like an idyllic solution, but is it really? The way learning games function today is not at all playful or engaging says Miguel Sicart (lecturer in game design at Center for Computer Game Research and head of the Media Technology and Games program at IT University of Copenhagen). Students do bring all their mobile devices to class, so there should be a way to exploit these digital tools to engage students more in the learning process. I will in this research paper give an introduction to the field of digital game-‐based learning, present some of the research, and discuss the different arguments for and against digital game-‐based learning and the difference between digital game-‐based learning and location-‐based mobile gaming.
KEYWORDS Mobile media; Gaming; Education; Location-‐based mobile gaming; Play
I. INTRODUCTION Teens use mobile media all the time and everywhere. They are in fact probably the most ideal users of the cell phone [1 – Ling, p2]. When kids began to acquire cell phones and brought them to school, teachers would have problems to get the kids’ attention. This is still a problem in high school and at the university – the students have so easy access to fun and games on their mobile devices, which mean they have less attention on the lectures. Some places the cell phone have become prohibited because of bullying and cheating during exams [1]. The cell phone was a revolutionary device, which for the elder generations was new, different, and might seem somehow scary, and therefore this mobile device has been through a lot of doubt and judgements. Addiction might be one of the most discussed subjects now that the smartphone seem like the centre of many people’s everyday life. With the smartphone the cell phone moved from being a communication tool with the ability to make calls and send text messages to being able to connect to the Internet. This opened up to a world of possibilities, especially for “[2 – Goggin, p140] bringing the affordances of computing to the cell phone.” This intriguing small device has many possible potentials and the mobility makes it indeed available twenty-‐four/seven. If you try to count the amount of computer technologies you
carry around when at work or in school, it will probably surprise you. You might have a laptop, a cell phone or smartphone, an mp3 player/iPod, a digital watch, a digital camera, and so on… There are computers all around us, and we interact with them all the time – sometimes intentionally; sometimes you do not even think about it. Nowadays, the majority of students bring there laptops, tablets, and smartphones to class, and – speaking of own experience – this can be very distracting, because of the easy access to everything else than having attention on the lecture and write notes. Of course this depends on the interest in the teaching. All have access to the wireless Internet, and almost everyone will have a smartphone, laptop or tablet computer, so why not take advantage of the immense availability of mobile digital devices? If you could be able to use mobile media effectively in school during class, students might be engaged on another level. Thus, I find the field of digital game-‐based learning and location-‐based mobile gaming interesting – is it applicable to make the mobile devices useful to the lessons instead of disturbing? Marc Prensky, Jane McGonigal, and Henry Jenkins suggest implementing gaming into school. They believe gaming is something millions of people actually like to do, and that there are many possibilities in implementing games in school activities [3 – McGonigal, video]. For us students it surely sounds like an ideal solution to boring classes and repetitive homework, but what about the teacher perspective? The teacher perspective is very important, because they are the persons who have to actually implement it and work around it. Therefore, I had an interview with Miguel Sicart to hear about his critical view on learning games. This leads to my overall thesis statement:
A. THESIS STATEMENT Students today likes to game, and mobile gaming affords interesting perspectives that can be useful to innovate the learning environment. Research Question: How does mobile gaming affords learning?
II. GAMING CAN MAKE A BETTER WORLD In a TED talk from 2010 Jane McGonigal talks about how games like World of Warcraft enables players to play heroes and save worlds. The excitement of being on the verge to an “epic win” is the way people should feel in real life situations, and she argues that it is possible to create games that will solve real life problems [3]. When studying at the IT University of Copenhagen you see and experience the world of gaming close up, even though I am not a gamer myself. Gaming is an extremely huge part of many people’s life and therefore also a big part of global media and the gaming industry [4 – Goggin, p99].
Gaming on cell phones has evolved a lot after the smartphone’s arrival and the access to the Internet. This has made multiplayer games possible on your mobile device, and thus has made gamers consider this way of gaming with others as a regular thing. Playing games is something we have done since childhood, and having fun is one of the best ways to learn. So why not make school funnier by playing games? Suggesting that the learning and training system is broken, Marc Prensky says: “[5 – Prensky, p2] So what’s going on? Is it the system? Is it society? Is it the environment? Is it the parents? Of course each plays a major role. But in almost all the analyses that we read or hear, one point of view is surprisingly absent – that of the learner. What is it actually like to be an elementary, high school, college or business training student today? The answer, overwhelmingly, is – it’s BORING! Boring compared to television, boring compared to computer games, boring compared to movies, boring compared even to WORK! Pretty much any teacher or trainer will tell you it’s difficult to compete with what’s out there.” He also explains how this is really not the students’ fault, even though they might be the ones playing video games in class and getting distracted by funny webpages: “[5] People live in the world into which they are born, and do the things of their time that appeal to them”. So, Prensky’s believe is clearly that the fault lays on the education system and the trainers, and he is supporting the idea of digital game-‐based learning. Among others as well, he consider these learning games as efficient for students gaining the engagement in education. Basically these games are kind of like a computer game, where some certain values will be learned. But how do we know if people will actually learn this way?
III. HOW DO PEOPLE LEARN? The answer to this question is definitely not easy, if not impossible, to defend. The ting is that learning is a very individual matter, and how people learn the best is very different from one person to another. Prensky believes that there is too much focus on what to learn compared to who and how to learn [6 – Prensky, p3]. He states: “[7 – Prensky, p5] Despite the fact that there are many creative trainers and teachers out there, the vast majority of our education has become a series of informational or logical presentations or readings, followed by some sort of quiz or examination.” This system is called the tell-‐test [7] system, and it is basically about broadcasting knowledge to a class of students, and then expects them to be able to pass a test or exam at the end of the course to measure what they learned. Prensky is truly against this way of learning; he simply does not believe it is working, especially not for younger people [7]. They simply do not find it engaging compared to so many other things they can do instead on their mobile media. I agree that it is not the ideal way of learning, but it does indeed depend on the subject of a class. If you are already interested in the subject, you will, to some extend, have attention on the lecture. Still, I as well see a problem with this tradition, because students are rarely interested in all classes, and sometimes it could be nice with some more appealing teaching.
So, there is a need for making school less boring and more engaging, and it also seems there is possibilities in the digital mobile devices that has made its way into the classroom without having anything to do with education, yet. Previously, writing, printing, and reading were the technologies of literacy. Now we have some New Media Literacies [8 – Jenkins, p4] that we should teach our students. Henry Jenkins explains: “[8] Schools and afterschool programs must devote more attention to fostering what we call the new media literacies: a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape. Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking.” Therefore, Jenkins among others suggests that we should think in new ways of education. This is very true. We have a new media landscape, but most young people already have these cultural and social skills, because they grew up with these technologies as so-‐called digital natives. Therefore, it seems to me that it is time to take the next step further. And lots of researchers already have with digital game-‐based learning. But is this actually a good idea, has everything been taking into consideration – for example the teacher perspective? On the next section I will discuss some of the arguments game design teacher Miguel Sicart has against these learning games.
IV. LEARNING GAMES – WHY? WHY NOT? Van Eck presents three different ways, which educators have already implemented games: “[9 – van Eck, p6] have students build games from scratch; have educators and/or developers build educational games from scratch to teach students; and integrate commercial off-‐the-‐shelf (COTS) games into the classroom.” Way number two is the one that describe my view of what digital game-‐based learning is mostly about, because you actually design specific games, which can help people with certain learning outcomes. The thing about these games is that they are not exactly easy to build in a game-‐way-‐fashion. In my interview with Miguel Sicart he elaborated on the importance of play in games: “learning games does not understand how complicated play is. […] There’s this myth, this idea that playing is learning recognition, social interaction, and so on. But we do it because play affords those things. But it also has a very constructive and destructive capacity – when we are in a game we immediately start building, and much more if we are in a sort of multi-‐ agent setting – many people playing the game – for example in a classroom, where the rules of how you play a game with your friends is going to be different than with my friends. We can play Monopoly in extremely different ways even though the game is the same. But learning games do never, I think, adapt to this capacity of play being creative and appropriated and destructive.” I want to emphasize the word destructive, because he had a very good point here. When you play a game, you will sometimes lose, and that is also what makes it even more pleasurable to win the next time. Sicart has a three-‐fold argument, where he explains his scepticism towards digital game-‐ based learning. The first argument is that it will not work outside controlled settings: “when we test these things we are always recreating fake environments. Games do not adapt -‐
many learning games theorists do not think about the importance of context of play in the development of these games. They think that by deploying a game with a particular set of values it will work, the kids will learn, and we move on. And that’s not the point, because learning is, as many other things, socially situated and it’s extremely contextual.” The learning games designed today evolves around a screen, and this is what Sicart means by not being contextual. Richard Van Eck also describes how context is an important aspect when it comes to learning. He refers to the principle situated cognition: “[10 – Van Eck, p4] learning that occurs in meaningful and relevant contexts”, and he means that games might be effective by creating context within the game. This way of context is not the same kind of context Sicart talks about. Sicart’s second point is that the games are not that different from a book. They still need a teacher or a guide to ‘walk you by the hand’ for understanding and learn from the game: “When we make computer games for learning we follow this really old fashioned input-‐ output system”. Sicart is not against using digital mobile media in a classroom, but he believes the screen is the enemy for this purpose. A much more interesting device is the smartphone, because it is small, and you do not have to look at it when interacting with it. His third and most important problem with learning games is actually the first mentioned: learning games does not understand the complexity of play. Sicart strongly believes that play is the key element, and this is a hugely ignored thing in the design of learning games: “So it seems to me that we don’t recognize that it’s not the games we learn from -‐ it’s through play. And learning through play needs dealing with all this complexity about how we create rules; how we negotiates rules; how we sometimes engage in a spiral of destruction, and becomes almost nasty and evil. It’s like all those things are sort of ignored. We build this game, we deploy it in a classroom, and it works because the game works. Instead of saying we build these play situations; we build these play contexts, and through these play contexts things may happen. And for me the keyword is ‘may’ – it’s not the termination.” So, there is a problem with the ‘may’ when it comes to researching and testing learning games. When researchers wants to develop a learning game they need money, and for the money they have to promise some kind of result. That means they have to build a game that works – they cannot ask for money to build a game that may or may not work. And that is a critical point to Sicart’s view of learning through play: “It’s not 100 % efficient. But then again – no learning system is a 100 % efficient, so we are demanding from games the kind of magic that we cannot deliver.” And that is the essential problem with learning games, according to Sicart. He does not see the research going anywhere unless there will be an entirely new assessment on the field.
V. LOCATION-‐BASED MOBILE GAMING Digital game-‐based learning might soon be out-‐dated, but that does not mean we should forget about learning through games and play. They key is to NOT only design for the screen, but to get a new perspective on education – how can we use mobile phones and mobile gaming? The mobile phone does not have to be in the classroom, since it is not tied to one location. Sicart explains: “The mobile phone on the other hand is getting much more
interesting as a tool, and I think that is what we are not having, ‘cause this thing – I’m holding an iPhone – is full of sensors.” The mobile phone, or the smart phone, compared to the computer has sensors, and knows things about itself, for example its location. Delacruz, Chang, and Baker describe how students can learn science through location-‐based mobile game. One example is the game Outbreak @ the Institute, where the students learn how diseases spread [11 – p. 251]. Location-‐based mobile gaming (LBMG) uses mobile devices with GPS instead of tying the learner to a platform. “[12 – p. 252] The technology used in LBMGs supports mobility and interaction, allowing movement in physical space to become central to the game.” The fact that the learner will not be set in a specific location makes it possible to place the learner in a relevant context. Delacruz, Chang, and Baker states how “ [12] anchoring abstract phenomena and information in concrete, physically accessible settings makes the relevant physical context part of learning.” This is the kind of context Sicart refers to as important when designing games and play in an educational milieu. Outbreak @ the Institute is a very good example of how the mobile devices can be used efficiently to learn students about something in a real context. The context might not be real reality, but the game will make it feel real, and the students have to walk around, have discussions, and try to solve a ‘real’ problem. They will not be sitting in front of a screen and click with a mouse in a simulated game. Sicart explains the difference between laptops and mobile phones by saying: “So, while the laptop is a stupid machine in terms of, you know, it’s dumb, it’s encapsulated in itself, the mobile phone affords much more interesting behaviour, and it’s portable; it’s kind of more innocent.” He describes the laptop as being ‘dumb’, because it is ‘encapsulated in itself’, and therefore the user cannot explore anything physical. This is what the mobile phone and other mobile devices can by participatory simulations [13 – p. 253]. Participatory simulations take the explorations off the desktop, and can teach problem solving and critical thinking, when you get the learner to actively interact with the system [13]. A key sentence from Delacruz, Chang, and Baker is that “[13] players experience the simulation from a first-‐hand experience through embodied action.” Participatory simulation is only one way of using mobile devices to learn. Augmented reality is another. Sicart explains how he might find mobile devices interesting to use in school in the future, when everyone has smartphones and/or tablets: “if we think that devices as smartphones or tablets will be present in the schools of the future, I think one way of thinking about how to learn or how to include learning through technology is to avoid the myth of the screen and just look at these objects as sensor devices. And say, if a kid is not going to be looking at the screen, if it’s going to use all the other elements that this technology has, then how can we use it. For instance, using the camera to collect evidence and upload to a shared database. Or use augmented reality to engage and make things more interesting.” In the interview he explains how you could use augmented reality on a tablet for example in a history lesson about Copenhagen. The students could go to ‘Rundetårn’ and look at the city through their tablets or smartphones. Then they might see how the city has changed during the years, and answer different questions by scrolling through the time periods. There are different ways of using digital mobile technologies to make learning mere efficient and fun. But why are these mobile games worthy? Next I’m going to look into the educational affordances of mobile gaming.
AFFORDANCES OF MOBILE GAMING “Exactly, even dumber devices – I’m interested in affording play even through dumb devices that still have some digital elements to it, but also fairly dumb. Cause the dumber the device is, the less focus it’s going to take, and then we can focus on other things. So I’m a little bit fanatic of dumb devices or sensor based devices rather than input based devices, so if an object knows where it is and its surroundings. So it’s much more interesting that the computer knows where it is instead of knowing where you are – then the input can be done in a very different way.” “. And I think that’s why it’s important that some people are already trying to think of this idea of transformation of play, which I think is much more interesting – where the game is just a part of transformation of process”