gamification - could this work for programming?
prof_braino
Posts: 4,313
By way of slash dot
Professor make boring data class interesting by applying D&D structure.
Says is works better than the regular lecture model: "Because the structure of a university class really makes no sense, whatsoever. Its based off this kind of like 19th century agrarian model, if not from this medieval Oxford model. "
http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/12/10/1827251/professor-cliff-lampe-talks-about-gamification-in-academia-video
Seems any change might be a step in the right direction.
Professor make boring data class interesting by applying D&D structure.
Says is works better than the regular lecture model: "Because the structure of a university class really makes no sense, whatsoever. Its based off this kind of like 19th century agrarian model, if not from this medieval Oxford model. "
http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/12/10/1827251/professor-cliff-lampe-talks-about-gamification-in-academia-video
Seems any change might be a step in the right direction.
Comments
Honestly, I don't see it as some magic elixir, keeping with the D&D theme, and may consider it somewhat condescending, or extraneous depending on how it was presented. Truth is, those people who are there and motivated to learn require interaction that works for them, and my primary gut take on this would be it seen as a means to an end, where that end is diluting down value added by instructors, and as such not an optimal reform for the classroom in general.
Gamification as an exercise is a good thing! That device has been around for ever, only recently in the limelight due to it becoming popular with corporations looking to improve on very specific metrics they find important. As a primary focus learning tool, I'm not seeing a whole lot of value above and beyond simply investing in students properly and giving them common sense options.
It's been almost 30 years since I've played D&D so I've never had the motivation to do it.
At my university they use a GUI framework written by a senior to teach programming. They do things like make pong and other graphically simple games.
I have a very different perspective. I wonder if its because I never could get into D&D when it was popular? The dice and the statistics tables seemed unrelated to any definition of fun. Which is strange, since I like dice and statistics.
Talking AT me is a great way to put me to sleep, getting me involved is a great way to wake me up.
I'm VERY interested in many subjects, from chemistry to physics to artificial intelligence. But when I look at the materials available, they make my brain switch off in seconds. (Google wiki FFT and see what put me to sleep yesterday) This is the human body's natural defense reaction to mind-numbing boredom. We see this same effect at weekly and daily project meetings.
The existing problem with education is that the most interesting subjects are presented in the most boring painful way possible. The lecture method was high-tech when it first came out, but we seen a lot of progress since the industrial revolution. We notice that college grads can't get jobs, and the high school drops out found successful corporations. One would think education should target and benefit both these groups in particular. Perhaps getting the student involved in the education process as a participant rather than a spectator has merit.
Additionally, the early roots of gaming can cover lots of ground without being too complex. Way back in the day when I was in high school, an attempt was made to teach programming that way. At the time, BASIC, LOGO and PASCAL were the languages used, with a few students doing assembly for various things on their own time. That was necessary to see any machine speed. Apple ][ computers were the target platform. Despite having an IBM lab later on, there wasn't any real attempt to teach programming on the MSDOS machines, until much later...
Class sizes grew considerably when games were incorporated. The LOGO class would end with students developing their own version of "Lunar Lander", which was just enough of a game to challenge a LOGO programmer on those machines without being too big or demanding. End of semester contest included playing, judging and debugging / optimizing the games written. For BASIC, the themes were simple action games, as described here, "PONG", "BREAKOUT", "WALL BALL", anything that could work with low resolution graphics and the paddles, or analog joystick / keyboard. The PASCAL project was a text adventure game. This was the least successful, and I think a lot of it had to do with that old PASCAL environment. It just wasn't as accessible as the other two were; otherwise, it was a great match given the capabilities and where students might catch interest.
That was the late 80's, and gaming at school was considered highly controversial. That class almost wasn't approved. Most of the other education going on was simple user practicum, running apps, completing business / graphics projects, or using telecommunications of various kinds.
In any case, applying games to programming got 80's era teen girls at the keyboard building with the best of them. Given where I lived at least, that was quite a feat!
We agree it seems.
Honestly, I think discussion and or "what if?" or "what happens?" type simulations presented as light games can be very engaging too, and I've used them over the years in some of my teaching / training roles over the years.
What we want to avoid is the games becoming more of a focus than the real learning is. Being talked at isn't always a bad thing, and sometimes we need that, and when it's done in an engaging way, all good. Nobody wants to hear the drone for 2 hours, but somebody actually sharing things with some passion, spark if you will, is great! Playing with the material, getting to interact is good too, which is why we have labs and such. So long as the gamification is a tool, great!
Well, theatre of the mind is my only response. Ever tell ghost stories to one another as kids? Ever have an idle fantasy you might want to share with others? Want to escape the real world for a time?
That is what D&D was all about. Really, it came down to one basic thing; namely, somebody who could visualize such a place and render it to others through words, rules and the various old school game assets. I got started by joining a game on a whim. The Dungeon Master, basically the person who executes the game for the players, either has that spark, or does not, and if they do, it's a wonderful experience. If they do not, then it's all kind of dull and formal. One key element here is character creation. Truth is you can populate a piece of paper with the stats, inventory, roles, etc... and roll the dice among friends to establish a fair set of attributes to work with. That's OK, but the real fun was visualizing this character. Make a back story.... That is what this DM required before one could enter the game formally.
He would accept your request to play, or issue an invite which was the case for me. I got the instructions and went to the fiction books in the library for inspiration. To this day, I can tell you the story of Zorak the Cleric, healer of all good men, strong warrior in battle, purveyor of valuable elements, elixirs, spells and all manner of arcane works. lol Picture a kind of muted "Gandalf" from "Lord Of The Rings", which happened to be the inspiration for my particular character. Zorak would have been a wizard, but the Cleric just appealed to me as more of an all around valuable person as opposed to a more focused and offensive sorcerer. Zorak grew strong and noble under the tutelage of his mentor Benzon, wizard and shaman of the light, inspired to defend the realm after seeing his small village pillaged and burned by a dark overlord.... and so it begins!
Once I had my back story done with enough fidelity to actually personify Zorak, I shared it and the DM would literally weave that story into the current campaign! Unbelievable experience! When I joined, the other players knew me, not as Doug, that geeky high schooler who wanted a go at this odd game, but Zorak! Bits of history, common ground, and such were there, ready for me to just get immersed right away, and I did. The first session lasted many hours and they seem as minutes, all of us looking up, blinking a little, realizing we had spent the day somewhere else!
On game day, I didn't join right away. The other players met me at some place in the game, after hearing from a barkeep that I might be a good addition to the team exploring the keep. When that meeting actually happened, I then entered as the game state was ready for me. Strange, but very potent done right. This invoked the theatre, as they literally would catch me up, with me hearing the goal for the first time right then and there, and deciding to continue or not. I could have left and the story would have continued, the DM accounting for that in advance.
When that DM moved on to secondary education far away, I was inspired to run a campaign. Nobody wanted to carry his realm on, the vision was too good. A new one was required. This is a lot of work, but very rewarding. Basically, that meant invoking a small realm, with history, social tensions, politics of the day, lands, keeps, villages, monsters, and all the stuff needed to go adventure with the best of them. Most of the good stuff exists in the DM's mind, represented by the spoken word, illustrations, and lots of maps, stats, and other things kept on paper away from the players so that the story unfolds in "real time"
Another alternative to this which proved quite popular was to take a movie and rework it as a D&D session. A friend and I did "Escape From New York", and it was quite possibly one of the best experiences I've ever had! We watched the movie, developed the game assets, then bent the story a little so we could have a game of it as opposed to some walk through adventure on rails, created the characters and then "playtested" the dynamics with some simulations run on the dies to see whether or not game balance would be immersive and challenging enough. Frankly, this took about 3 months to complete in spare time. I seriously wish I had kept it... The assets were with that friend when I moved on, lost to time, somewhere. Oh well.
A typical play session would involve meeting somewhere, synching up stats, inventories and everybody getting organized and it would begin with a brief retelling of the current game state as maintained by everyone. Once there was agreement, the DM shifts to the master role, executing the game for the players. The DM would tell the players the details, then wait as they decided what to do.
Say we are in a hallway, dark, dank, poorly lit, but for two of us holding torches and the Cleric preparing both a light and healing spell, just in case battle were to happen, and say there are four players. To set that up, it would go like this:
DM: You see dank stone walls, vines growing here and there, torch holders along the left, some with unlit torches others empty, to your rear(south) is the hall you've traveled along, and ahead of you the hall extends past your torch light, 15 feet or so. You feel a cool breeze at your back and a musty smell to your front. There is a slow trickle of water here. Two can stand side by side, but no more.
Players: (group discussion) Zorak, please prepare light and healing, Bozone will hold one torch, sword in hand advancing in front, Zorak in middle with Daria, who has axe and shield, Ben at rear, holding the other torch and his staff.
DM: (often would simply note this with a nod, or some gentle signal he gets it, perhaps making a note)
Players: We advance slowly, holding torches high, 20 feet just past where our light extended to.
DM: (after considering notes and a die roll or two) As you advance, the trickle of water becomes more prominent to your right, the breeze at your back fades some, you begin to smell something more foul, Ben's staff glows faintly, and you come to a "T". The passage to your left smells dank, the passage to the right is cooler, water can be heard. Zorak is 50 percent complete on preparation...
Players: We hold here to wait for Zorak, Ben moves to front and gently probes either direction with his staff.
DM: To the left, a brighter glow is seen, to the right, steady to dim, etc...
Now, the DM knows that Ben is carrying a staff of warding, and the glow indicates something evil lies ahead, and would weave that into his story, which was set before we began to play. A band of trolls is sleeping in the one passage, and the other has water leaking into a pool, with other passages branching off from there. The DM would draw what the players can see on the game map on graph paper, tell them stuff, then wait to consider their actions in light of the story, using the die to determine outcomes.
So there you go. That's what it was about! Well, that and finding immersive places to play. A dark room, candles, pictures and such helps.
Getting back to the discussion at hand, programming that kind of stuff would be a kick with the capable machines we've got now, IMHO. What nobody has really done successfully is capture that great DM in code... Quite the challenge.
Compare writing some code to solve some problem vs playing chess:
1) You have a rigidly defined field of play. The chess board vs the computer memory.
2) You have strict rules about what can happen in that field of play. Chess piece moves vs machine instructions or high level language constructions.
3) You have a time dead line. Complete the program on time or make your chess move on time.
4) Others will always be able to play better than you or get the solution quicker.
Why this infinitely fascinating pursuit of programming needs "gameification" is beyond me.
Braino,
The thing about the FFT is is that it is damn hard to understand. It was decades between me first seeing the source code of an FFT program and me understanding how the hell it worked and getting to the point I could write my own from the mathematical definition. Never mind the gaming, if you want to understand a thing you have to work at it, which means you need a fascination for it.