Motivation through Narrative

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?