Mobile games, gamefulness, and place-based learning

How can you leverage mobile gaming, location-based mobile features, and gamification to produce powerful learning opportunities?

Key Questions and Comments:

• (03:16) If people learned at least 10% about the site and artifacts I had to learn inmaking the game, I’d be very pleased.
• (09:15) I’ve decided that the mobile is not the primary theme that holds these things together; it’s, in fact, location…Moving away from the mobile as a technological focus to location as a thematic or cultural focus.
• (13:10) The act of play (whether it’s adding fiction to the environment or drawing our attention to certain things because we’re engaged in the narrative)…is potentially transformative of location.
• (18:05) It can be a really powerful experience to take a sensory experience of being in a place, and also the cognitive (and sometimes emotional) experience of doing this roleplaying activity–that’s a big part of the power of this type of learning.
• (20:45) “Gamification” takes a system that’s already well-defined and simply makes that system more efficient…We take tasks and make them less boring by adding game mechanics, and I think that’s really troubling–that’s not why I’m interested in games.
• (25:40) Have either one of you undergone that experience where you’ve created this game and there was this emergent product or realization that you didn’t plan?
• (29:06) One of my colleague, Scot Osterweil, talks about ‘The 4 Freedoms of Play’ and one of them is the ‘Freedom to Fail’. Games provide a really good space for that, giving people permission to go out on a limb and try things.
• (31:07) What is your position on this whole trend toward integrating games into the government and institutions such as K-12 schools? How will that pan out?
• (34:10) Is it fair to say that mobile is distinctly different? And if so, how? What are some of the positive outcomes that can come from the mobile aspect of games?
• (37:56) I think there are opportunities to reach people in very different ways that school doesn’t tend to do a very good job at; that’s something that we can investigate trying to leverage more and more.
• (43:38) How could non-programmers start providing mobile game-based learning for their youth? What are the first steps?
• (48:40) The more we can provide templates for things, that’s another way to provide a really easy on-ramp for people to get started making their own games. That’s a huge piece of it.
• (50:45) I really want to hear Eric talk about some of the tough topics that you tackle through a mobile game. Is there a threshold [regarding] the rigor or the difficulty of the topic that you want to engage?

From this Series:

• Part 1—Mobile learning: turning place into a learning space
• Part 2—Teachers and Students: real-life mobile implementation with learners
• Part 3—Mobiles and informal learning spaces: libraries and museums

View the Conversation
During the broadcast, the conversation also took place on Twitter using the hashtags #connectedlearning and #mobileed.

Guests for this webinar included:

• Richard Scullin – Founder, MobileEd.org; Director of Mount Greylock Regional High School DML Lab
• Judy Perry – Research Manager, Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP), MIT; TaleBlazer
• Eric Gordon – Associate Professor, Emerson College; Founder, Engagement Game Lab
• Debra Polson – Queensland University of Technology; Founder, newishmedia

Resources for this webinar:

• Mobile Devices for Learning: What You Need to Know
• “How to Design Mobile Game-Based Learning – Part 1”
• “Gamification, Meet Gamefulness” by Ben Betts
• Darfur Is Dying: a refugee game for change
• The Scheller Teacher Education Program at MIT
• Scot Osterweil: “The Four Freedoms of Play”
• TaleBlazer.org: an internet app to author smartphone location-based augmented reality (AR) games
• The Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College
• newishmedia: large scale data visualisation projects and alternate reality games
• Five Research-Driven Education Trends At Work in Classrooms