Task Three

7/27/2018

This blog post is also a self-guided quest on using game design lenses to make your current curriculum more contemporary. You, the reader, ultimately get to decide your destination and the impact that this will have on curriculum design, instruction, and assessment. We are going to lay out some thinking points, and you will get to apply them to your current curriculum. We invite you to share any “AHA!” moments that you have in the comments section, so we can collaboratively grow from each other’s ideas and expertise.

Note: You can also lead students through this process to help them think of ways to make products and/or presentations more engaging.

Quest Action One: Introduction

Download Jesse Schell’s Art of Game Design app: A Deck of Lenses (iOS Link | Android Link). The app is free, and you can follow Jesse on Twitter if you are interested in more of his work: @jesseschell.
Scroll through the lenses to gain a sense of familiarity with them, noting ones in particular that grab your attention.
Think of a game you’ve played and lenses that might be involved. Have a discussion with someone else about how understanding design lenses impacts the player’s (your) experience and how the addition of other lenses might enhance the game.

Quest Action Two: Analysis

Let’s start with a popular game like Angry Birds. When you first open up the app to play the game, you are given a goal. There is also a visualization of what you must do to meet your goal.
You perform an action that either completes the goal or necessitates a do-over. The goal can be completed at a low level (one star) or a high level (three stars), with the higher level as an indication that you have an improved skill set.
Getting the stars and advancing (leveling up) to the next levels are affirmations of your skills. In the case of Angry Birds, there is actual cheering when you complete the level.
You continue to play so that you can reach your goals, which may include: leveling up, achievement of experience points, more stars, or actual rewards that may help you achieve subsequent levels.
The positive feeling reaching all these goals keeps you in a state of engaged play, a toward state that keeps you interested, motivated, and continuing to play.
In-game challenges give you opportunities to put your skill sets to the test in a uniquely challenging problem or scenario. These challenges often have additional rewards for completing them, maintaining that high level of intrinsic motivation.

Quest Action Three: Application
Note: Your response to these questions are just for you and you are not required to document your answers.

What lenses can you identify, using the Deck of Lenses App, when thinking about Angry Birds or any other game you play?
What lenses do you wish you saw?
How could you improve the games you play by using additional lenses?

Quest Action Four: Extension
Your responses to these questions will be documented in the Comments section. Directions for this are at the end of this blog post.

Thinking about the lenses you saw in the app, the lenses you aligned with a game you play, and your thoughts about improving the games you play with additional lenses, how could you improve your curriculum using these lenses?
In what ways could the lenses improve instructional actions?
In what ways could the lenses improve assessment?
What happens when you invite students into this conversation to co-create instructional actions and assessments?

The goal here is intentional thought about the impact that these game design lenses might have on your curriculum. This is not the same as Gamifying the curriculum, where science content is layered on top of Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders, or where video games might be used to improve content knowledge or motor skills. The is more along the lines of decisions we make about instruction and assessment, and in this case, those decisions include facets of what game designers consider to make their games more engaging, more addictive, and more exciting. We want those same things in curriculum design.

Please respond in the comments section to just the Questions in Quest Action Four. Be sure to comment on one or more of the other participants' responses.

7 Comments

Kelly Zimmerman

7/31/2018 04:41:03 am

I loved these lenses! I think it can be a very useful tool to evaluate your current curriculum. They are probing questions that allow you to reflect on the effectiveness of your curriculum from different points of view and really hone in on what skills students are learning.

I think these definitely could drive instruction and help you to tailor projects/ lessons to really develop and extend studnets critical thinking and creaive skills.

These coudl help drive assesment becasue of their reflective nature. They coudl allow you to really probe into studnet learning and what other skills they are learnign other thatn just hte content.

I think when you invite studnets into the discussion about instruction and assesment it becomes more realvant to them and in the end more engaging. Students are able to have a say in what they are learnign and what they already know. It allows you to further learnign on a deeper level. In additon it helps you to see what students know and what they want to know.

Tracey Palmeri

7/31/2018 06:04:20 am

Kelly, you make a great point about using these lenses to evaluate curriculum. I had the initial misconception that we would need to play actual games, but uses the same game design lenses to inform our own teaching strategies has some excellent potential benefits!

7/31/2018 06:01:51 am

I have to admit that I was not initially on board with the gaming aspect. BUT, after reading this section, I see the purpose! It isn’t necessarily about play, but about learning curriculum through the style of play. I didn’t think that I played games, but I use Duolingo to learn German. It is not necessarily a game but it is a style of learning that uses many of the gaming lenses. There are levels, rewards, punishments, and competition. And it is addictive AND I am learning some German which is really cool. When learning a new part of speech or grammar, you can only make so many mistakes before you have to go back to the beginning and practice some more basic words. I think I could improve my curriculum by using the reward and punishment system as well as the competition lens. The rewards are intrinsic, you level up, you move on to a new skill. The punishments are not severe or grade related, you just go back a step to gather what knowledge you need to succeed. The competition lens would be helpful too. Peer competition has always proved to be a great motivator in past lessons.

The lenses make you rethink your instructional actions because rather than just delivering instruction, you are thinking about how to get the students to uncover the skills and use them. The lens of meaningful experience and the lens of challenge are both ideas that we incorporate into lessons every day, it just needs to be presented in a way in which they see it as a game. It is really hard to get students to get excited about The Metamorphosis, but presenting it as an investigation of existentialism or an investigation of Gregor’s true problem, could make it more fun especially if the culminating challenge or competition was in the form of a debate.

The lens of Visible Progress is a great way to improve assessment. I think if you are going to use a game or quest, you have to assess as you go. If you make the entire project have one summative assessment grade, the stakes are too high and that can cause students to shut down or withdraw. Having smaller achievable goals or levels would make the learning much more engaging.

I think that students would really see the value in the game or quest if you invited them to create it with you. This makes the learning personal and authentic. They set the rules, the goals, the levels and the path. The lens of choice helps make the content more valuable to the students.

Nicole Neri

8/2/2018 07:29:22 pm

Tracey- I agree at first I wasn't on board with the gaming, but looking at these lenses definitely helped me understand see all the benefits of it! I took liked the visible progress lens as a way for the students to assess as they go.

8/2/2018 08:09:34 pm

Tracey- I agree. At first I wasn't on board with the gaming, but looking at these lenses definitely helped me understand and see all the benefits of it! I too liked the visible progress lens as a way for the students to assess as they go.

8/2/2018 08:26:29 pm

Examining the lenses on the app, I was surprised with how many lenses there were to examine and improve games, instruction, assessment, and so much more! These lenses can definitely help to improve instruction and assessment in the classroom. While I haven’t played a game in a while, I have watched my boyfriend play Fortnite and almost all of my students this last school talked about how fun it is. I watched him play a couple times this week and can understand why it may be so engaging and addictive to people. There are many lenses aligned with this game such as, emotion, surprise, curiosity, problem solving, time, pleasure, action, and so many more.

I could definitely improve my curriculum using these lenses. I thought the lens of goals questions were extremely important to use when improving curriculum and instructional actions. For example, are the goals of this lesson concrete, achieving, and rewarding? These lenses could also help to improve assessment. The lens of meaningful choices made me think of evaluating my assessments. For example, am I giving students the right number of choices for a summative assessment? Would more make them feel more powerful or would fewer make them clearer? This is definitely something I want to work on this school year with my co-teacher. I think inviting students into this conversation to co-create instruction and assessment makes it more meaningful to them. They can take a look at the lenses as well and co-create with the teacher. With my students, we could look at the lens of rules to create guidelines and expectations together for an assignment or assessment. High quality instruction and assessment takes a look at ALL of the lenses.

8/6/2018 08:04:25 am

I woudl be interested to see what students think of the lenses and how they relate to the curriculum they are learning in school. Definitely importation to include them in these decisions.

Task Three

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