bewilderED: An Experiment in Using Non-Digital, Transmedia Story Telling & Mystery for Exercise Science Education.

For a long time I have been obsessed with ‘The Mysterious Package Company’ which can be found here: Mysterious Package Company.You can read more about the Mysterious package Company at their website or here. Their tag line ‘Stories you can Touch’, really caught me, and I was instantly interested to find out more about this idea of physical stories. Although a bit pricey, I ordered one of their bespoke story experiences for my partner (The Weeping Book) and waited. We were not disappointed. A month later, a nailed shut wooden crate arrived, addressed to my partner who had no idea what this was or that it had been ordered for him (something that the company suggests for an authentic feel). And then began our journey. I wont spoil the story or go into detail about what was inside the package, but what I will say is that the package managed to balance the art of theatre with beautifully made props alongside the powerful engagement factors of mystery and storytelling, in order to deliver an experience that was quite unlike anything Ive ever experienced before. We are still trying to work out the puzzles that are so wonderfully hidden within the story and props, and the experience has given us lots to talk about.

My mind instantly thought of the work that we had been doing on escapED and how these experiences played with very similar themes (puzzle solving, story, props and the feeling of being involved in something much larger). I also thought on the theories surrounding the use of object play and storytelling play for children, and realised that experimenting with this type of method might have some interesting findings and outcomes for adult play at the level of University education (an area where the ideas of play are desperately needed more!). The three main things that really stood out for me though with ‘The Weeping Book’ and made me sit up and think.. this is where we should be developing our ideas, were the following thoughts:

1. this idea that the experience arrived out of nowhere, my partner didn’t know if this was real or not and I found this really powerful. The not knowing felt like an ARG but with a greater pull. I began to think how could we harness this for education? It felt so powerful, and I was immediately hooked when the crate arrived without warning!

2. the experience seems to keep giving. The more you look into it, the deeper the rabbit hole goes. Puzzles that weren’t there before, suddenly emerge, or you think about something in a slightly different light and boom! Mind blown! It offered a longer experience that we could come back to at any point.

3. I never knew this idea of non-digital transmedia storytelling existed (id seen digital transmedia but never this idea of using real props), but I instantly fell in love with the idea. I felt that it brought together all of the elements of game design, narrative design and theatre that I have always loved. I felt like a child again, uncovering some big Enid Blyton mystery!

So bewilderED was born. A spin off of the escapED series, this was to be the educational version of ‘The Mysterious Package Company’, at least in my head!

So with much enthusiasm, I explained the premise of the project to a colleague of mine, Michael Duncan, Professor of Exercise Science at Coventry University. Luckily, he was also super excited about using this method with some of his Master’s students. He had already developed and was teaching a module that asked the students to look over a fake sports personalities information and data in order to come up with a sports conditioning recommendation for them. The students at the end of the module are asked to present their recommendations via a 15 minute presentation to a fake company who ‘commissioned’ the students to deliver this information. Since the structure was already there, we decided to adapt this module to fit with the bewilderED method so we could compare the data of the new version with the previous version.  

Following the main concept used by ‘The Mysterious Package Company’, the idea that things are delivered through the mail and randomly turn up somewhere from unknown sources, was something that I wanted to try and emulate as much as possible. We decided that the materials were going to be delivered to the students classroom, seemingly from different outside sources, over a 4 week period in the following setup.

Week 1: Introduction to the students of the module by Professor Duncan. To start the illusion that the students were going to be experiencing working with real companies and the element of mystery around the materials and companies involved, we had the students sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) that they would not discuss any personal information regarding what they would see and experience within the next few weeks.

Week 2: The first pack would arrive. Addressed to Mike, the contents held a letter from the British Martial Arts Institute (false company), with instructions detailing what they wanted the students to do (provide a recommendation via presentation) and a physiological assessment report with ‘data’ for the BMAI’s ‘client’.

Page of Fake Report from BMAI

The pack also indicated that they would be shortly contacted by the BMAI’s sister company: Power Prime Labs.

Week 3:  The second pack to arrive was from the sister company ‘Power Prime Labs’. This company was responsible for providing the ‘client’ with supplements. A letter contained in the pack, detailed how they would like the ‘client’ to use the supplement ‘NITRO-Train’, and promised enhanced performance. Alongside this letter was a flyer for NITRO-Train and a sample pack of the NITRO-Train supplements (completely safe for the students to consume, made up by Professor Duncan).

NITRO-Train Flyer found within Week 3s Pack

 Week 4: The third and final pack to be delivered, would be slightly different from the previous two packs. Contained in a plain envelope, a usb stick containing videos of a Muay Thai fight and an interview between a Trainer and a Muay Thai fighter. The videos and interview, would all contain information that alluded to the idea that the fighter was struggling with certain things; psychological issues, training issues, problems with supplements etc). Unlike the previous two packs that obviously came from corporations, this pack had underlying hints that it may have come from the fighter themselves. A cry for help almost.

Week 5: Students are asked to present their findings and overall recommendations to the BMAI company regarding their Muay Thai client. The students believe that a good presentation might land them a real job at this company.

Following the rundown of the packages each week from the different ‘sources’, it was hypothesised that the students should face some challenging ethical issues. They should believe that they are in with a chance of achieving a real job from the BMAI if they present a good client recommendation. However, based on the information they are given, they will need to make a choice about whether they report that the client shouldn’t necessarily take Power Prime Labs supplements (BMAI’s sister company) based on the final packs information.

How the students present their information, and how they’ve thought about the overall welfare of the ‘client’ will all lead to their final grade from the module. The narrative of the ‘client’ and their relationship to the companies, BMAI and Power Prime Labs, provided through the packs is vague and shrouded in mystery enough to allow the students to make their own conclusions as to what they believe the real motivations of each fictional player  in this module is. Used alongside the element of props that they can use, feel and believe are real artefacts, a level of believability was hopefully added to the whole performance.

Currently we are in Week 3 of the experiment. Reports so far have indicated that students have shown assertiveness in leadership in their groups and are inquisitive to the packages that are being ‘delivered’. The students have also tried the ‘NITRO-Train supplements, with some reporting that they feel an increase in their performance (these supplements are placebo pills with no effects).

Following the end of the module, our plan is to run a focus group at the end of the project to report on overall student opinions and feedback. We are planning to focus on various areas such as motivation, engagement, power of mystery, the use of story, use of props and the illusion of reality. I am really looking forward to seeing whether this method of delivering a module, actually encouraged active participation within the students and if so, what were the elements that they found to be the most powerful in their learning experience. Once we have the data we are planning to publish this further, and if we find successful results, we are planning to adapt this method further for other subject areas as well as other ares of Exercise Science.

 

 

Developing Interactive Fiction with Learning Objectives for Fostering Player Choice & Ownership in Education.

Most people are familiar with the paradigm of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, but for those who are not familiar, wiki defines these books as:

“Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children’s game books where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character’s actions and the plot’s outcome.

The player is asked to choose a path that they wish to take at key moments in the story or asked to roll a die/other random generator to select a path, allowing for the player to experience an individual route through a non-linear branching storyline. The player often feels more of an emotional connection to this process because they have had some influence on the outcome of narrative and therefore feel a sense of ownership over the choices they have made within the process. Tom Kuhlmann’s “3C model” to construct scenarios or interactive e-learning in his Rapid E-Learning Blog describes a 3C process in order to create digital-based, interactive choose your own adventures. The 3C’s are as follows:

Challenge: Pose the challenge to the player/reader. What are the problems they face and how is the emotion conveyed/fostered?

Choices: What are the choices available to the player/reader to deal with the challenge that has been posed?

Consequences: Your player/reader has selected a choice, what is the outcome from the choice they made? Are they better or worse off? Has it opened up the story further?

This is a great model in order to remember the basic principles of creating choose your own adventures and adequately describes the mechanics process at the fundamental level. Of course when you talk about interaction fiction and branched scenarios, inspiring connection and emotion from your players is a little more complex and requires a flair for creative writing.

There are some really great examples out there of digital choose your owns and interactive fictions for both entertainment (Trapped in Time (Simon Christiansen, PDF), Hadean Lands (Andrew Plotkin, Glulx), and education (look at work from Dr. Zorn who is based in York University). And whilst I am all for digital versions of choose your owns and IFs, I personally am more interested in developing physical books (such as the FF book series by Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone) and props for this type of experience. Why? Well I believe allowing your players to play through a physical experience of something, allows for another level of emotional connection. Through the use of props, I believe you can create a really great haptic experience that stimulates the senses and enhances the storyline of the adventure. The element of mystery and intrigue can be embedded into these props to add puzzle-solving elements, and due to a physical space being adopted, these experiences could be made for multiplayer purposes, allowing for collaborative learning. In this area, I have recently been inspired by the work of Gisken Day and her experiences that use props to spur conversation and reflection. You can connect with her and her work here: Gisken Day.

So, in a bid to start experimenting in this area of using physical choose your owns for higher education/learning, I set about making a prototype in which we could plan a layout, structure and mechanics of a choose your own in which we could then adapt for various learning objectives at a later date.

I set about creating a story or fan fiction as it were, that was based loosely on a Stephen King novel. The story itself I felt was fairly easy to write, however it took me a long time (longer than anticipated) to figure out the structure.

As seen in the photo, it was very much trial and error to create the structure without any software (there are many out there such as Chatmapper), which to be honest would have helped if I had had the foresight to use (yes thats a paintbrush linking two paths!).  But essentially the structure ended up becoming the following formula:

In this formula, players are presented with a starting piece of the story and given a challenge. They are offered a choice of either path A or B. Once they select a path of either A or B, they are presented with the consequences of their actions and another series of choices depending on the path taken, path A provides the choices A1, A2 or A3 and path B provides the choices B1, B2 or B3. Moving forward from here, the players, depending on the choice they pick, for an example lets say they chose to follow path A and then chose the path A1, are presented once again with the consequences of their actions and then a final ending choice of either eA1.1, eA1.2 or eA1.3. This was the basic structure that I settled on, as this could be expanded or condensed depending on the needs of the story/learning objectives. Within this structure each path way could contain a valuable learning objective for a player to explore or the whole experience could be used as part of a reflective exercise to show different outcomes of real-life scenarios (nursing/medicine/crisis management/business management etc.)

Once this structure was in place, I wanted to explore interesting ways in which players would be able to get from path to path. I settled on two options to play through the experience, offering the player/facilitator options to suit their needs.

The first option is the traditional, allow the player to choose which option they feel they would do in that situation. This allows for a fully player-led experience with the motivations and engagement properties that player choice and ownership offer.

The second option was to use Tangram geometric puzzles and a timing system to choose the paths for the player to follow. Based on the time it took for the player to complete the puzzle, this would lead to a designated path. This idea meant that time could be the factor that affected the outcomes, based on how quickly or slowly the player took equalled how long the player took in the game to respond to something that was happening. In this option, it was determined that different types of puzzles could be used in place of Tangrams depending on the depth of connection with the story and whether the puzzles themselves could be a deeper level of understanding for the story (uncovering extra materials).

Once this main structure was put together, I harnessed the power of help from my colleagues at the DMLL (Rebecca Morris and Olly Wood) to start constructing the real prototype that could be used to show how the experience worked.

Above shows Becky creating the system for the prototype and the layering of each of the paths for the physical experience, and below is the final experience compiled together into a folder.

As previously stated, I am really interested in how props and theatrics enhance the experience of the story and whether they foster a greater emotional engagement in the overall narrative. In each path that held the main branching storylines, physical props (made by Olly Wood) such as maps, shopping lists, photos etc were added with the exert of story. My plans are to include in a future evaluation of the experience whether or not props increase emotion/attachment to the narrative/experience to determine whether they have any meaningful affect on the players for future development.

Whats Next?

Now we have a fully completed prototype, our first exercise into adapting this for educational purposes, is to target the dry area of Research Methods. Currently we are assessing and developing learning objectives in which we can build into a structure that follows the prototype experience. Once this is completed, we hope to trial this with both undergrads and masters students within both Coventry and Salford Universities.

Further work to be considered that I would like to follow up on with this type of experience, is to develop a few different types of puzzles that could be integrated in place of the Tangrams which could have a deeper meaning/ uncovering of additional paths.

Would you like the format that we used to develop your own?

If you would like a template of the format that we used to construct the prototype then I am happy to provide you this for free, just send me a pm/email. All I ask is that you credit myself and the Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry University, if you use the template in any experiences you create yourself.

EscapED Prototype Results & Next Stages

For those of you who have already read the motivation and breakdown of the escapED philosophy and its framework found in this post: escapED Framework , you may know that I was planning on running an exploratory prototype with some EEC, Coventry University staff members at their Innovation Day. We wanted to test the approach of escapED really quickly, a rapid prototype if you will, to see if it had any legs at all and whether this was an idea that we could take and develop further. Well, we did it and we now have the results. We also have an awesome video that shows off some of the video footage of the prototype that can be found here: escapED Promo

What we did:

We developed a prototype experience of escapED that was created for Coventry University staff members with backgrounds in engineering and computing in mind. The educational objective of the prototype was for players to develop soft skills such as communication, leadership and teamwork throughout their experience. The central theme of the prototype was created to produce feelings of action and threat within the players, and the overall main player objectives were to free a hostage and disarm a bomb. Riddles, puzzles and communication tasks were then developed within this theme to fit the needs of the proposed educational content, the overall player learning objectives and their soft skills development.

On the day of the event, members of staff signed up to time slots and were put into teams no larger than 6 players. 3 teams participated in the game, with an overall total of 13 players taking part in the event. Each event lasted around 30 minutes, 10 minutes for introduction and rules, and 20 minutes for the game. A key feature of the design of the prototype was that the teams were split into two groups and placed into two adjoining rooms. One room held the bomb, and the other held the hostage. Riddles and clues were then split between the two rooms and relied on the communication of the players to describe and put the pieces together from both rooms. Players were not allowed to go between rooms and could only communicate via two laptops that were connected to Skype, of which one was assigned to each room. Players could not move or touch the laptops, but could bring clues and puzzles to the laptop to show their teammates based in the other room. A first year drama student was employed to play the part of the hostage and to provide time awareness and clues to the players throughout the game. Most of the players were not aware/had not heard of Escape Room games before the event.

All players were observed by myself via a connection to Skype, and were monitored to observe player engagement and progress within the game. Each team was observed to display a similar method of entering and familiarising themselves with the room, displaying conservative behaviour but quickly figuring out where the laptops were placed and whether the other room could hear them. All players of each of the three teams displayed a high level of engagement throughout the experience, although this diminished somewhat when the players knew they had less than a minute left to complete the room. One team, was observed to develop a strategy in which they had a designated main communicator who would be responsible for relaying the information to the other room. None of the teams successfully completed the room, however a prize was offered to the team that came closest to completing the challenge.

Results:

We collected some results that were more focused around how the staff members perceived the game. Did they find it enjoyable? Would they consider using it as a method for teaching in their lessons? Essentially I wanted to know whether or not the people who would be responsible for implementing escapED into a teaching practice, the facilitators, had any interest whatsoever in these methods of game-based learning. What we found was very exciting, even as a small-scale study with limited participants.

After the experience, each player was asked to fill in a short feedback sheet that asked four exploratory questions about their experience and perceptions of escapED that are detailed below:

1. Do you think escapED has any educational value?
2. Would you consider using the escapED program in your lesson plan?
3. What was good about the escapED prototype session?
4. What could we improve?

From the 13 participant players, a total of 8 feedback sheets were returned with all questions answered. Members who did not complete participant sheets were asked some basic questions concerning their experience. All written feedback exhibited a positive theme throughout in regards to the experience itself. The words; ‘Fun’, ‘Innovative’ and ‘Engaging’ were repeated throughout the feedback and some player’s indicated that they did not realise that 20 minutes had passed. This was also reflected in the verbal feedback. All 8 feedback sheets stated that they could see the educational value of escapED, especially if the puzzles and theme of the experience, were worked into their taught subject matter. All feedback sheets indicated that the players would consider using escapED in their lesson plans but were unsure how to facilitate it. A few responses indicated that they thought the experience would be good as an induction into their lessons to encourage getting to know other students. One concern brought up through a number of the feedback responses was that the participants were curious to see how the experience would work with larger groups of players. None of the feedback received suggested that there were improvements that could or should be made to the experience.

Next Steps:

Since reviewing this prototype, we have concluded that there was enough positive evidence with this small group to suggest that we could take it further to try out a few different games with different user groups such as students/ different faculties.

At present we are developing the following games to trial with students in Coventry University:

• Ethical Hacking Game – A blend on real-world and digital puzzles. To run alongside the first year of the course, the game will be centred around a solve the mystery experience to develop additional skills such as programming and maths.
• University Rules and Regulations – a short 20 minute game to get masters students thinking about University rules and regs.
• 2 x Induction Games (Photography and Aerospace Engineering) – Meet and Greet games to get students talking and working with each other.

Some of these should be implemented and running at the start of this academic year in September. I hope to post some updates on their development leading up to their release.

Other Stuffs:

On more of a random note I have a few talks/workshops coming up at the end of this month where I shall be discussing the benefits of interactive GBL in more depth.

Digibytes Session, DMLL, Coventry University: DigiBytes – Game-Based Learning

Jisc Connect More Event (More Training Focused): ConnectMore

 

 

escapED: how to design interactive, live-action, game-based learning.

It’s been a while since my last post (sorry!) due to several work/life distractions. One of those distractions is what I’d like to share with you today; escapED. What is escapED I hear you cry? Well this is a new programme that we’ve been developing here at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab, to become a part of the Game Changers initiative. We’ve been working hard to get a prototype session up and running ready for next weeks; Coventry University, EEC Innovation Day for staff development.

So how does it work? Well, escapED is a programme to primarily aid the design and development of interactive, live-action, game-based learning (GBL) experiences. escapED has been adapted from traditional Escape Rooms and Live-action gaming experiences (think Crystal Maze and Knightmare and you’ve got the general idea) and has been given an educational twist. The beauty of escapED is that it can tick several boxes that other game-based learning applications cant and have struggled with before. I will say now that escapED will not be for everybody and will certainly not provide all of the answers for playful learning, however, I believe that this may be the start of a closer look at how we can bring GBL quickly and easily into higher/further educational establishments to provide more enjoyable and interactive learning experiences. Here are 11 reasons for believing this:

1. It appeals to a wide audience (data indicates equal participation from both genders and a wide age range within traditional Escape Rooms play).
2. It can be adapted to almost any subject through using puzzles and riddles to achieve desired learning outcomes. Want to create an interactive induction day for your students? No problem! Want to create a learning experience entered on engineering challenges? No problem! … you get the idea.
3. It can help support Flipped and Disruptive learning techniques. Puzzles can become part of the experience of student-led learning.
4. escapED can be designed to be multi-disciplinary and provide cross-collaboration opportunities, allowing staff and students to come together and put their skills to the test through a live-action experience.
5. escapED can be made quickly and can be easily changed to reflect the needs of the learners. No programming necessary!
6. Students and staff can make their own experiences to challenge their peers as part of the learning process.
7. Players can develop their soft skills such as communication and collaboration as part of the experience.
8. The only limit is the creativity behind the design and development of the experience. Themes, puzzles, props, actors… the list can go on depending on how low-key or detailed you want to make your experience.
9. It doesn’t take as much time as you think! I won’t lie, there is an additional effort to creating these experiences, however, I believe the extra effort is worth the end result. Read from a powerpoint vs engaging with an object and real people to solve a problem… I know which option I would choose.
10. People will be talking about it for ages. Did you get this puzzle? What was this about? How did you..? Seriously, in just one days worth of testing, the groups used for testing were buzzing long after the event discussing puzzles and riddles.
11. Finally, its super fun! I mean really, REALLY fun. The DMLL is talking about visiting a traditional entertainment Escape Room in Birmingham for ‘Team Building’ and I can’t wait. Imagine engaging your students/staff so much that they “can’t wait” to take part in your next session.

Now I could go on about the benefits of adopting escapED as a paradigm for creating live-action game-based learning, but that is for you guys to determine yourselves. I shall be updating and writing about how the prototype goes after next week and will hopefully have some more concrete evidence to support escapED after the training event.

But before that, I would like to present the escapED framework that was developed to help create the prototype experience.

escapED Framework – Samantha Clarke & Sylvester Arnab. 2016

As you can see, the framework is split into 6 main categories:

1. Participants
2. Objectives
3. Theme
4. Puzzles
5. Equipment
6. Evaluation

Within each section is presented some core themes that you may wish to explore/develop upon for creating your own live-action game-based learning experience. Let us break down the elements and discuss what each section means and why you should consider each sub-heading before development.

1. Participants

• User Type: Consider your intended players/users (Please see User Identity for a more detailed explanation. But the basic premise of this step is that staff may have different needs/expectations than students (learning objectives). Age and backgrounds can influence your decisions in making the game. Example: Media staff and students may be put off from lots of maths based questions (this actually happened during testing this week!). Use your initiative and make sure you consider your players to create truly enjoyable experiences.
• Time: How long do you want your experience to take? Do you want a quick session to run no longer than 15 minutes or something that is more complex that could span hours, days, weeks…. etc. Setting this straight at the beginning will allow you to judge just how many/how complex your puzzles should be. There is no point in designing the next ‘DaVinci Code’ if you are only setting aside 15 minutes for the experience.
• Difficulty: This is where consideration of your intended users should play a part. You might want to scale the difficulty of puzzles for different levels of players such as college students, undergrads, post grads, doctorates and staff. Alternatively you could create a series of experiences and label the difficulty as easy, medium, hard and super duper extreme mode, and allow your players to pick and choose what they would like to try (Im a fan of this approach as it gives the players some control of their experience).
• Mode: mode = how is the room/experience supposed to be …well…experienced (like a time or a competitive mode in video games). Some suggestions for this as follows:

– Cooperation based: Players work together to solve/escape the experience.

-Competitive based: Players compete to be the first to figure out the objectives.

My modes are named as follows;

1. Mode 1 – All by Myself: A personal experience, self-directed motivation for beating the experience.
2. Mode 2 – Stand By Me (SK anyone?): Team-based experience which can either be a co-op or competitive session (multiple teams competing for best time/against each other).
3. Mode 3 – Flipped Out: This mode brings in flipped and disruptive learning techniques to enhance the players experience. Example: Players can be given materials to review before coming to engage in the experience. Clues and hints to solving the puzzles can be hidden in these materials.
4. Mode 4 – Whats in the box John?! (please tell me someone gets that reference): A single box/crate/briefcase can be used instead of a full blown room for recreating escapED as a table-top exercise.

Although I’ve given a short selection of modes, you can make up as many different modes as you like to fit your needs.

• Scale: How many people are you planning to cater for with your experience? Its best to start off small but if you are feeling confident then there is nothing stopping you from creating experiences for 60+ people. However, a consideration of intended room size and area needs to be addressed at this stage.

2. Objectives

• Learning Objectives: Just like any other lesson plan or learning experience, escapED requires some thought concerning what are the learning objectives that you are trying to achieve with the session? These objectives can be worked into the theme, its puzzles and mode to help structure the learning plan. Creating tangible learning objectives allows you to evaluate your players learning experience, learning achievements and iteratively re-design if needed at a later date.
• Solo/Multi-Disciplanary: Will your experience be created to solve one fields discipline or multiple fields? Personally, i love the idea of bring in University students and staff in from a range of subjects and asking them to work together to solve the room. Puzzles could be designed to appeal to a wide range of types and backgrounds.
• Soft Skills: Interactive live-action games are by their very nature, great for helping develop those soft skills such as communication and leadership. How will you challenge your players to develop these in your experience? In our prototype session we have the players split into two rooms with their only communication being Skype. Hilarious to watch and interesting to see how they communicate their rooms and puzzles to each other.
• Problem Solving: What types of problem solving challenges are going to make the experience interesting to your players? Remember that all learners are different and therefore will enjoy a range of different challenges.

3. Theme

• Escape Mode: As traditional entertainment escape room theme; get out of the locked room in a set time.
• Mystery Mode: Solve the mystery in a set time.
• Narrative Design: Whats the story morning glory? Er.. I mean, what is your experience all about? Is it Zombies? Sherlock Holmes? Crazed Tibetan Monks turned into Ninja Monkeys? Any theme that you choose needs to have a compelling story. Good story telling = happy, engaged players who want to know more about your experience.
• Stand alone/Nested: Is your experience a one off session or part of a larger, nested experience that can run across months or a year? Nested experiences give a great opportunity to allow people to feel like they are working towards something greater but present a few challenges like maintaining player engagement across the time planned.

4. Puzzles

• Puzzle Design: The challenging but fun aspect of creating your experience. Puzzles and riddles make your experience interesting and are ultimately what these experiences are about.
• Reflect Learning Objectives: Refer to your learning objectives and theme to ensure that puzzles reflect the overall goals of the session.
• Instructions/Manuals: Good experiences have clear, set instructions and rules. This is a good time to make a note of anything you don’t want your players to touch or to explain the nuances of your session. Integrating this with your theme can help to set the backstory of your experience. Do the players require extra instructions whilst playing? If so think about additional ‘manuals’ that can be made up to look like game props.
• Clues/Hints: Everyone gets stuck once in a while, and good Escape Rooms are notoriously hard. Think about how you are going to give clues in the rooms (if at all) and how you would deliver hints whilst outside/away from the players. Playing a character can help so as not to break player immersion/fantasy. Hints can also be delivered directly via computer/phone to the players if needed.

5. Equipment

• Location/Space Design: Location, location, location! It really does make an experience, especially if you are expecting to trap people together for a set about of time. Ensure there is enough space and it is comfortable to move around. It really goes without saying but i will anyway..don’t put your players anywhere, where there is a high possibility of them getting hurt and be conscious of your players well being. Other than that, make your environment as realistic as possible within your means. This will help foster player engagement and belief of your intended theme.
• Physical Props: Puzzle props, red-herrings + general environment items, these are thing that you will need to make a compelling and workable experience. Imagine your experience is the same as a play, you’ve chosen your stage and now you need to dress it. Be wary of players who will try anything to complete your experience. (I’ve read one company had to use odd shaped screws to stop players from dismantling their game rooms!).
• Technical Props: If you are thinking of using technology to enhance your experience then great! Computers, VR, Augmented Reality, GPS and location-based identification, can all really bring something to these experiences. The downside is that as with all technology, you run the risk of things going wrong/crashing/general not wanting to work/player unfamiliarity. Proceed with caution and ensure lots of testing with these elements, but when they work, get ready to see happy players.
• Actors: This really is where I think cross-disciplinary works well. Imagine getting on board your University’s/College’s  drama department and letting them help create your experience. Need a zombie or a dying victim? Perhaps a hostage? Either way, having real-life actors helps concrete the experience further as believable. Actors can also be used as timer indicators or can give out hints if they see the players are getting stuck.

6. Evaluation

• Testing: Now that you hopefully have all of your elements ready to create your game, spend some time testing with others before going live. You will most likely find (as I did) that I had created puzzles that were too hard to solve in the time that was intended. There were other puzzles that just made no sense and could only be known through testing. This gives you time to get feedback from testers and re-design what is needed before allowing the intended players to experience your session.
• Reflection: You’ve now allowed your intended players to experience your session and it’s the moment of truth. Did they learn anything from your session? If so what? and more importantly did they have fun? What was the most interesting thing? What worked? What didn’t? How would they make it better? Talk about the learning objectives and did they feel that they achieved them? A focus group session/feedback sheet may be useful to help gather information.
• Evaluate Learning Objectives: Here is the time to make a more formal evaluation of the learning objectives that you may have set for your experience. This can be done via your own preferred methods.
• Adjust: Use the feedback to provide informed decisions on how to adjust your experience if so needed. This is a good opportunity to use iterative design and developing or action-led development to help refine your experiences.
• Re-set: If you are running multiple sessions back to back, make sure you develop a re-set sheet. A re-set sheet is a list of all puzzles/riddles and intractable objectives within your experience that need to be checked over to ensure they are in the correct state before the next group. I can imagine nothing more frustrating than getting half-way through an experience to find something broken.

And there you have it, a very long and much over due post! As previously mentioned, I plan on updating next week after our first prototype session with some of the staff at Coventry Uni, ECC department.

Signing off.

 

Identity: The 1st step in the Needs Hierarchy of Serious Games Development.

Following my promise of breaking down each of the 7 steps of the Hierarchy of Needs for Serious Games development (Original post can be found here: A Needs Hierarchy for Creating Serious Games.), today I shall be discussing the first stage: Identity.

For some, user identity will seem like a fairly reasonable and obvious starting point when considering how to develop a product, especially when we talk about serious games or gamification, or any venture that involves a high degree of reliability on user preference. Many instructional systems development methodologies, the A.D.D.I.E model to name one, start with the importance of analysing your target audience, as lets face it, knowing who your audience is and why are they likely to want to engage with the product is necessary for making key design and development decisions.

Unfortunately though, this step is often overlooked as a starting point, with focus drawn onto other  development considerations such as the technology thats going to be used or the preferred genre of game of the developer. Just this Wednesday, I was having a discussion about developing games for business and corporate training. The person I was talking to was really enthusiastic about using the latest VR for corporate training because it looked shiny and expensive, and that, he explained, was what companies were looking for; something that looked expensive. Whilst I agree that VR will have its place in serious games and gamification, it made me sad that the first consideration to VR game-based learning (GBL) in this case, was how expensive the tech looked and therefore was automatically considered to be the best option for training, rather than asking what are users likely to get from using VR over other options. Anyway, I digress but hopefully you get my point that more often than not, the end user (and the various types of end users) are thought about a bit later in the development stage than they should be.

So why is it SO important when designing GBL? And how do you go about identifying your audience? Well lets address the first question, the why?

Games by their very nature are varied and complex systems and are not unlike other types of consumable media such as movies, books and theatre. There are many different genres and sub-genres and within each of those types, are cultural associations, play-styles, pre-conceptions, expectations and a whole area of research dedicated to trying to understand why players play the games they do. What motivates and engages players is a central question in understanding why and how to develop the gold star example of GBL: GBL and gamification systems that add fun and interest to learning/behaviour change policies. The key thing to remember is that every person is different with varied likes and interests. I love reading Stephen King books for the thrill, gore and the way he captures characters. You on the other hand, may find Stephen King to be distasteful and uninteresting and therefore would not only be dis-interested in reading his books but upset if I made you sit and read his books because ‘it was for your own good’. Frankly you would most likely be put off the whole idea all together.

Now lets take this a step further. Apply the same thinking to game mechanics and you will see that they often have been tacked on to various learning systems or have been made in a certain way because the mechanic/theme/genre has been previously seen to engage players (can anyone say points, badges and leaderboards?). Well yes, certain games appeal to certain demographics, this is true and part of my point,  but that doesn’t mean creating the next Resident Evil 3000 because it a, looks good b, you like it and c, is seen to appeal to the masses, is going to do the same for your product and your target demographic. The key is to assess what is out there and to apply a system to help understand your audience before trying to create something for them.

A more academic example for the purpose of explaining the importance of Identity is as follows:

A serious game to promote adherence to the breast cancer drug Tamoxifen is proposed. The demographic is middle aged to elderly women who have received a diagnosis of breast cancer. Within gaming research, entertainment and education, numerous studies have been conducted surrounding gender and female gamer behaviours. Current research suggests that women spend on average less time playing computer games than their male counterparts [1] and furthermore, as women age they have less free time to engage in activities such as gaming [2]. This could indicate that time will become a leading consideration on the development of a game-based intervention. A game that requires a significant amount of time to play or has a steep learning curve would not fit the needs or time requirements of the user group. Indeed the research into online casual games that require little time to play shows that the majority of their player audiences are female [3]. The recent 2015 video game usage statistics released by Big Fish indicate that 52% of gamers in the UK are women with the average gamer age of 31 [4]. Additionally, 33% of the women surveyed, listed their favourite game genres as Trivia/Word/Puzzle. Referring to current video game statistics on national and global game usage trends can help form guidance topics for the researcher that covers issues such as genre, time and technological acceptance for user consideration within the needs assessment planning stage.

From the above statement we can begin to get a good idea of the types of games that may or may not appeal to that demographic. We can also get a sense of some of the constraints/issues that they may have before they can settle into playing games, in this case: time. From this very basic search, we now know that creating a Call of Duty style game is unlikely to appeal and address the needs of the intended users.

So lets move on to the issue of how do we identify out target audience. Well the best way (in my opinion) and the one that forms part of the Hierarchy of Needs is to do a Needs Assessment. Traditionally used in the health care professions, a Needs Assessment is described as follows:

“a systematic process for determining and addressing needs, or “gaps” between current conditions and desired conditions or “wants”. The discrepancy between the current condition and wanted condition must be measured to appropriately identify the need.”

To do this you must address some main areas concerning the problem that you are attempting to address with GBL and the intended users:

• What is the problem that you are trying to address with GBL?
• What is out there already? Are there any gaps that your product could attempt to solve? Why does this need to be addressed and what is the benefit to the intended users?
• Conduct a literature review to see what the recent research has to offer, review relevant archival information concerning both the problem and the user group.
• Learn about the target user culture and its philosophy. This can be done via literature review, interviews, focus groups, online questionnaires and many other ways. Get to grips with the target user views, concerns and suggestions are and preferably try to do some participatory design sessions in the early stages of product design.
• Review all existing materials regarding serious games and gamification already developed for the problem and the user group. Are there things that worked or didn’t work? Can these be built upon?
• Ascertain the best way of delivering a product via a technological assessment – Does the target user group have access to internet, tablets, smart phones. If so, how do they use them? Would it be better to do a board game, app or PC based solution etc?
• Do the users require additional resources alongside the product you are developing such as user manuals or links to other sources of help?
• Determine who are your end users. Remember that if your product is being used by a facilitator to teach students, then the facilitator becomes an end user as well (this is often forgotten in the design).

Now I know that the above seems a bit long winded and some people may find that they they just don’t have time to conduct a Needs Assessment at the pre-production stage. But believe me, taking some time out to address the above considerations will mean a better overall understanding of what you are trying to achieve and the users that need to use your product. It will also mean that you are less likely to develop a product that is completely flawed in terms of addressing the end users needs and wants and in turn create a product that is unfit for purpose. For more information regarding the Needs Assessment stage please refer to the Trans-disciplinary model for creating game-based interventions – Trans-disciplinary Model. Next time, I will look at the second stage of the Hierarchy of Needs for Serious Games Development – Pedagogy, and how we go about implementing this successfully into GBL and gamification.

Happy Gaming x

[1] ESA. Entertainment Software Association. (2006a). Top 10 industry facts. Facts and Research.

[2] Apt, N. A., & Grieco, M. (1998). Managing the time: Gender participation in education and the benefits of distance education information technologies. The Change Page: Participative Approaches to Development Management. Ghaclad Conference on Computer Literacy and Distance Education. Accra, Ghana.

[3] IGDA. International Game Developers Association. (2005). 2005 Casual games white paper. IGDA Casual Games SIG.

[14] http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/stats/ – Accessed 18^th November 2015

 

Digifest 16 and the Disruptive Media Learning Lab

So, I have been a bit lax this past week due to my move over to the Disruptive media Learning Lab at Coventry University: DMLL and my exhibition involvement at Digifest 16. Needless to say it has been a big week and I am still finding my feet here at the DMLL. One of the aspects of working here that I am beginning to really love is the constant quest for information on various issues such as different learning theories, serious games, e-learning and whats out there for new technologies. There seems to always be a seminar, showcase or a disruptive byte #disruptivebytes (mini hour sessions for quick learning) in which I can drop in and drop out of, and contribute to a network of what is going on in and around  Coventry University. These sessions are usually open to all and free to attend, so I encourage all who can to keep an eye on what is going on at the DMLL for daily updates.

Personally here at the DMLL I am working on an EU funded project titled Crowds 4 Roads which is all about encouraging positive behaviour change for sustainable roads and travel. Once I get more into the nitty gritty of the project rather than what am I doing, where, I shall write in detail what it is that we are trying to achieve in this project and how/why we intend to change these behaviours for the better.

My mini project for the next couple of weeks is to re-purpose a popular card game to help teach people about the different aspects of gamification. Im doing this for a number of reasons:

1, there are so many terms and mechanics in gamification and games design that I, who have been doing this for 7 years, still gets confuddled with whats out there and how to explain these to people who are interested.

2, I wanted a quick way for people to learn these terms without feeling like they are overloaded with information. By introducing terms then concepts I am hoping people will take away from the game some lasting knowledge of the terms and hopefully apply this to their own projects.

3, I wanted to show my love of board games and card games for learning. Sometimes I feel people jump to technology because … well because its shiny and new which means it must be good for learning right?  Im not convinced, and moreover for quick prototyping and experimentation with mechanics you cant go wrong with table based games.

I shall post regular updates as to how this process is going with re-purposing this card game. For those who are interested the game is Dobble – a fantastic game that is a fancier version of snap (its super fun and competitive!) Im just at the point of figuring out the interaction mechanics and from there I hope to assign the gamification learning objectives.

In other goings on, I attended Digifest 16, a conference on Learning and Technology hosted by Jisc, was run last week at the ICC in Birmingham. I was there running an exhibition stand for the DMLL, showcasing some of our internal and external projects. I saw some really fantastic ideas for including technology to help enhance student led learning and reflection. One of these ideas was from the fantastic people at Orchid Hill College, London @OHC_College. They have designed a wonderful online portfolio for students to visually document their learning process, objectives and reflections. It has been designed with emphasis on engaging students with disabilities in mind, but can be used by all. I can really see this type of resource making a huge impact on the way that students think about the hows and whys of their learning journey. Marry this resource up with some fantastic story based gamification mechanics and you have the potential for creating a student-led process that is not only beneficial, but interesting for a variety of students who may find didactic approaches to reporting difficult or un-engaging. Musings for later considerations…

As promised I hope to explore the individual components of the Heirarchy of Serious Games Needs that was posted last week A Serious Games Needs Hierarchy for Creating Serious Games.. Tomorrow I will explore the Identity layer that informs the first stage of the hierarchy.

Happy gaming.

A Needs Hierarchy for Creating Serious Games.

Playing and creating games has always been a passion of mine and I often drive my poor partner spare with these familiar lines; what do you think of this mechanic? how about this theme? It’s …

Source: A Serious Games Needs Hierarchy for Creating Serious Games.