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Motivation through Narrative

Motivation through Narrative. And it’s Connection to Situated Learning Theory. Research Questions. What is Situated Cognition? What is Cognitive Apprenticeship? What Motivates Players to Play Games? Malone Tuzun What are the Results of an Effective Narrative? Waraich Barab

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Motivation through Narrative

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  1. Motivation through Narrative And it’s Connection to Situated Learning Theory

  2. Research Questions • What is Situated Cognition? • What is Cognitive Apprenticeship? • What Motivates Players to Play Games? • Malone • Tuzun • What are the Results of an Effective Narrative? • Waraich • Barab • Relationship between Narrative, Motivation, and Situated Cognition?

  3. Situated Cognition: An Overview • Lunce • “Community of practice” • Peer-based • Novices learn from experts • Observe actions and communications of experts • Role-playing • Learn to use tools in real life situations to accomplish real world objectives • Halverson • Become “critical consumers of information”

  4. Situated Cognition: Cognitive Apprenticeship • Brown and Collins (1989, 1991) • Challenging the assumption that schools make • “Cognitive strategies are central to integrating skills and knowledge in order to accomplish meaningful tasks” • Cognitive Apprenticeship: • "tries to enculturate students into authentic practices through activity and social interaction" • Moving beyond the tangible to the abstract • Allow students to generate their own solution path

  5. Situated Cognition: Serious Games • Lunce • Fidelity • Non-Threatening, Few Negative Consequences • Other Advantages: • Active participation • More interesting, intrinsically motivating and closer to real world experiences • Transfer of learning • Flexible in that both student and instructor • Facilitate learning by omitting what would otherwise be distracting elements in a real-world situation

  6. Malone: Evaluating Game Preference

  7. Malone: Evaluating Game Features “Without a clear goal, the game was not really a game at all.” (Malone, p.348)

  8. Malone: Applications to Narrative • “Unless fantasy is carefully chosen to appeal to the target audience, they may actually make the environment less, rather than more interesting.” (Malone, p.355) • Framework for a Theory of Intrinsically Motivating Instruction

  9. Motivation: Tuzun’s Results in Quest Atlantis Tuzun: Quest Atlantis • Keys to Success: • Exploration • Interaction • Immersion

  10. Motivation: Tuzun’s Findings • Findings • Significant learning gains • Statistically significant higher intrinsic motivations • Statistically significant lower extrinsic motivations learning in the game-based environment • More independent while participating in the game-based activities • Less concerned with grades

  11. Why use Narrative? • Narrative then can be viewed as a mechanism to make sense of the material that we are presented with or as a fundamental property of meaning making. • Goal: Engage players in a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi) • Provides context • Explains problem • Moves player towards solution

  12. Narrative: Waraich’s Research in ILE • Overview: • Analyzed the role of both narrative context and game goals as features for motivating and conceptualizing learning in a 2-D interactive learning environment (ILE) • Problem: • Increase learning and motivation to learn when the content is difficult : Use of narrative to solve this problem

  13. Narrative: Waraich’s Results For the Combined Honors students (who used the software) there was a clear improvement in test scores. For the MS control group (who did not use the software) there was a slight deterioration in test performance and this may be due to “test fatigue”.

  14. Narrative: Waraich’s Conclusion • Conclusions: • “For any learning task to be meaningful to the learner they must have both a sufficient context for the learning and motivation to perform the tasks that will help them to learn. We believe that game based learning environments that incorporate a strong narrative can meet these requirements if the learning tasks are appropriately designed and tightly coupled with the narrative”

  15. Narrative: Barab Quest Atlantis • Study: • Performed mixed methods research on game called Quest Atlantis, where “participants use an avatar to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities (Quests)” (62) • Students were interviewed regarding their engagement in the narrative • Players took on characteristics of their avatar and grew frustrated with other characters who’s actions worked against the solution (players became participants rather than bystanders)

  16. Narrative: Barab Example Interview

  17. Narrative: Barab’s Findings • Results: • “Statistically significant gains • Demonstrated rich insights in terms of their submitted work • Clearly engaged, • Participated in rich scientific discourse” • Overall: “Students developed a rich perceptual, conceptual, and ethical understanding of science”

  18. Narrative: Barab’s Conclusions • Design Framework: • “Ensure that the narrative actually immersed students within an issue that was meaningful” • “Educational promise…lies not in engagement with the media, but with the narrative” • The narrative establishes the problem within a situation that requires interpretation so that students can engage in inquiry • Learners still need different supports in order to successfully learn from virtual environments

  19. Guidelines for Narrative • Hook: Play begins with players being immersed into a narrative and the introduction of the problem • Engagement: Narratives continues to be revealed and grow increasingly more detailed as players become comfortable with the environment • Rich narratives full of detail in order to create context and immerse player • Don’t make the problem area too complicated to the point where players are too busy sorting out the storyline rather than engaging in the solution of the problem • Gee states that “well designed game play immerses the player in a rich network of interactions and unfolding storylines where the player must learn about the underlying game grammar to solve real and imagined problems”

  20. Tying it All Together • Goal: Promote learning for all students, especially unengaged or underperforming students • Brown and Collins (1989) • Games are an "opportunity to practice the skills and knowledge they have spent (in some cases) years studying." • Make sure there is no dissonance between narrative and content • Coaching, modeling, and scaffolding needs to be present in narrative • Games and virtual environments should “include a rich narrative and interactive rule sets that work to position the users as an active protagonist in a storyline in which they have solve game specific challenges” (Gee) • Games immerse player in ideological worlds where the player takes on the philosophy of the characters in the game and immerse themselves in their role

  21. Bibliography • Barab, S. A., Sadler, T. D., Heiselt, C., Hickey, D., & Zuiker, S. (2007). Relating Narrative, Inquiry, and Inscriptions: Supporting Consequential Play. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 16 (1), 59-82. • Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18 (1), 32-42. • Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible. American Education , 6-11, 38-46. • Csikszentmihaly, M. (1980). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Collins. • Halverson, R., Shaffer, D., Squire, K., & Steinkuehler, C. (2006). Theorizing Games in/and Education. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Learning sciences (pp. 1048 - 1052). Bloomington: International Society of the Learing Sciences. • Lunce, L. M. (2006). Simulations: Bringing the benefits of situated learning to the traditional classroom. Journal of Applied Educational Technology, 3 (1), 37-45. • Malone, T. W. (1981). Toward a Theory of Intrinsically Motivating Instruction. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 5 (4), 333-369. • Tuzun, H., Yılmaz-Soylu, M., Karakus, T., Inal, Y., & Kızılkaya, G. (2008). The effects of computer games on primary school students’ achievement and motivation in geography learning. Computers & Education, 52, 68-77. • Waraich, A. (2004). Using Narrative as a Motivating Device to Teach Binary Arithmetic and Logic Gates. Paper presented at the 9th annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education., (pp. 97-101). Leeds, United Kingdom.

  22. The End • Any Questions? • Comments? • Additional information to share?

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