Games Based Learning MOOC

These are a few resources that talk about engagement in games and how it happens.

Four Keys to Emotion Without Story

Chasing the Wonder and Engagement

Sculpting Flow and Fiero

Flow - a Ted talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow - Csikszentmihalyi - Motivating People to Learn

did Keller's ARCS model of motivation have it right?

Attention

Relevance

Confidence

Satisfaction


And have we been overlooking it?

These were all excellent links! I saved them all for future reference. Kids DO want to be game designers. They need to be shown all the important steps too. I liken this to the reason why I decided to design a game around my curriculum - to offer them "someone else" to listen to and help them make the connections (from one skill or concept to another as well as to life in general) and in a fun, engaging, and motivating way.

Even though I am a consumer of map packs and not a creator,I think that the easiest way to be a builder is to work on map packs for Games you like and share thm with others. Back in th day when I was in high school I co-opted my BASIC class with a book on concurrent programming and graphics. By mid-semester we had veered off the textbook and students were all making thir own games in BASIC instead ;)

I have been learning about flow and fiero from the references and videos suggested in this MOOC and found them very helpful. What I am wondering is what the feeling is that one gets from doing a great dance routine in Zumba or from running a marathon. Do these concepts apply to those experiences as well?

Maryanne
http://eduwebtools.blogspot.com/

Maryanne,
I can't speak for fiero, but flow coulld certainly be experienced in a great dance routine or running. Here is a link to an article on Bernie DeKoven's website Deepfun. It speaks of flow and flow that is shared by more than one person as in a dance.

#6415282 anciana wrote:

I have been learning about flow and fiero from the references and videos suggested in this MOOC and found them very helpful. What I am wondering is what the feeling is that one gets from doing a great dance routine in Zumba or from running a marathon. Do these concepts apply to those experiences as well?

Maryanne
http://eduwebtools.blogspot.com/

Perhaps slightly off topic (language geek moment)- I don't recall if any of the readings talked about this, but Fiero in italian is "proud" (as in "I am proud to have won the championship" or "I am proud that my kid got an A in math"). I wonder if this is where the term (as used in our case) originates :)

I agree with you there!

I have recently started going out at lunch and jogging/walking fast/running for an hour and then going back to work. I use Nike+, and landmarks to get in the zone; and fiero does come in when I can pick a landmark (demarcating some distance) and run past it despite the fact that the run has kicked my behind :-)

Even though I didn't know this when I started using Nike+, when I am close to beating my own record, an announcer comes on and let's me know. When I beat my own time or distance record there is a sense of fiero.

#6415500 christopher wrote:

Maryanne,
I can't speak for fiero, but flow coulld certainly be experienced in a great dance routine or running. Here is a link to an article on Bernie DeKoven's website Deepfun. It speaks of flow and flow that is shared by more than one person as in a dance.

#6415282 anciana wrote:

I have been learning about flow and fiero from the references and videos suggested in this MOOC and found them very helpful. What I am wondering is what the feeling is that one gets from doing a great dance routine in Zumba or from running a marathon. Do these concepts apply to those experiences as well?

Maryanne
http://eduwebtools.blogspot.com/

I had never heard of Fiero before this MOOC, but now that I know what it is, I am relating it to a favorite activity of mine. I love working crossword puzzles and other word and logic puzzles, and my favorites are those that have a theme or a final answer to figure out. When the puzzle is hard but not too hard, I have that great "aha" moment when I figure out the answer. Now I can call that "fiero". The harder the puzzle was, and the longer I was frustrated trying to figure it out, the greater the fiero.

I agree. It's about not having it handed to you easily but instead having to work for it. In a game I play with a guild of educators, we were in a new area where normally we would have to spend a decent amount of time figuring out everyone's roles and how to work together. We did have someone outside the guild with us and they told us (actually called out) what to do. Afterwards, we were discussing how what we had done wasn't as enjoyable as usual. We ended up being to articulate it as fiero. While the person was just trying to be helpful, we now know we have to be on the look-out for helpful people who accidentally steal our fiero!

kae, this is a really great example. I ordinarily (okay, always) experience flow and fiero when playing games alone. I never feel them in groups. Feeling the experience in Zumba or running using Nike+ (or not) is great, but again, it's experienced alone.

Yours is the one example where fiero was felt by a group -- even if what was felt was its absence!

If I might bring Daoism into the discussion, I think flow might be very similar to the goal of practicing wu wei, active inaction, so to speak. It's an attitude of activity that turns off the thinking mind, where doing takes over.

(In Daoism, the doing should accomplish nothing, and thereby accomplish everything, very much the paradox so don't let me get you hung up there. It's a unique sort of fiero, I'd say!)

My point being that Daoism is very much a religion suited to loners, which can be the case with games as well.

Taking a giant step forward to my question (Mother, may I?):

How do we balance individual and group achievement when we take games into classes (or vice versa)?

Beth

#6422136 Beth wrote:

How do we balance individual and group achievement when we take games into classes (or vice versa)?

Beth

Let me extend that by applying it to education and MOOCs. In MOOCs (at least those where participants aren't looking for credit) Lurking is A-OK with the creators of the MOOC. Many do participate, but there are also a lot of drop-outs and lurkers (not sure what the percentages are since no one is tracking those stats).

So,

• participation in MOOC is equivalent to a guild's group mission, while
• lurking is sort of like single player

In the "old" days of video games, my classmates in school would try to prove that they accomplished something by describing what happened at the end of a state, or a game - but unless they had a polaroid you don't really know if they accomplished something (hey, original screenshots!)

These days achievements and trophies (at least on iOS, Windows, xbox, playstation and OpenFeint) you can really show that you did accomplish something (well, unless someone else was playing with your account). This way, both lurkers and team players can show their accomplishments and understanding. So...how do we transfer this (meaningfully) to education so that both active participants and lurkers can demonstrate competency?