Shonda KuiperGrinnell CollegeApril 27th, 2010

OutlineSerious Reasons for Playing GamesShort ActivityResearch ProjectConclusions

♣Games motivate students to learn because students clearly see how knowledge is related to the goals of the game.

“There is no reason that a generation that can memorize over 100 Pokémon characters with all their characteristics, history and evolution can’t learn the names, populations, capitals and relationships of all the 101 nations in the world. It just depends on how it is presented.” (Prensky 2001a)

Prensky, Marc (2001a, October). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9 (5), pp. 1-6.

Why Play Games?

♣Games motivate students to learn because students clearly see how knowledge is related to the goals of the game.

Today's students are “digital natives”. They grew up immersed in technology and are accustomed to learning through physical interaction and feedback.

“The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."

Prensky, Marc (2001a, October). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9 (5), pp. 4.

Why Play Games?

♠ Games have a low threat of failure and sequence tasks to allow for early success. They maintain a threshold at which players feel challenged but not overwhelmed. There is no threat of failing an exam or a tough assignment where students get stuck, afraid to write something down unless they are sure it is correct.

In electronic games, they simply restart the game and try again. By lowering the threat of failure, students can feel free to experiment. They can try new strategies and modify the strategy until they are successful.

Papert, Seymour (1998, June). Does easy do it? Children, games, and learning. Game Developer Magazine, p. 88.

Why Play Games?

♠ Games have a low threat of failure and sequence tasks to allow for early success. They maintain a threshold at which players feel challenged but not overwhelmed.

While students often complain about hard homework, these same students want to only play electronic games that are challenging.

Papert (1998) uses the term “hard fun” to describe how the best electronic commercial games are educationally compelling. 

Papert, Seymour (1998, June). Does easy do it? Children, games, and learning. Game Developer Magazine, p. 88.

Why Play Games?

♦ Game based learning fosters a sense of engagement. Students become immersed in a game, share ideas which lead to peer-to-peer teaching, and are inspired to seek out new knowledge to improve their gaming abilities.

Our students’ fascination with such games is unlikely to fade. Instead of swimming against the tide, educators should consider the lessons that the gaming revolution can teach us. (Jenkins 2005, p.48).

Learning is essentially hard; it happens best when one is deeply engaged in hard and challenging activities (Papert 1998). Jenkins, Henry (2005, April). Get Into the Game. Educational Leadership 62 (7), pp. 48-51.

Papert, Seymour (1998, June). Does easy do it? Children, games, and learning. Game Developer Magazine, p. 88.

Why Play Games?

♥ Games allow statisticians to create simplified models of the world around us. Games can extend students’ knowledge from a simple model to a variety of more complex real world problems in a variety of disciplines.

Before computers statisticians had no choice. These days we have no excuse. ...Technology allows us to do more with less: more ideas, less technique. We need to recognize that the computer revolution in statistics education is far from over. (Cobb 2007)

Cobb, George (2007). The Introductory Statistics Course: A Ptolemaic Curriculum? Technology Innovations in Statistics Education 1 (1).

Why Play Games?

ImPerfection:

♦ Place pegs in the appropriate holes.

♥ Game “explodes” if you do not go quickly enough.

♣ Relates to a common psychology research question: The Stroop effect [red green]

♠ Structured but flexible data collection techniques.

http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~kuipers/statsgames/imPerfection/

Discussion QuestionsDesign issues:

Identifying the response variablesIdentifying factors and levelsDetermining sample sizeChoosing a design structure

Blocking for gender or paired testsInteractions

Model assumptions (data transformations)

Multiple comparison issues

Advanced Project GoalsPreparing students for research

and real world problemsRead and evaluate primary literatureBuild upon current research to develop their

own research hypothesisTransition from a research question to a

statistical modelCollect their own data, develop their own

simulation study, and determine appropriate analysis

Oral and written reports with peer review

Steps in an Advanced ProjectIntroductory workshop style labJournal article or reading assignment that

incorporates a statistical concept into another discipline

Students prepare a research proposal that identifies their own research hypothesis response variable, factors, and levels of each factor what factors they plan to control during the experimentan appropriate experimental design the contribution this experiment makes as it builds upon

previous work. Collect their own dataWrite a research paper or poster

Use a grading rubric for peer review of other projects

♠ Low threat of failure: Simple questions can be addressed with a low chance of data collection errors. Games can be extended to very complex models.

♣Knowledge is related to goals: Students want to know how to answer there own research questions.

♥ Create simplified models: Research questions are motivated from current research in psychology.

♦ Sense of engagement: Students choose their own research question and enjoy sharing how their research compares to others in the class.

Conclusions

web.grinnell.edu/individuals/kuipers/stat2labs

Thanks to Sam Rebelsky and Henry WalkerNSF DUE#0510392: Kuiper, Moore, and Collins