Practical, Appropriate, Empirically-Validated Guidelines for Designing Educational Games

Conor Linehan1, Ben Kirman1, Shaun Lawson1, Gail G Chan2

1Lincoln Social Computing Research Centre (LiSC), University of Lincoln2 School of Health & Social Care, Oxford Brookes University

Structure

• Using games for education• Integrating education & games design• Building an educational game based on ABA– Why?– 1. Measure– 2. Analyse– 3. Feedback– 4. Adapt

Why use games in education?

• Good question!• Generally– Grabbing attention– Maintaining attention over long periods of time– Time-on-task predicts learning– Games engender time-on-task

• Also….

Fantasy narrative

Fun

Engagement

Flow

Feedback

Goals

Problem solving

Game Balance

Pacing

Interesting choices

Achievement

Practice

Discovery

Creativity

Experience

Meta-learning

It goes on!!

• Lots of literature exists on why games should be good tools for education

• Very little on how to ensure that they are• Hence, very little evidence for success– O’Neill et al, (2005) review article– Thousands of articles on educational games– Only 19 had any sort of analysis of outcomes

Using games in education

• When games are designed to educate, to train, or to modify the behaviour of players…..

• They should work• We should should be able to make a case in

advance that they will work.• We need an appropriate, proven process

Structure

• Using games for education• Integrating education & games design• Building an educational game based on ABA– Why?– 1. Measure– 2. Analyse– 3. Feedback– 4. Adapt

Games are funLearning is hardForcing people to learn in games can ruin the fun

“Chocolate Covered Broccoli”

Integrating games design and education

• Can it be done?• It has already been done! By Entertainment

Games Designers!• But games only teach how to jump over

chasms, hack zombies, murder prostitutes, rescue princesses etc.

• We must understand the structure of games & use this in teaching

Integrating games design and education

• Game Structure:– Short, medium and long-term goals– Players must act to reach those goals– Immediate, specific feedback– Complex system of rewards– Long complex tasks broken into short, simple tasks– These are trained individually then chained

together– Mastery criterions

Structure

• Using games for education• Integrating education & games design• Building an educational game based on ABA– Why?– 1. Measure– 2. Analyse– 3. Feedback– 4. Adapt

ABA

• ABA teaching– Typically one-to-one – Teacher as coach– High performance targets – Repetition– Quantitative– Specific timely feedback– ~90% passing criterion

• Sound familiar? It’s very appropriate

The methods through which games designers motivate & engage players are very similar to the methods through which ABA teaches.

ABA

• Also have:– Short, medium and long-term goals– Must act to reach those goals– Immediate, specific feedback– Complex system of rewards– Long complex tasks broken into short, simple tasks– These are trained individually then chained

together– Mastery criterions

ABA

• Empirically validated:• Successful wherever used– University, secondary, primary, driver training,

special populations.– Early intervention for children with autistic

spectrum disorders.• Practical:– ideal for machine implementation– Quantitative; algorithmic

Structure

• Using games for education• Integrating education & games design• Building an educational game based on ABA– Why?– 1. Measure– 2. Analyse– 3. Feedback– 4. Adapt

ABA

1. Defining and measuring behaviour2. Recording and analysing behaviour change3. Presenting corrective feedback4. Dynamically adapting to student performance

1. Defining & Measuring

• Define:– clear, observable learning outcomes– Intrinsic learning (Habgood, 2007)– Hierarchy

• Measuring: – Behaviour must be quantifiable– Those numbers should be meaningful

2. Recording & Analysing

• Recording:– Everything is recorded! – meaningfully– big benefit of games to ABA

• Analyse: – change in behaviour– Accuracy is dependent on how well behaviour has

been defined, measured and recorded

3. Corrective feedback

• Operant Conditioning – Importance of consequences– Reinforcement and punishment as appropriate– Scheduling rewards and punishment– Huge amount of evidence on how this should be

done

4. Dynamically adapting

• Challenges should be appropriate to the learner / player– Balance / pacing– ABA has developed algorithms that deal with this

• Evaluating effectiveness of feedback– All ‘rewards’ are not reinforcing– There are mathematical ways of evaluating the

effect that rewards are having on player behaviour

Conclusion

• To advance educational games we need a proven, appropriate scientific framework

• ABA teaches in a similar way to games, so it’s appropriate….

• ….and very successful• …..and Practical• If not ABA, we need something very like it• Read the paper!

• Conor Linehan• Lincoln Social Computing (LiSC)

research centre• clinehan@lincoln.ac.uk• http://lisc.lincoln.ac.uk

This work was carried out as part of the "Leonardo" project "Learn to Lead” funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Program (http://www.learn2lead.unina.it).