This document discusses using gamification in liberal arts education. It notes that learning through play is not new and that games can be used to teach complex concepts through simulation and role-playing. The author has successfully used games like Civilization and World of Warcraft in economics courses to help students learn at higher cognitive levels and retain information better. However, challenges to wider adoption include technological support needs and resistance from faculty concerned about control over curriculum and the impact on higher education.

1. Gamification: Theory and Applications in the Liberal Arts
Benjamin Balak and Connor Neve (Rollins College, FL)
I see and I forget
I hear and I remember
I do and I understand
(Confucius)

2. ● 1st generation gamer (1976: Star Trek on IBM 360)
● UNC-Chapel Hill: love of teaching + education tech
● Econ education is worse of the worse:
irrelevant, doctrinaire, boring, anti-experiential
● Solutions:
○ Content: HoT, methodological pluralism, heterodoxy
○ Form: teaching experiments, media, role-playing
● Rollins (2002): finally did my homework on pedagogy
10 years using computer games

3. ● Reading Benjamin Bloom (1956):
○ Gaming industry uses sophisticated pedagogy
○ Schools don’t (not my kids nor my workplace)
● Learning by playing is not new:
○ Zoology, anthropology, psychology
○ Mind games: Socratic elenchus, debates
● Hierarchical opposition (Victorian?):
serious work / frivolous play
Overarching Insight:

4. ● Key: the fun IS the learning
○ NOT learning delivered in a fun way
(edutainment)
○ learning in context:
■ Encyclopedic vs simulation (Zoo Tycoon)
■ Textbook = manual without the game (Gee)
● Hard to compete with almost $100 billion industry
○ Plenty of great games (I have a wish list!)
○ Not labor-replacing: teachers absolutely needed
○ Debriefing, modding/customization, guidance, ...
Educational or commercial games?

5. ● Primarily Civilization (since v3 now at v5 + 2 expansions):
○ Over 200 discrete concept with multiple interconnections!
■ Lot’s of work by Kurt Squire
■ Games in Education: September 2013 Special Issue of
Transformations (esp Todd Bryant and Ed Webb)
■ Ed Webb’s Seminar: Games in Education: A Classroom
Perspective (Oct 17th, 2013)
● Also MMORPG: World of Warcraft (aka “g33k crack”)
○ Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
■ WoW in School
■ Foreign language potential: immersion (e.g.)
Which commercial games?

6. ● 1st in economic history elective (freedom to
experiment)
● Ever since: Economics in Historical Perspectives
○ Rollins Economics Curriculum:
■ ECO 202: Starts with history (empirical)
■ ECO 203: Traditional “mic-mac” (theoretical)
■ ECO 204: Alternative Perspectives (method)
● Twice in freshman seminars:
Deus Ex Machina: Social Evolution in Virtual Worlds*
* the most pompous name for a course ever ;p
Which courses using games?

7. ● See CIV General Comparative Analysis document
● A comparative analysis between:
○ Simulation processes and outcomes
○ Real world: history, institutions, processes, ...
● BTW: This is what is done in professional research
using simulation methodology (Santa Fe, complexity)
● Variations:
○ Write in epic prose (role-playing)
○ Group work encouraged
What do we actually do?

8. ● Broad enthusiasm for history (say no more!)
● Reaching upper cognitive levels of learning (Bloom)
● Higher retention (Dale)
○ in subsequent major/minor courses
● Experience economic concepts
○ Personally (ownership)
○ Meaningfully (in context of decision making)
○ E.g.: consumption vs. investment
● Systemic and strategic sophistication
General Results:

9. Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956)

10. Edgar Dale’s Cone of Learning

11. ● Hard to push students from the virtual world to the
real world (semantic spaces)
● Nevertheless:
○ Even students who resist develop high levels of
sophistication in the analysis of their game-word
● Effective only with good debriefing
○ Like any experiential learning
○ maybe why distance learning is generally awful?
○ Potential for gamification to contribute
However...

12. ● CIV multiplayer (pilot this summer)
○ more intense use
○ in-class play (social epiphenomena)
● Other games: Expand use of MMORPGs
○ As social laboratories
○ Behavioral economics
○ Finance
● Simulation methodology: MMORPGs and Netlogo?
Further Developments

13. >>> Q&A
>>> Poll #1
Have you had any experience with using games or
simulations in education?
[] None
[] Some
[] Lots
[] I play games but not in education

14. Since last summer so 3rd iteration/generation (see syllabi):
1. Summer 2013:
● Economics, Media, and Propaganda
2. Fall 2013:
● Economics, Media, and Propaganda
● Deus Ex Machina: Social Evolution in Virtual Worlds (WoW)
3. Spring 2014:
● Economics in Historical Perspectives (CIV)
● Economics, Media, and Propaganda (now “Blended-Learning”)
● Senior Seminar in Economics (individual research capstone seminar)
To be definitely continued...
Gamifying the Entire Course

15. >>> Prezi
… over to you Connor
http://prezi.com/gyo9_kunzsdr/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

16. ● 3D GameLab (3dgamelab.com)
● 1st fully gamified LMS
● Individually affordable
● Thus possible for isolated faculty to try
http://portal.3dgamelab.org/
Learning Management System

17. ● Like games but applicable to entire course
● Most student love it for the best reasons:
○ Flexibility:
■ Time and Space
■ Learning styles ← VERY important
○ Feedback: quick, specific, clear
○ Security:
■ Low risk--can resubmit until accepted
Preliminary Results

18. Technological change is not at moment of invention
● Change in social relations (social science)
● Change in the human experience (humanities)
Consider the steam engine: 100+ years from invention to wide adoption
● Desktops are “19th century clerical metaphors”
● From FB to mobile devices: interface design is gaming-driven
Games are leading tech innovation (under-recognized)
● Impacting social relations and the human experience (web2.0)
● Massive parallel processing of information (“dashboards”)
● Culture: most smart kids are avid gamers-- the new hochkultur
● of course there’s lots of junk; like when the novel was “invented”
The “Information Revolution” has just barely started

19. >>> Q&A
>>> Poll #2
Does any of this make sense?!
[] None
[] Some
[] Lots
[] In theory yes; but technology is being used as a
cost-cutting racket in education!

20. ● Difficult without dedicated institutional support:
○ tech support
○ surprisingly tech-illiterate students
○ BUT: provide practical job-skills
● Solution:
○ Undergraduate TAs (Buffalo State)
○ Collaborative / Guild elements and quests
○ Active participation: “figure it out!”
● Working with students as co-researchers
The Political Economy of Gamification

21. ● Difficult within a traditional institution’s system:
○ Experimental, evolutionary, and even anarchistic
pedagogical ethos (oh my!)
○ Grading structure
■ unfamiliar culture of trust and cooperation
■ flexibility pushes me to bottom of to-do list
○ Popularity: gamified courses draw students
○ Lack of economies of scale
Stay calm and give up control...

22. ● Lots of bad blood in many (most?) institutions today
● Technology in education is caught between:
○ Administration rhetoric:
■ MOOCs, blended, flipped, …
■ Gimmicky? PR driven?
■ Labor and property rights?
○ Faculty intransigence:
■ Luddites? sticks-in-the-mud?
● Is it political, cultural, generational, irrational?
The battle lines are drawn!

23. Resistance IS very understandable:
● Most distance-learning IS awful
● Many worrisome developments in higher education
● Push to cost-cut and a sharp decline in the faculty
● Problem with ownership of the curriculum
> web2.0: public content → private profits
● Problem with monopolistic power
> MOOCs vs Distributed Open Collaborative Course
see Fem Tech Net + Shared Academics here.
A hard sell to many faculty

24. ● Teachers must be in control of teaching (tech ethos)
● Winter is coming (faster than you think!)
● Gamification in particular:
○ Labor-ENHANCING not labor-REPLACING
○ Unlike:
■ traditional distance learning
■ MOOCs
■ even blended learning (to an extent)
On the other hand

25. We better grab the bull
by the horns or it will
grab us by the _____.
TYVM.
>>> Q&A