I have finally come across the first report about folks “using Neverwinter Nights 2 for learning and/or research.” I am pretty sure the folks at Heriot-Watt University are somehow “inspired” by the success at West Nottinghamshire — since both Judith Good and Judy Robertson also hailed from the United Kingdom.

But whatever the things they are doing with NWN2, the most important aspect (to me) is the last question on the interview: How are you going to measure the benefit (i.e. learning progress) of the game-based learning project?

Read on…

Hitting the Play Button : HERO

It’s part of a research project at Heriot-Watt University, where researchers are exploring how school pupils can learn through building their own video games. Using a toolkit adapted from the fantasy role-playing game Neverwinter Nights 2, it aims to engage pupils with a range of curriculum activities in literacy, IT and design. Below, Keiron Nicholson, software developer with the project at Heriot-Watt University, explains how it all works. Questions by Charlie Peverett.

How does the concept of Adventure Author go down initially in schools? Do teachers need much persuading that it’s ‘real work’ as well as popular?

There can be initial resistance from teachers, who haven’t grown up with video games in the way that most children have. We did some trial sessions at a typical primary school in Dundee and initially met with quite a cynical response from the teachers, but within a few weeks they’d become very enthusiastic about the project, largely because they saw how much it motivated the children.

In terms of persuading them that it’s ‘real work’, there’s a lot of links to the curriculum that they were keen to pick up on – since a big part of the design is coming up with a story and writing interactive dialogues, it feeds into their literacy and storytelling abilities. They also learn a lot about problem-solving and collaboration, and the teachers in Dundee particularly noted the kids’ willingness to ‘redraft’ their work, which is usually very difficult to get them to do.

Naturally they’re also keen on getting the children excited about an ICT package, since computer skills are a big focus nowadays. I think they feel that anything educational that actually gets kids motivated is a good thing. The teachers even chose to tie it in to additional areas of the curriculum, like getting them to make artwork and adverts to accompany their games.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is pretty warlike. Do pupils playing Adventure Author follow that lead? Do you find pupils are more likely to bring murder and military stuff into their games than, say, if they were doing a creative writing exercise?

The game sticks strictly to largely non-violent fantasy combat as seen in the Lord of the Rings films. Naturally, the game toolkit has plenty of resources for fantasy monsters and swords and sorcery stuff, as this can be a fun aspect of the gameplay. However in story terms, their writing has shown a lot of imagination, and doesn’t seem to be bound by the setting – in fact, they use the restrictions of the fantasy artwork very creatively. They use what’s available to them for what they want to do, so we’ve had stories where werewolves are cast as train conductors, and zombies hang about outside Blockbuster Video! In particular, the girls are less interested in the fantasy combat aspect, and more focused on the possibilities for storytelling and art design – it’s quite possible to leave the ‘warlike’ stuff out of the game altogether.

Have any designs particularly impressed you?

One of the kids at our workshops did a satirical game in which you had to interact with various famous political figures like George W Bush and Tony Blair, culminating in a duel with Jacques Chirac! We thought that was pretty inventive.

If pupils want to go on designing games beyond the time allowed by Adventure Author, what opportunities are there for doing so (either within formal education or outside it)?

The Neverwinter Nights 2 software is commercially available, and will probably be selling at below full price by the time the project is finished. We’ll be providing the Adventure Author software on our website free of charge for anybody who wants it, along with tutorials and teachers’ resources to help things along. In formal education, there’s a rapidly growing selection of courses and even institutions which specifically teach game design and programming. There’s also plenty of stuff on the web that pupils will find useful.

After the trials in Dundee, we found that a majority of the kids were asking for the game for Christmas so they could carry on working on their games, and that many parents then bought it on the recommendation of the teachers. The original Neverwinter Nights can be picked up for under £10, and it provides a fairly gentle start to game design for those wanting to get stuck in immediately.

How are you going to measure the benefits of Adventure Author for pupils’ development?

In educational terms, we’re going to be looking closely at the links between their progress in other areas of the curriculum and their experiences with the software. We’re most interested in the impact on literacy skills, since our results so far have indicated that a lot of kids will engage far more in creative writing within the context of game development, when ordinarily it wouldn’t interest them so much. We’ll also be gathering the opinions of professional game designers, teachers, and other pupils to judge how successful the kids have been at creating a well-rounded and fun video game.