No Magic Bullet: 3D Video Games in Education

Kym Buchanan & Nick Viani

Elliot, J., L. Adams, et al. (2002). No Magic Bullet: 3D Video Games in Education. ICLS 2002, Seattle, Washingon.

• Intro
• Critique
  • "Introduction"
  • "Background"
  • "Study Description"
  • "Method"
  • "Results"
• Points of Interest
• Future Directions & Conclusion

Intro (Kym)

Teaching using games

• Poorly-understood area
  • Design
  • Pedagogy
• Rhetoric
  • Educational games
  • Teaching using games

Why this article

• Prototypical experimental design
  • Create a game
  • Teach the experimental group using the game
  • Compare experimental to control
• Disappointing results (no magic bullet)
  • Honesty
  • Concise
  • Thoughtful

Context

• ICLS: The Fifth International Conference of the Learning Sciences
  • Conference theme: "Keeping Learning Complex: Fostering Multidisciplinary Research Efforts
  • Appropriate for game studies and teaching using games
• Researchers from the College of Computing, Georgia Tech
• Pre-calculus classes
  • Parametric equations
  • Polar coordinates

Cartesian & polar coordinates
(polar_coordinates.gif from http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PolarCoordinates.html)

Critique of "Introduction" (Kym)

Highlights?

The researchers expect to find some correlations between success with AquaMOOSE and...

• ...attitudes about math
• ...spatial ability
• ...interest in video games

And they were wildly successful?

• "we discovered these hypotheses to be false"

The path not taken

• Learner-Centered Design (LCD)

Perspective on design and pedagogy

• Pedagogy dictated by pragmatism (a Spiro-like "conspiracy of convenience")
• With new, accessible technologies, "The range of easily produced mathematical constructs will be vastly expanded."

Overly-ambitious effort to improve both curriculum/content and instruction

Results were disappointing. Possible reasons?

• Students' expectations
• Killing a fly with a canon
• Classrooms are messy places

Critique of "Study Background" (Kym)

Screenshots

How do you win at the Ring Game?

Parallel to LOGO

• Logo is a family of programming languages and environments
  • Elliott et al. are probably referring to Turtle
  • Robot turtle, then on-screen turtle
  • Moving a turtle by typing commands

Critique of "Study Description" (Nick)

Beginning Hypotheses (11): pg. 5

Study Description:

Quasi-experimental design with two groups:

Study Sample:

• Study includes a single school, ‘BHS’.
• BHS is a suburban public high school in central Georgia (‘less advantaged’ population).
• Drawn from 2 pre-calculus classes (N = 30, N = 34)

The Teacher: Kimberly, 17 years experience

Critique of "Method" (Nick)

1. Begin by assessing students’ visual ability and attitude toward mathematics:

• Kit of Factor Referenced Cognitive Tests to measure the students’ visual ability.
• Attitude survey, in the form of the Fennema-Sherman Math Attitude Scales.

2. Control group undergoes regular classroom instruction for seven days.

3. Experimental group receives mix of classroom instruction with 3 days of AquaMOOSE intervention.

4. At the conclusion of the unit on parametric mathematics, both classes assessed for content, and math attitude.

5. Three students from control group and eight students from experimental group were interviewed after the experiment.

6. Three months after the experiment, all students receive an open-ended survey about the content material and the math class in general.

Critique of "Results" (Kym)

Highlights?

Math ability measured using grades from prior semester

Lots of minor disparities, but none are statistically significant

• Control group scored better than experimental group (!)
• Poor retention in both groups
• "After the test I will forget, because it's not interesting to me."

(Ah ha! A good excuse to insert one of my graphical ideas!)

Students "confused and unoriented"

Points of Interest (Nick)

• Design allows for control over many validity issues (internal, external).
• Most of their hypotheses are affective goals (motivation, attitude, etc.)
• AquaMOOSE intervention includes more content than traditional class curriculum.
• Group equality established through prior math achievement (same as math aptitude?)

Future Direction & Conclusions (Nick)

• Future Direction is very positive. Rather than letting the idea die, they post it on the web, making it available to all (while they refine it).
• The question is . . . would you download it?
• This study reminds us of some of the messy realities of working in educational research (lab problems, disruptive students).