This is a peer-reviewed presentation from AERA 2014 (American Educational Research Association) about game-based learning in a university teacher preparation program.

1. ANNA ARICI, PHD.
DIRECTOR, QUEST2TEACH
CENTER FOR GAMES & IMPACT
MARY LOU FULTON TEACHERS COLLEGE
SASHA BARAB, PHD
.
DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR GAMES & IMPACT
MARY LOU FULTON TEACHERS COLLEGE
TERESA FOULGER, EDD.
SIG TEN PRESIDENT, ASSOC PROFESSOR
MARY LOU FULTON TEACHERS COLLEGE

2. • John Dewey – Philosopher, Educator
• Transactive view of learning, Learning by doing.
• The Laboratory School, Chicago
• Lacked the ability to scale vision, difficult to maintain
• Modern technologies allow learners to become active protagonists,
with agency and immediate consequences for their choices.
“a communicative action or
activity involving two parties
or things that reciprocally
affect or influence each
other—changing both.”
Transactive Learning

3. Transformational Play
an experiential state that involves:
• projection into the role of a character who,
• is recruited into a partly fantastical problematic context,
• must apply conceptual understandings,
• to transform the context,
• and, ultimately, oneself.
It involves positioning …
• persons with intentionality,
• content with legitimacy, and
• contexts with consequentiality.

4. Game-Infused Learning &
Teacher Education
• Game-infused learning is particularly well suited for
teacher education.
• Theory alone isn’t enough, you must have practice.
• Games allow students to
– take on the role of a professional educator, and begin
to shift their identity
– experience the nuances and complexities of teaching
– see the consequences of their decisions played out
– fail safely, make changes, succeed
– gain fluency in practice

7. Avatar/Identity

9. Rich Narrative, Problem Scenario

10. Fantastical mentoring, Just-in-time

11. Choices: Balancing
personal time and
class preparation

12. Teachers Lounge

13. Consequences of your Decisions

14. What you do prior to class largely determines the
success of your students

15. Students get Immediate Feedback

17. Digital natives are Not always Gamers
• Most common use of computers was for
homework or social networks.
• More than 87 percent of students indicated
that they rarely played video games, if at all
• Only 9% reported that they only played video
games between 1-5 hours each week.
• 21% considered themselves to be a novice
with video games
• Only 5% described themselves as a gamer

18. Research: Comparison Findings
Regular class
Described unit as ‘useful’, ‘a lot of information’, ‘boring’
• “This unit made me more aware of my actions”
• “It taught me about a lot of different professional situations”
Summary: learned ‘about’, and became ‘aware’
Game-infused class
Described unit as ‘interesting’, ‘really valuable’, ‘fun’
• “This game allowed me to practice how to be respectful in a disagreement, it gave
me skills in interpersonal relationships and how to work better with others.””
• “This experience gave me the language to approach new and challenging situations
in my professional career. It showed me that I should not listen to other people's
judgments and should instead face the situation or person with an open mind.”
Summary: learned ‘skills’, ‘language’,
first person/protagonist and in-depth

19. Immersion: Authentic practice
Immersion provided language and practice for difficult situations
When students were asked what they learned in this unit that will stay with
them, many responded they felt better equipped to handle difficult interactions
in the real world.
• “I like how this game gave us scripts for handling conversations. I think that’s
huge. Sometimes we know what we’re supposed to say but it’s hard to find
the words. It was great just reading the various options and seeing there are
a lot of different ways to approach it.”

20. Avatar: Identity as a Professional
Game role supported Identity shift from Student to Teacher
Several students felt that this game was the first time they felt like they saw
themselves as a teacher, rather than a student.
One student shared:
“This was a significant shift out of not being a student anymore, you know?
We are in the professional world now, and we need to see ourselves as
teachers. This game was like a shift into ‘the real life’, and other people can
relate to that struggle.”

21. Relevance to Real World
Relevance to real classroom
Students participating in their last semester of student teaching pointed out
that they had already experienced conflicts very similar to these, and that the
virtual experience reflected the real world.
• “I just want to say that I definitely give a lot of points for relevance, because
a lot of these situations were like things that I’ve already experienced. I was
immediately able relate to some of these situations.”

22. Positive Results
• Nearly two-thirds (62%) reported that the
game helped them to see themselves as a
more professional teacher
• 45% of students reported that their
engagement with the game helped increase
their level of confidence in their future
teaching ability
• 52% of students indicated that the game they
were engaged with helped increase their
commitment to future teaching.

25. Q2T:Diving into Data
• Data-Driven Decision Making
• Collecting evidence & Making
Inferences
• Diagnosing root causes

29. Intel Collaboration:
Powering up the Promise of Digital Learning
• Next targeted curriculum to design, collaboration with
Intel’s Education program, content, and network.
• Q2T games provide experience with technology and have
shown increased self-efficacy with digital learning.
• These Intel collaborations would take this a step further to
teach specific digital literacy skills via a gamified network
with blended and immersive experiences.

30. Teacher Toolkit
These automatically become
available to the instructor in
the teacher toolkit, along with
all kinds of analytics, scores,
and other ways of tracking
student progress in the game.

31. Games for Learning aren’t software,
they’re curricula.”

32. MLFTC Teacher Education Games
‘Big G’:
Social &
Professional
Network
Pursuit of
Professionalism
On the Write
Track
Data Driven
Decision Making
At the Core:
Project Based
Approaches
Multi-
User 3D
Hub
The Promise of
Digital Learning
(Intel)

33. Multi User 3D Hub

34. Quest2Teach International Network
for Pre-Service Teachers
Mary Lou Fulton
Teachers College, ASU,
Arizona
Dublin City University,
Ireland
University College
Copenhagen,
Denmark
University of Foggia,
Italy
The Joan Kanz
Cooney Center,
NYC

35. small “g” games
Small ‘g’ games are bounded; they’re self-contained and completeable; pre-
optimized to introduce, cover or re-enforce a particular lesson in safe, simulated
and structured environment. Key genres include:
• Adventure Games - Optimized for enabling students to take on identities and solving
problem in an engaging, narrative context
• Simulation Games - a framework for engaging in discussion, co-mentoring, tutoring,
critique, reflection, “theory crafting”, and designing
• Strategy Games - Optimized for students to solve complex problems balancing multiple
variables to accomplish desired outcomes

36. Big “G” FRAMEWORK
Big ‘g’ game infrastructure is open-ended; integrating small g games into a larger,
flexible ‘meta-game’ structure and affinity spaces that foster user-driven extensions
and adaptations in support of real-world goals and outcomes; Key components:
• Data and Analytics Dashboard - allow players, teachers, and researchers to
access data in order to interact with the game and optimize the learning
experience
Social Communities/Affinity Spaces - a framework for engaging in discussion,
co-mentoring, tutoring, critique, reflection, “theory crafting”, and designing
• Achievement-based framework and gamification layers - carefully designed
extrinsic reward systems and intrinsic motivators to focus attention, motivate
action and provide a trajectory of advancement
• Smart/Modding Tools - framework, tools, and support structures so students
and teachers can extend, shape, and augment the core platform in the virtual
and real world
• Meta-game identity - framework for personalized avatars, meta storylines, and
open APIs that unite small “g” and real-world experiences

37. Extending Impact – Change Agents

38. 1.56
4.47
2.54
6.39
0
2
4
6
8
10
Avg. Accepted Avg. Revisions
Average Number of Reports Per Student Accepted &
Revised by Year
2013 2014
f =1302 f =2138 f =3732 f =5384
Building Capacity of
Teachers to improve
Student Work!
0.00
100.00
200.00
300.00
400.00
500.00
Total Number of Student Reports Accepted by
Teacher & Year
sum_Accepted_yr1
0.00
200.00
400.00
600.00
800.00
1000.00
Total Number of Revisions by Teacher & Year
sum_Revisions_yr1

39. N = 834 (2013)
N = 842 (2014)
1.56
4.47
2.54
6.39
0
2
4
6
8
10
Avg. Accepted Avg. Revisions
Average Number of Reports Per Student Accepted & Revised by Year
2013 2014
f =1302 f =2138 f =3732 f =5384
276
158
915
688
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
Smith Jones
First Time Teachers (2014)
Total Accepted Total Revised
2.11 2.05
6.98
8.94
0.00
1.00
2.00
3.00
4.00
5.00
6.00
7.00
8.00
9.00
10.00
Smith Jones
First Time Teachers (2014)
Avg. Accepted Avg. Revised

40. Quest 1 – Improving Student Learning with Data-Driven Decision Making (Building Theory)
• Mission One – What is Data-Driven Decision Making (D3M)?
• Mission Two – Locating Qualitative and Quantitative Data
• Mission Three - Drawing Inferences from Data
• Mission Four – Building Data-Infused Models
• Mission Five – Creating Research-Informed Solutions
Quest 2 – Thinking Critically With Data (Playing the Game)
• Mission One – Analyzing the Problem (game)
• Mission Two – Building my Model (game)
• Mission Three – Unlocking my Action Plan (game)
• Mission Four – Unbundling the D3M Tool
• Mission Five – Choosing my Research Area
Quest 3 – Applying D3M to My Classroom (Theory to Practice)
• Mission One – Digging into the Research
• Mission Two – Identifying My Classroom Challenge
• Mission Three – Applying the Research to Practice
• Mission Four – Building my Research-Informed Model
Quest 4 – Implementing and Optimizing My Plan (Theory to Practice)
• Mission One – Leveraging Peer Feedback
• Mission Two – Implementing my Action Plan
• Mission Three – Optimizing … (my plan, student learning, my understanding)
• Mission Four – Sharing Lessons Learned
Data-Driven Decision Making

41. KERBALS MINECRAFT
PORTALS WOW
Player
Agency
Ongoing
Services
Productive
Constraint
Designed
Product

42. Research-supported and carefully-sequenced set of instructional challenges
featuring diverse modalities for maximal learning and engagement
Learning Trajectories
 Sample Sequencing: “Quest2Teach: On The Write Track”
(Providing Feedback to Students in Ways that Inspire Engaged and Purposeful Learning)
Description
• Invitational Pitch
Triggers
• Agree to Contract
• Build Learning Goal
Resource
• Journal Article
TLlg CMpr
Description
• Introduce Yourself
Trigger
• Complete Profile
Gast
Gaad
Description
• Level Up Student Work
Triggers
• Decisions with NPCs
• Threshold Scores
• Ability
• Confidence
• Commitment
Resource
• Pedagogical Agents
Immersive Strategy
Game Framework
ASpr
Description
• Post Classroom
Reflection
Triggers
• Post & Peer
Endorsement
Resource
• Posting Tips
SRwe
Description
• Improve Student Work
Triggers
• Submitted Student
Work Reflection
CMpf
Description
• Comment on Peers
Trigger
• Offer Endorsement
Resource
• SEL Handout
SLs

43. Research-supported and carefully-sequenced
set of instructional challenges featuring diverse modalities
(leveraging learning sciences principles and featuring a game-infused framework)
Sequenced
modalities
put knowledge and concepts to work to build
mastery of real world disciplines
THRIVE
Learning
Trajectories

44. Game Ecology Needs
• This game sets the tenor for the entire Q2T multi-year experiences
• Just in time, not just in case
– Later in semester, but not too late that irrelevant
• Instructors need to be invested
– Rather than apologizing, we should be celebrating,
– Play the game, upload the rosters
– Learn the concepts, drive the curriculum
– Teacher toolkit, new pedagogies
• They need additional support, 2 hrs min, perhaps at all college monthly
meeting.
– Form community of instructors to support ech other during implementation and thru
semester via network.
• This needs to mediate between a high caliber class and the field
– Raise expectations but not overwhelm with too much content (replace rather add)
– Theory-based, rigorous course
– Methods courses? more focused subgroups for richer transactions

45. HTTP://GAMESANDIMPACT.ORG/QUEST2TEACH/GUESTACCOUNT
CONTACT: ANNA.ARICI@ASU.EDU
WWW.QUEST2TEACH.ORG

46. 6 Traits: For 3D Gameplay
• Tyrion: Organization
• Alaina: Voice
• Catelyn: Word choice
• Jaime: Purpose