Tag Archives: gamification

Games for learning – Dan Millward #open17

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Gamefroot is a platform for kids to make video games; he’s also cofounder of Games for Learning conference.

Museums have a desire for innovation but a low appetite for risk. Air and Space Smithsonian though makes more on its digital content than all the other Smithsonian

Gamefroot gets a media palette eg terrain, background, effects, events – can put it together, preview, make game. Creating an app. Eg

  • Game about museum – writing labels
  • Mihi maker game
  • After-school game design club

Playing games can be educational but hard to compete with games out on the market. Gamefroot by contrast is about construction. Giving kids a reason to want to learn.

What’s in making a game?

  • digital tech / code
  • media
  • narrative
  • production
  • ideation / testing / feedback
  • teamwork

Code Red project – pilot of coding workshops – but have evolved beyond code clubs to game design clubs

Gamification to improve awareness of library services #theta2015

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Evolving customer engagement: Using mobile technology and gamification to improve awareness of and access to library services (abstract)
David Honeyman and Daniel Walker

[I’m reflexively sceptical of gamification. Maybe because it’s a buzzword and sometimes implemented as such without much thought about whether people want to play these games, and/or whether these games will actually help solve the problem? But certainly I’ve also seen cases where it’s been done really well.]

Acknowledge that it takes time to build a game.

Session includes a game: http://thetachallenge.blogspot.com.au

Idea is adding game elements to less engaging activities to increase fun/engagement. Can increase motivation and improve learning outcomes. Many businesses even involving it – especially to get customers more involved. In libraries: orientation, infolit, fighting plagiarism, using library resources/services

Mobile technologies makes this more possible. “Opportunities that arise when everyone’s carrying around a computer in their pocket”.

Gamifying orientation to move away from guided tour. Started with self-guided orientation to blend paper-based with SurveyMonkey. Prizes offered. Worked okay but limitations – no embedded videos/images/links and not mobile friendly.

“The Research Game”
Needed to be cheap, easy to make, desktop- and mobile-friendly, look good, let people save and resume, gather responses (ie a form tool).
Considered TextAdventures, Twitter, Blackboard, Facebook, Blogger. Went with Blogger because it was customisable – many other tools come with one look-and-feel. Embedded Google Forms. [Looks different on desktop than mobile but both work.]

Points were displayed on a leaderboard using Infogram – either compared to whole uni or to own faculty. Development took 200 hours, and a couple of hours each day to collate results and post updates. Second year they changed questions and tasks (so people who’d done it last year could do again) which took an extra 70 staff-hours.

“The Bond Med Student Challenge” – students descend on library, get the URL, and go off to do the challenge. One staff to supervise and answer questions, but doesn’t need to do much. 100 staff hours to create tasks and questions but will be able to reuse this in future years.

“The Law Library Challenge – could embed videos and image which improved look and performance. Being on Google Docs means it doesn’t look as good as Blogger but easier to create and quick to collate results.

Tried to blend tricky/serious with fun/lighthearted questions. 2-3 hours to update each semester for next students as just tweak questions.

Donated textbooks as prizes.

What worked:

  • Completion rates: paper-based system had some drop off from question to question; gamified system has more even response rate
  • 85% of players said they’d use a resource they weren’t previously aware of.
  • Reduced environmental impact – less printing!
  • Students can use own devices – most have their own. [What about the few who don’t?] Don’t need to download software with webapp.

Limitations:

  • Google Forms limits layout options so not as game-like as desirable.
  • Blogger more tailorable, but had its own downsides: required multiple Google Forms and takes time to collate these. [Seems solvable using some kind of data munging software.] Every time they complete a task they have to enter their ID to enable scoring, which isn’t ideal! Suggest looking for something with a good login system.

Q: Are you looking at orientation differently?
A: No, same content but more fun.

Q: Was there any resistance to this?
A: No. Supported by management.

Q: Any thoughts of integrating with LMS?
A: Hadn’t thought about it – too clunky and doesn’t look like a game. (Blackboard)
Q: Ours also very restrictive.

Q: Can people come back and refresh?
A: Done over 2 days. But can’t come back later as requires setup in the library.

Q: Percentage uptake?
A: 50% uptake for Law last semester, out of 100 students (helped because draw for iPad)

Sembl, the game of resemblance #ndf2012

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Sembl, the game of resemblance
Catherine Styles, @cathstyles
Sembl is a powerful system for thinking in a playful, dialogic, creative way. Cath will introduce Sembl through its initial manifestation as a real-time group adventure game at the National Museum of Australia, and explore how its play cultivates polyphonic, associative thinking, and new ways of knowing. She will explain where the game comes from and speculate on where it could go, in physical museum space but especially on the web, as an engine of open and linked data, and a game- based social learning network.
This game of resemblance has been gestating a long time, so Cath is stoked to share the story of its emergence.

[ETA: Cath’s own images, notes and clips from the presentation.]

Sembl
Game derives from Charles Cameron’s “Hipbone Game” who got the idea from Herman Hesse’s “Glass Bead Game”.

Started as an iPad game at National Library of Australia. Users make connections between objects (a branding iron and a breastplate “label bodies”; leg irons and a Welsh organ both “involve keys”), which are then rated according to how interesting they are. What makes a resemblance interesting? Makes you think about things in different ways.

Developed on paper, tested with kids, then moved to a digital prototype and tested with same kids. This got them even more interested in getting into the museum itself.

Co-authorship, radical trust, open authority, new epistemology. Meaning not just imposed by museum, created by visitors. Game provides structure for dialogue between museum and visitor and among visitors.

linked data — linked link data
identy — similarity
logical — analogical
prescribed — freeform
comprehensive — generative

Those creating network links learn network thinking.

“You kill what you categorise.” @ffunch
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant” – Emily Dickinson

Image of an exhibit colocating slave shackles with fine silverware

Open Museum had a game where users posted “this image is similar to that” until the chain of images looped around to the first image again.

“Every move you make is a futher link in the pattern that connects. Every move you make is a creative leap.” – Charles Cameron on Sembl

6: gamification #blogjune

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Today’s free association generator goes 6 > dice > gaming > gamification.

I’m simultaneously enthusiastic about and sceptical of gamification.

On the one hand, it works: offer people the chance to earn points, even if the points are absolutely meaningless, and many (not, mind you, all) will be keen to amass them. Add in team spirit and/or actual prizes and many more (though still not all) will jump on the bandwagon. If you want to get people to do something, then telling them it’s a game is a great way to do it, with a pedigree no doubt much longer than the obvious fictional example.

On the other hand, is it our job to get people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise want to do, or is it our job to help them do things they do want to do? If every reader should have their book according to their own needs (and not the ones they don’t need), surely every library user should get the services and skills they need rather than having to accrue them all in order to compete with the Joneses?

And on the gripping hand, wouldn’t it be a lot more productive to gamify proofreading of our OCR’d digitisation projects (as does the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program) instead of gamifying checking in to the reference department?

I suppose like everything it depends on the user group, the skills, and the game in question. So I’m particularly curious to hear from readers on this one: do you know of some examples of gamification in libraries (whether an extended thing like Lemontree, or a one-off like a treasure hunt or some other competition) that have been demonstrably useful not just to the library’s statistics sheets but also to the users’ lives?