IT’S ALL A GAME – READY TO PLAY ON THE CAMPUS OF THE FUTURE? Thomas Mengel

IT’S ALL A GAME – READY TO PLAY ON THE CAMPUS OF THE FUTURE?

By Thomas Mengel

Ludus could mean ‘school’, but it could also mean ‘sport’ or ‘game’.... Ludus had been designed as a place of learning1 .

Students of the University-as-Playground engage in world-making, with players building pretend worlds, inhabiting them, playing in them, and role playing within these imaginary environments. Students and faculty also transgress the rules, invent new rules, and play games based on these new rules2 . ”

Gaming

IAM not a gamer (not yet anyway). That might just change after I devoured Ernest Cline’s Science Fiction novel Ready Player One and gobbled up the Steven Spielberg movie shortly after.

Translated into more than 20 languages and lauded around the globe this “grown-up’s Harry Potter”3 may easily become, if it isn’t already, the cult piece of Sci Fi, virtual reality (VR), and gaming. In this 2011 novel the protagonist Wade Watts engages in a global VR game created by the fictitious late billionaire James Halliday. Set in the 2040s, the winner is promised to inherit Halliday’s fortune and sole control over the simulated reality OASIS that people turn to trying to escape their dystopian world. Ludus is one of the planets in OASIS hosting people’s virtual world of learning and major episodes of the game.

I was intrigued by discovering the Matryoshkan set of worlds in Ready Player One, nestled like Russian dolls. I journeyed from “my world” to the fictitious world of Ernest Cline’s novel, immersing myself into the virtual world of OASIS, finally entering Ludus’ world of learning and games within OASIS...and back. I immediately knew that this – together with David Staley’s conceptual essay from 2015 about The Future of the University4 – might serve as an inspiration for the campus of the future.

Campus of the future

“Dear Colleagues, we need your help and expertise in designing our campus of the future”, the email from our university executive reads. “Dwindling student numbers and reduced funding from our government threaten the sustainability of our university. Students and the general public are concerned about the value of a traditional university education. Our university needs to urgently address that...” I noticed myself nod in agreement and issue a sarcastic snort with an I-told-you-so-attitude while I finished reading, “...and we hope that you will contribute to developing a strategy for our university of the future”.

I told myself that I needed to accept the challenge and get to work. I might finally find open eyes and ears for the concepts and ideas that I worked on during my sabbatical leave with colleagues within my global network. Maybe we now were ready for the disruption that we thought was needed for our system of higher education.

Given my latest fascination with games and excitement about nestled realities, I would start with concepts detailing the University of Play, Nomad University, and Interface University that we had gleaned from Staley5. I started sketching out some of our ideas in terms that would catch the attention of university

administrators and could be understood by all stakeholders. Reviewing my earlier notes, I imagined a world of education with play as the major paradigm, where learning is facilitated wherever problems need to be studied and solved, and in which humans learn, even think, together with machines, taking full advantage of technological and digital advances.

The University of Play, or Ludic University, I began to jot down, embodies the experience of play being an important element of human development and strongly connected with learning, like on planet Ludus in Ready Player One. However, the University of Play would move beyond traditional seminar rooms and laboratories and introduce studios as places where learners can follow and satisfy their curiosity like artists imagining and creating possible futures. Providing space for serious play, experimentation, and exploration, the university becomes the playground for adults, where engaged learners – students and faculty – build, live, and play in “pretend worlds”6 on their own terms and rules.

Nomad University would further disrupt the traditional approach to education by dispensing with set physical spaces for learning. Instead, faculty and students “travel” to where the challenges are, study immersed in real-life scenarios, and cooperate on exploring meaningful solutions. The mode of travelling, studying, and cooperating on solutions changes from case to case, including physical journeys and locations as well as virtual travels and modes of collaboration.

I paused and remembered the use of teleportation between different locations and learning environments in the virtual world, as imagined in Ready Player One and used widely in virtual games.

I suggested that teleportation in between virtual spaces of learning could become a powerful, cost effective, and equalizing alternative, further removing the financial barriers of higher education. Like in many-sided study abroad programs, learners, including faculty, could encounter the unfamiliar and explore new worlds outside of familiar educational environments, in many cases from wherever they were. At Nomad University, learners could take advantage of a mix of “real” and “virtual” immersion into the unknown.

These technological advances, particularly offered by artificial intelligence (AI) and VR, could be topped by the Interface University, where humans would team up with computers allowing learners “to engage in a level of cognition not possible with the human brain alone”7. In a symbiosis of this kind, as effectively demonstrated in the OASIS virtual environment of Ready Player One, the webs of computers would be more than simple tools; they would become powerful resources for teams of humans collaborating with each other in exploring and creating highly innovative approaches to mastering complex challenges. The key paradigm and objective of Interface University, I concluded, is symbiotic collaboration and development between humans and computers, not replacement of one by the other.

I could clearly see the beauty in how these three modes of higher education could enhance each other in creating a fun, flexible, and fluid learning environment, going far beyond the fragmented implementation of individual components that we could already find here and there. I could also imagine how two other elements of Staley’s vision might fit in helping create the campus of the future: Polymath University adds the idea of disparate disciplines connected as idea-spaces and the Applied Liberal Arts College focuses on acquiring proficiencies required across different work settings.

I also was convinced: While all factual description and argumentation was needed to cater to my academic colleagues, I needed to go beyond the format of a traditional paper. I needed something more exciting and engaging to reach a wider and diverse audience. More importantly, I needed a way to make readers see and feel how the suggested campus of the future, its components and connections, and its way of life were substantially different from what we know. I needed to invite them on a journey they hadn’t been on before. I needed to allow them to see and feel, what they, what we, have not yet seen and felt. I thought a story should work.

2040

“How can I direct your thoughts?” my virtual assistant Dana welcomes me after I activated them with a blink of my eyes. Awaiting my instructions, Dana smiles at me from the top right corner of my iGlasses.

“HAIL3000, please”, I say and immediately I watch myself entering the virtual seminar room of our industry sponsored Human-AI-Interface Lab. I walk by colleagues and grad students busy at their work stations. Some are conversing at a holographic display manipulating a 3-D projection floating between them. Most wear iGlasses or VR headsets and wearable sensor-transmitter combos. I approach my colleague Punji, the lab director....

nnn

Today

“Johnson, you’re back!” Kripke from Physics patted my back with several colleagues onlooking, “How was your sabbatical? What are you up to?”

“Have a beer on me and I’ll tell you all about it!” I welcomed everybody with a handshake guiding them to the bar of the Faculty Lounge.

“Now we’re talking!” Punji a research assistant from Math chimed in.

The waiters were busy serving drinks. I was pleased to see representatives of the administration and unions among the crowd that had followed my invitation. At 2 pm sharp I remotely started the TV screens showing the Danish National Symphony Orchestra performing the Star Wars Suite. After the dramatic intro, I turned down the volume and took the mic:

“Welcome to the beginning of a journey into a “universe-ty” that may feel far, far away. It can be life-changing for all of us.”

I detected a range of facial expressions, but I had everyone’s attention.

“As you know, I have been on leave exploring transformative visions of the future. This afternoon, I will share highlights of this journey including some challenges and tremendous opportunities.”

Many were now frowning.

“Please join me on an immersive, interactive journey into a virtual campus. We will see how we can tap into substantial research money. We will address existing concerns and risks. And we will play a game of future foresight for our university. The lounge team will now hand out VR headsets to each of us...”

nnn

2040

“Well hello there; I can see you are all busy!” I greet those who notice me coming in with a nod and then turn to Punji.

“Can you bring me up to speed on the lab’s latest work?”

“Buckle up, Johnson!” Punji responds with a grin, exerts a few swipes with their right hand on the virtual display mid-air, and selects ‘Play’.

I find myself catapulted into a simulation showcasing our university’s transformation over the past 20 years. I am zooming through a universe with stars. Reminded of the intro sequence of The Big Bang Theory TV series, I fly by a metallic grey marble labelled ‘technology’ on my left, just before a fiery red ball appears to my right, ‘cognition’ written across in dark letters. Looking back, I can make out ‘social innovation’, a sphere with a mountainous surface reflecting in all shades of green, just before all stars implode and then expand into a web of firing synapses.

“Welcome to today’s learning environments”, a solemn voice greets me through my implanted earphone while we seem to be circling back with a nauseating movement. I now see countless planets in all colors of the rainbow; some disrupt each other, or the spheres they are orbiting, being thrown off course and flying in all directions like shooting stars. I can only make out ‘social impact’, ‘design thinking’, and ‘culture management’ in passing.

Shiny space ships zoom by, introduced as colleges and universities by the same voice I heard earlier. They form a web labelled ‘competency-based education networks’, some of them docked to ‘breakthrough incubators’ and ‘innovation labs’.

I feel slingshot into a continuum of five interconnected universes8: At Polymath University I see learners studying disparate disciplines in connected idea-spaces. Students and faculty at Nomad University do not all gather in classrooms; instead learning occurs where problems need to be solved either in a virtual or traditional learning environment. In Interface University I see humans thinking and interacting with computers in teams. Applied Liberal Arts College English majors and chemistry students advance and test their critical thinking skills collaborating on various reallife scenarios. The University of Play – my personal favorite – uses serious games and experiments with alternative ways co-creating new realities in a trans-disciplinary multi-verse.

Just when the end credits allow me to recover, I am sucked into what reads: “Let the games begin, and may the Odds be ever in your favor!”9

nnn

Today

“You can now take off your VR headsets and hand them back to the lounge team!” I addressed my colleagues bringing them back to the present. “I hope this immersive experience was able to convey my passion for a whole new learning environment and my hope that together we will be able to build a new world of playful learning. I am not saying this is easy, but we already do have some building blocks in place. Now, we have to seize the opportunity to collaborate on putting them together; imagine, invent, and implement what is missing, and again be a leader in innovative education. If we combine our courage and creative forces, virtually, not even the sky is the limit...”

NOTES:

1Cline, E. (2011). Ready Player One. Kindle edition. Location 1183 2Staley, D. (2015). The Future of the University. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/ articles/2015/11/the-future-of-the-university-speculative-design-for-innovation-inhigher-education 3Serle, R. (2011). ‘Ready Player One’: An Interview with Author Ernest Cline. Huffington Post, August 17. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ rebecca-serle/ready-player-one-ernest-cline-interview_b_929300.html 4Staley, 2015, ibid. 5Ibid. 6Ibid. 7Ibid. 8Ibid. 9Inspired by Collins, S. (2008). The Hunger Games. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Dr. Thomas Mengel: Professor of Leadership Studies, University of New Brunswick, Canada; Proud member of WFSF and ILA; Writer and Futurist, APF, WFS (tmengel@unb.ca)

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