July 16, 2007

The Southern Illinoisan ran a story about Mr. Brian Murley who took my game modding class. (Brian teaches Math at Giant City School.)

Teacher Mod Squad

(It seemed that several people have picked up the story elsewhere on the Internet, too (Serious Games Blog at Ning.com, John Rice’s EduGames blog, and Neverwinter Nights blog)

Original Website: http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2007/07/16/local/20834712.txt

Teachers create video games for classroom use

Ashley Wiehle, The Southern (July 16, 2007)

CARBONDALE – Brian Murley’s approach to teaching math to his students is a far cry from the abacus.

“This is Lord Nasher,” Murley said, pointing to the computer screen where a medieval figure was positioned in a room with another man dressed in armor.

Students at Giant City School, where Murley teaches math to sixth- through eighth-graders, are obviously familiar with video games, but the one Murley was playing on Friday afternoon had one substantial difference: He created it himself.

Murley is a graduate student of Christian Sebastian Loh, assistant professor and coordinator of the instructional Design and Technology’s Collaboratory for Interactive Learning Research at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Loh has been teaching a summer game-modification class that allows students to create their own version of popular computer game Neverwinter Nights.

Neverwinter Nights encourages users to create their own realities within the realms it has created. With each copy of the game comes a toolbox that experienced modifiers can use to make a new version of the popular game.

“It’s almost like playing house,” Loh said, explaining that his students can create endless combinations of scenery and characters with the tools provided and skills learned.

Murley’s game took about two weeks to create, and the most difficult part was the conversation between characters. Video games have a sense of realism, and creators have to anticipate any direction a character conversation can go.

A single conversation in Murley’s game consists of 11,855 words that can be combined any number of ways. By contrast, a 50-page story typically boasts about 12,500 words.

When someone made the comment that writing the conversations had to be a fun part of the process, Murley laughed out loud.

“Not for me,” he said. “I’m a math teacher.”

Players are given an option of three possible responses when interacting with other players in the game. The option chosen by the player dictates how the other character will react.

Responses in Murley’s game run the spectrum from polite and helpful to anti-social and rude, he said.

“The character can give a good-guy response or he can be a jerk,” Murley said.

Players quickly learn that polite responses yield much better actions from other characters.

“It even teaches social skills,” Loh said. “If you’re going to be a jerk, life is harder.”

The goal of the class is to create video games that are more than entertainment, Loh said.

“We are trying to make games that have educational value,” Loh said.

Loh cited a game created by Ph.D. student Jaehwan Byun as an example. Byun created a game that asks players to come up with a way to neutralize the acid in an ailing girl’s stomach to help her back to wellness.

“The player figures out to use chalk and add it to vinegar to make a potion,” Loh said. “That creates Alka-Seltzer.”

Participants can create games that illustrate any point they are making in lessons for their students.

“You can find a real lesson plan and convert it into a game,” Loh said.

Dr. Sebastian Loh teaches a class that helps educators learn to program video games that they can use in their own classrooms. (Pamela Kay Schmalenberger/The Southern)

February 21, 2007

(Our research project team made Headline News today!)

Computer Games May Help with Class Work
Jaehnig, K. C. (Feb 21, 2007)

CARBONDALE, Ill. - Some day, in the not-so-distant future in a school not far away, students may claim that a dragon ate their homework.

A teaching environment based on today’s multi-player, computer-game worlds could engage students as never before, according to Christian S. Loh, an assistant professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

But before teachers can bring that environment into the classroom, game designers and educators must work together to figure out and assess just what it is their student players are learning.

“We all know that games teach, but how do you measure that?” Loh said.

“We want to know (how to measure teaching effectiveness) in order to convince the skeptics that the students are really learning when they are playing games.”

In the past, researchers have tried to answer the assessment question by analyzing what the players say about their play experience and by analyzing hours and hours of filmed play sessions.

“Analyzing films is a very slow and tedious process,” Loh said.

“Many hours are required to analyze the huge amount of data collected.”

Loh takes a different tack, which he discusses in the newly published book “Games and Simulations in Online Learning,” edited by David Gibson, Clark Aldrich and Marc Prensky.

“If you can track what a gamer has done in the game, then you can rebuild the gameplay experience from the data and analyze just that,” he said.

The technology to do this already exists. Major Web sites such as Amazon, Yahoo and Google already track users’ activities to provide them with a personalized online experience.

“Online retailers make successful use of sophisticated online tracking mechanisms to profile their customers in order to understand their buying habits,” Loh wrote in his chapter’s introduction.

“Online multiplayer games make use of similar technologies to keep track of gamers’ activities, for better management of in-game resources and to settle disputes.”

Educators could harness that same technology for learning assessment, Loh maintains. By following the “footprints” laid down by the players’ characters (“avatars” in gamespeak) teachers could then see how often the students played the game and for how long; get an idea of how well they mastered the material by how well they played; determine their individual learning styles; spot (and, it is to be hoped, fix) any student weaknesses noticed during play; and even reward good students with valuable trophies, medals, special armor and such.

To make an instructional game as useful as possible, teachers must be in on the design process, helping to ensure that it tracks only learning goals, Loh said. No point in collecting information just for the sake of data gathering – it just slows down play.

But the key to successful educational design lies in one simple fact: It has to be fun.

“A game that is not fun to play is doomed to fail,” Loh said.

With an SIUC “seed grant,” Loh and students Arnond Anantachai of Herrin, Jaehwan Byun of South Korea and Joseph D. Lenox of Rockford have begun work on software that would pull data from a gaming session and compile it for learning assessment. They plan to make the software easy enough to use that even teachers with no coding or programming skills could call up the information and understand it.

Because the software would make quantifiable analysis of gaming possible for the first time, Loh believes it would have a market advantage.

“If we come up with patentable technology, then we could invite investors to come in,” he said.

Apart from his regular teaching, Loh conducts a summer course in game modification, or “modding.” He also serves as one of two coordinators of the Collaboratory for Interactive Learning Research, where he focuses on researching problems related to computer and video game learning.

"Mod Squad": Photo by Steve Buhman

“Mod squad” Meeting in the office of Southern Illinois University Carbondale assistant professor Christian S. Loh (seated), students (from left) Joseph D. Lenox, Arnond Anantachai and Jaehwan Byun discuss the computer game they’re modifying (“modding”, in gamespeak) to make it a useful educational tool.