Minecraft is a game that has sustained the attention of teachers wanting to introduce elements of gamification into their classrooms despite their encountering two steep hurdles: (1) the complexity and depth of the game itself, and (2) understanding how students will experience self-directed critical and collaborative learning by engaging each other in appropriate video games. I started EVO Minecraft MOOC (EVOMCM) in 2015 to learn with teaching colleagues how to experientially address both these issues. EVO (Electronic Village Online) consists of over a dozen sessions on topics proposed by language teachers who develop their proposals into professional development courses of interest to other teachers. The Minecraft EVO session has become an ongoing community of practice of language practitioners learning about gamification by interacting with each other in Minecraft for over 5 years now, http://minecraftmooc.org. This talk is about the nature of learning in sustainable distributed communities of practice as embodied in EVO, and in particular understanding how video games can be leveraged into opportunities for language learning once teachers grasp the ineffable nature of their participatory cultures through engagement with peers, and in learning hands-on through meaningful play how games such as Minecraft might be used in their own teaching contexts.

1. GAMIFYING TEACHER
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
THROUGH MINECRAFT MOOC
A PLENARY ADDRESS PRESENTED BY
VANCE STEVENS
AT THE ICCTAR CONFERENCE IN MELAKA, MALAYSIA
28 JUNE 10:30 TO 11:20

2. THIS IS A FLIPPED PRESENTATION
● You can read my presentation in full text here:
https://tinyurl.com/icctar2019vance
● You can download my slides at any time here:
https://tinyurl.com/vance2019icctar
If you visit my slides you will find a link to the full text.
If you visit the full text you will find a link to the slides.
I am Vance Stevens. Find me at
http://learning2gether.net -- Penang, Malaysia
Or VanceStev at gmail.com

3. MELAKA MINERS
● Let’s ask these guys
about the
affordances of
Minecraft for
language learning
● Having FUN
engaging in
Frivolous
Unanticipated
Nonsense

4. WHAT IS THIS ABOUT?
● The role of games in language learning.
● Premised on the assumption that …
In order for games to be used effectively in language
learning,
the teacher / learner needs a clear / intuitive
understanding
of the affordances of games
in fostering development in a target language

5. HOW TO UNDERSTAND AFFORDANCES
OF GAMES IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE?
As a learner you can teach yourself languages
in a gamified environment,
● Just download Duolingo 
● Or visit a build in Second Life where interaction
is in a language you want to learn
● Or join a guild in a foreign language in World of Warcraft
Then you will
● arrive at an understanding of the role of games in language learning
through your own experience in that process
● If you are a language teacher,
you’ll be better positioned to guide others in that process
https://www.duolingo.com/

6. TEACHING VS. TRAINING
• There is no such thing
as a language teacher
• There are only
language learners
Stevens, Vance. (2004). The Skill of Communication:
Technology brought to bear on the art of language
learning. TESL-EJ 7 94) http://tesl-
ej.org/ej28/int.html

7. TRAINING SPANISH VERB CONJUGATIONS
Attribution attanatta
Retrieved from
https://www.flickr.com/photos/austinaron
off/18930548626
under
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by
/2.0/
Charts like this imply training.
Learning comes from context
• e.g. reading
• Immersion
• Authentic communication

8. HOW TO TRAIN (NOT TEACH)
YOUR HORSE TO COUNT
● https://youtu.be/j0DkkpJvt9w
● A horse counting
https://youtu.be/kwiQXEmNRE
U
It’s an illusion, of course
• The horse can’t count
• or process what it’s counting
Certain forms of
assessment can create
illusion that
• students are learning
• when they are
responding to training

9. TRAINING STUDENTS
TO ANSWER TEST
QUESTIONS
A B C LMark the correct letter on
your answer sheet
The teacher moved to
stand near the correct
answer during the
assessment
• Real incident
• A variation: “teaching to the
test”Max Pixel -- Public domain graphics. Retrieved from
https://www.maxpixel.net/Man-Class-Illustration-Lecture-Professor-Speaker-
3026707

10. TEACHERS VS. LEARNERS
● A teacher
models and
demonstrates
● A learner
practices and
reflects

11. TEACHERS AS MASTER LEARNERS
A master learner
• models and demonstrates
• and practices and reflects
David Warlick
“to redefine what it means to be a teacher —
I try to present myself as a master learner,
suggesting that part of what teachers should be, today,
is constant and resourceful learners — master learners.”
Warlick, D. (2010, October 8). Are they students or are they learners? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://2cents.onlearning.us/?p=2762

12. GAMES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
● Recall: If you incorporate gaming in your own language
learning,
you will arrive at an understanding of the role of games in
language learning through your own experience in that process,
and if you are a language teacher,
you’ll be better positioned to guide others in that process
● Corollary:
If you teach using games, but don’t use games to learn languages,
how can you effectively teach languages using games?
● Not can you? The answer to that is of coure, YES -- But HOW can you?

13. WHY TEACHERS NEED TO PLAY GAMES
● If teachers want to understand how games are meant to be used with
students –
need to themselves become gamers.
● HOW you use these games, or more importantly how your students
use them, will fall somewhere on that scale between
 true learning … and something closer to training 

14. WISDOM OF THE PAST: COMPUTERS VS. TYPEWRITERS C.1985
I used to rant about teachers teaching
revision processes that they themselves
were
not using in their own writing practices
Attribution: The Blue Diamond Gallery, retrieved from
http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/typewriter/t/teacher.
html
under Creative Commons 3 - CC BY-SA 3.0
Attribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II

15. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GBL AND GAMIFICATION
From Khidar Bin
Abdullah's talk
at the PELLTA
conference in
Penang, April
2019
https://drive.goo
gle.com/drive/fo
lders/15gki57Jv-
xMSTtRM42cbb3
LzI7Csm2nD

16. MONOPOLY
From Pixaby:
https://pixabay.com/photos/play-
board-game-monopoly-money-
1538339/ under Pixaby License
A game, but not
gamification
• No incentive to learn
language in order to
improve game play
• Produces telegraphic
language
e.g. “Pay me”

17. WISDOM OF THE PAST
MYSTERY HOUSE, 1980
There is a very powerful
Easter egg here:
Hidden passages
Watch the game being played
https://youtu.be/kiwHwPvIHBs
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_House
Armando Baltra on Mystery House in ESOL
Baltra, A. (1984). An EFL classroom in a Mystery House. TESOL Newsletter 18 (6): 15.

18. TRACE EFFECTS -- EXAMPLE OF GBL FOR ESOL
● Free copy and resources, https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/trace-effects
● Trailer, https://youtu.be/U-luAE4p7cw
• Learners assume an “other”
persona
• Problem: to return this character
back to the future.
• Pragmatics (politeness)
important to success
• You interact with other
characters in the story (in
predictable ways)
• The game is free, and materials
developed for it to be used as
reinforcement, rewards, or
“cheats”

19. AN EXAMPLE OF GAME-BASED LEARNING IN CALCULUS
Immersive world teaches
calculus concepts through
simulations controlled to
force the player to solve
puzzles that
• teach concepts
established in advance
and
• require mastery before
moving on to the next
step
• Students can manipulate
but not alter content
Variant Limits walkthrough
From Triseum
https://youtu.be/3vFyxFR83ZQ

20. IS THIS GAME-BASED LEARNING? -- KAHOOT
From video at https://kahoot.com/

21. PLAY
KAHOOT?
This is
on the
Kahoot
website,
but
● How?
● With
whom
?

22. WHEN DID LARGE NORWEGIAN QUIT WRITING LEXICON
ON PAPER?
Not strictly
gamification
● It’s fun, but it doesn’t
keep records on
students in a way that
can track
performance.
● Students are
engaged while
playing the game, but
that engagement
OFTEN ends when
the game does.
Learning? Or
reinforcement of
training?
Dr. Charles Browne suggested that LEARNING could be augmented
with algorithms for recycling learned items and implementing contextualized reading, etc.

23. MEMRISE – CLASSIC STRUCTURAL GAMIFICATION
● Teachers set up lessons in profiles,
● Players must be logged in
● Each player has an identity image --
doesn’t have to be their own picture
● Memrise tracks everyone who
attempts each lesson in a
Leaderboard.
● Points are awarded generously for
modest successes. Everyone starts at
zero and points build UP
● Players gain in level the more they
play
● Players can find other games created
by their teacher, or by anyone
● Teachers can group students into
separate classes
https://www.memrise.com

24. TEACHING VS.
TRAINING
Quizlet Arabic to
English,
https://quizlet.com/12
9523616/arabic-to-
english-1-flash-cards/
can be a good way to
learn either Arabic or
English, vocabulary
items,but as training,
does not extrapolate well to wider contexts
Structurally gamified 

25. STRUCTURAL GAMIFICATION
Centers on motivating people to complete everyday
or mundane tasks ... that they find
● difficult to complete
● or lack the motivation to keep on track.
e.g. fitness, health and wellbeing apps, badges, stickers,
rewards and virtual ‘whoops’
The best approach is where a game and the game
mechanics have learning value of themselves, where
learning is intrinsic to the gameplay.
So, gamification is a great way to reward, motivate and
sustain interest in repeat tasks, daily procedures or long-
term goals - from following a standard operating
procedure to learning a language.

26. STRUCTURAL VS. CONTENT GAMIFICATION
Karl Kapp (2013) distinguishes
● Structural gamification – where designers seek to
“apply game-elements to propel a learner through
content with no alteration or changes to the
content itself. The content does not become
game-like, only the structure around the content;”
● and content gamification, which involves
“the application of game elements and game
thinking to alter content to make it more game-
like.”
Kapp, K. (2013, March 25). Two types of #gamification [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://karlkapp.com/two-types-of-gamification/
Aha! games where learners can alter; i.e. have control over, content in a game-like
context.

27. GAMES-BASED LEARNING VS. CONTENT GAMIFICATION
● Content is finite; therefore
● You notice repetitions in content
● Once you have “won” the game,
or reached the end, little
incentive to go back and repeat
it, as opposed to trying to learn
what you want to learn in some
different way.
However, it’s designed for ESOL
● Content infinite and randomly
generated, always unique, always
different
● Because you play that game in the
company of people who
themselves are unpredictable and
infinitely branchable, you can learn
something new from THEM each
time you play.
e.g. Trace Effects e.g. Minecraft
But, teachers need to learn the
game in the company of others

28. MINECRAFT AS AN EXAMPLE OF CONTENT GAMIFICATION
● May 17, 2009 – Minecraft released
● 2010 - Joel Levin “first played an early version of
Minecraft with his 5-year-old daughter in 2010.
He was amazed at how much his daughter was
learning from Minecraft; she solved problems
on her own, developed a spatial understanding
in the game, and accelerated her reading and
writing skills because she wanted to be able to
interact with other players
● 2011 – I requested Minecraft licenses for my
workplace
● 2015 – I started EVO Minecraft MOOC
Ossala (2015)
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/arch
ive/2015/02/teaching-in-the-age-of-
minecraft/385231/

29. THE BIGGEST PROBLEM PREVENTING TEACHERS
FROM LEARNING MINECRAFT IS
Finding a community
● Anyone can buy the game & play alone,
but benefit comes from playing in a
community
● It’s not so much the game but the
participatory culture surrounding the
game which is where the language comes
from, where the most significant
development takes place.
● But players of this game in educational
settings tend to be K-12 children and
adolescents.
● Difficult for many teachers to become
trusted and accepted to play the game on
servers populated by school kids in order to
learn first-hand its affordances.
Solution: EVO Minecraft MOOC
http://minecraftmooc.org

30. COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
"Whatever the problem the community has the answers“ - Stilger (2017)
● 1998 I started Writing for Webheads -- a space where NNS students could meet to
practice English
● 2002 Webheads in Action started as a CoP of ESOL teachers and edtech specialists called
that is still viable today (Stevens, 2018).
● Over the years this CoP has ebbed and flowed and interleaved with other CoPs, one of which
was called Electronic Village Online. EVO is a CoP that has produced free online teacher
development workshops that have taken place every Jan/Feb since 2001.
● In 2015 I started EVO Minecraft MOOC. This session just completed its 5th consecutive
iteration in February 2019 and is planning a sixth in 2020 (Kuhn and Stevens, 2017).
Stevens, V. (2018). Webheads [pdf]. In John Liontas (Ed.). The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. Wiley-Blackwell.
5824 pages. DOI: 10.1002/9781118784235. Retrieved from
http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/archive/9781118784235eelt0458webheads.pdf
Kuhn, J. and Stevens, V. (2017). Participatory culture as professional development: Preparing teachers to use Minecraft in the
classroom. TESOL Journal 8 (4), 753–767. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.359
https://afternow.today/wp-
content/uploads/sites/8/sites/14/2017/09/LifeAffirmingLeadership.
pdf

31. HOW DID EVO MINECRAFT MOOC COME ABOUT?
An EVO colleague from Croatia had an 11 year old son, Filip, who
had become fluent in English by meeting people from other
countries online and engaging with them in world in Minecraft
(using multimedia with text and VOIP).
● Filip had his own YouTube channel where he shared videos, in English,
with peers his age from other countries in Europe.
● Watched videos in English about how others solve problems in
Minecraft
When I visited his family in Croatia he told me that he couldn’t
understand these videos at first,
but eventually, “they started making sense.”
Wanting to understand something in English so badly that
you keep watching, and meaning emerges. …
That’s language learning!

32. HOW EVO MINECRAFT MOOC BEGAN
● NOT: enter the master learner cycle at the front end, with modeling and demonstrating.
● We flipped that, proposing instead to enter in the middle, starting with practicing and
reflecting.
● Now all we needed was a community where some in the community would be able to model
and demonstrate to us.
Most people develop an expertise and then propose a session
to TEACH that expertise; How did we approach this?
We created it in two steps
● Marijana interviewed her son for Smolčec, Smolčec,
and Stevens (2014).
● We created an EVO session so we could all learn about
the affordances of Minecraft for language learning
Smolčec, M., Smolčec, F. and Stevens, V. (2014). Using Minecraft for Learning English. TESL-EJ 18, 2.
Retrieved from http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume18/ej70/ej70int/

33. HOW EVO MINECRAFT MOOC BEGAN
● NOT: enter the master learner cycle at the front end, with modeling and demonstrating.
● We flipped that, proposing instead to enter in the middle, starting with practicing and
reflecting.
● Now all we needed was a community where some in the community would be able to model
and demonstrate to us.
We created it in two steps
• Marijana interviewed her son for Smolčec, Smolčec,
and Stevens (2014).
• And we decided to create an EVO session so we could
all learn about
the affordances of Minecraft for language learning
Most people develop an expertise and then propose a
session to TEACH that expertise; How did we approach
this?

34. ENTER THE PARTICIPATORY CULTURE / COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
Jeff Kuhn David Dodgson
In my literature search I had identified other practitioners who were doing interesting
things with Minecraft and language learning. They joined us and became or
mentors.

35. AMONG OTHER SKILLED MENTORS IN EVOMC MOOC 2015
Mircea Patrascu’s amazing roller coaster
built on the EVO Minecraft MOOC server,
which you can ride yourself here,
https://youtu.be/nJQhvLjtQn0
Mircea limited access to this ride by
designing a set of switches that had to be
set in a certain order in order for the door
to open.
The switches are set in answer to
questions, which players must answer
correctly before they can ride.

36. ANOTHER COMMUNITY -- JAMES YORK AND KUTOBA MINERS
● 2005 - James York started playing World of Warcraft to help him learn
Japanese,
● Once Minecraft was released, he became convinced that this was the
language learning game he had been looking for all along• He set up a server for his
Japanese ELL students
called Kotoba Miners (KM)
• He created a series of
English language learning
tasks for them.
But KM became a project for English
speakers to learn Japanese.
How did that happen?
Read …
York, J. (2014). Minecraft and language learning. In C. Gallagher (Ed.). An Educator's Guide to Using Minecraft® in the
Classroom: Ideas, inspiration, and student projects for teachers. (pp. 179-196). Peachpit Press. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296537652_Minecraft_and_Language_learning

37. JAMES YORK AND KUTOBA MINERS
York enlisted some native English speakers to come and play
on the server with his Japanese ELLs. just once each week to
help his Japanese students learn English.
● His students’ level of English was fairly low, so the NS
volunteers could also practice Japanese.
● Once a week, the NNS students logged in and completed
activities with English-speakers
● Once the course finished, NNS stopped playing on the
server, but the native English speakers continued.
York suddenly had a server of English speakers who were
interested in learning Japanese
This led to the creation of Kotoba Miners (York, 2014, p. 182)

38. JAMES YORK AND KUTOBA MINERS – WHY MINECRAFT?
York chose Minecraft over other possibilities
such as Second Life and WoW because
● “I experimented with a number of virtual
worlds and games as part of my research.
● I rejected massively multiplayer online
games (MMOs) for lack of control over
content and their often extremely
specialized discourse
● I also rejected a lot of social worlds (such as
Second Life) for their painful aesthetics,
controls, and perceived distance between
“users” and “content creators.” (p. 180)
This left …
The image is from York (2014)

39. WHY IS MINECRAFT SUITABLE AS A CONTENT GAMIFICATION
ENVIRONMENT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNERS?
As York explains it
● “Minecraft is simple. From controls to
aesthetics and even gameplay.
● Learners spend less time learning how to
navigate the game and more time learning
and focusing on language. Additionally, it
gives teachers and learners 100 percent
control over content … that is easy to create
and use.”
The critically salient affordance of Minecraft that
gives it the distinction of being an example of
content gamification: Control over content for all
players
● “The application of game elements and game
thinking to alter content to make it more
game-like.” (Kapp, 2013).
● “In content gamification the content is altered
to be more game-like by using elements such
as challenges, feedback loops, and storytelling
without actually turning the training into a
game,” Designing Digitally, Inc. (2019).

40. IF WE DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO REACH THE END OF THE SLIDES
You can read a text version of this
talk at
https://tinyurl.com/icctar2019vance
And find the complete slide set here
https://tinyurl.com/vance2019icctar
Contact Vance via
https://learning2gether.net/
Or by email:
vancestev [@sign] gmail.com
More information about
EVO Minecraft MOOC:
http://minecraftmooc.org
The End