21st Century Organization

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 4: Games as the practice arena for 21st century skills

Chris Dede of Harvard has identified three new century demands for learning:
1. Collaborate with diverse teams of people
2. Create, share and master knowledge by assessing and filtering quasi-accurate information
3. Thrive on chaos – make rapid decisions based on incomplete information in order to resolve novel dilemmas

Research is showing that games can help develop these skills and attitudes whether the games are purposed for, appropriated by, or incidental to the formal context in which the skills will be applied.

Games purposed for learning were highlighted with spotlight on the serious games development and their use of simulations and role play strategies. These games have learning objectives as part of their design. They are very often content focused and engage players in bounded representations of real world environments. Players manipulate aspects of the world and hypothesize and test out the repercussions of their actions. In the past few such games included the multiplayer social dimension allowing for many-to-many discourse, collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Examples:
· Finance for Decision Makers
· One the job video training

Games that are part of entertainment are also being appropriated as a part of formal learning agendas. Teachers in schools struggle with how to slice and dice multi-hour engagement in immersive games like Civilization within inflexible school timetables. Family counsellors like my daughter are considering use of the Sims in their work with adolescents growing up in dysfunctional families.
Examples:
· Civilization
· The Sims

The most intangible and arguably the most exciting area of learning gain from online gameplay may come as an unintentional by-product of personal and recreational engagement in games. Most recent research into online games would suggest there are gains to be made in three key areas.
1. content
2. ‘soft skills’
3. habits of mind.

It is in these last 2 areas that MMOG appear to have the greatest strengths. Their capacity to develop as complex social environments extends to players access to knowledge sharing and support through the self-organising communities that envelope them. Players in these games do not act as docile consumers but are instrumental to the system as Taylor’s First Monday article reminds us; “... scholars and designers need to pay serious attention to the role of players in game culture, not simply as consumers or widgets that can be plugged into rationalized systems, but as prime agents in producing and sustaining the very systems they are engaged with.”

Skills and attitudes developed in online games transfer into decision making and complex problem solving in workplaces. Mike Antonucci boldly states “The people who play games are into technology, can handle more information, can synthesize more complex data, solve operational design problems, lead change and bring organizations through change”. Galarneau and Zibit identify the “soft skills” developed in gaming as critical thinking, teamwork, problem solving and collaboration. In their research into World of WarCraft forums Steinkuehler and Chmiel (2006) found evidence of the development of scientific habits of mind such as scientific argumentation, model-based reasoning and, theory-evidence coordination.
Examples:
· World of WarCraft
· EverQuest

There is a big lesson from MMOG environments. People are enormously capable when given the space and motivation, even through simple gameplay, to flex their cognitive and social muscle in an environment where anything is possible and experimentation is safe, permissible and desirable. (Galarneau & Zibit)

A nascent body of research, and I have only cited a few luminaries, indicates that games have a role to play in answering Dede’s demands for learning and in developing skills beneficial for the 21st century. Now we have to work out how – more on this tomorrow.

- Bronwyn

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 3: Games recruit learning

Why the big interest in video games at the moment? Why are mentions of games popping up in BRW, government reports and corporate press reports? Well Jim Gee probably sums that up best for us when he says that games are able to get people to sustain engagement in activities that are long, hard and complex and they even pay for the privilege. That engagement is not all grinding (the repetitive tasks completed to escape lower levels of the game). Video games engage players in cognitive activity; strategizing, developing and testing theories, innovating and forming creative solutions. And in today’s massively multiplayer online games they are not doing this alone. They are members of affiliations and clans looking for ways to collaboratively compete to raise the individual and the clan status and identity. As the Game Life blog pointed out when gamers get into that state of "flow" they are not necessarily engaged in "fun".

Yesterday I raised the issue that not all virtual spaces are games and Gee’s list of game features succinctly defines what we should see in a game…

1. Empathy for a complex system
2. Simulations of experience and preparations for action
3. Distributed intelligence via the creation of smart tools
4. Cross-functional teamwork
5. Situated meaning
6. Open-endedness: melding the personal and the social

He further suggests that the qualities of good games are that they are motivational, lower the cost of failure, encourage competition and collaboration and the development of strong identities as players move through well-sequence problems facing a ‘pleasant level of frustration’. I can recommend pouring a cup of coffee and watching Jim Gee’s full presentation given here in Australia last year (17th Aug, 2006 1hr 22 min) Games Are Good For Learning...But Not Just Because They Are Games

Until this presentation I had thought Gee was advocating for all learning to become a game. But he is not. What he is challenging us to do is to reflect on how we can get people to develop their own resourcefulness and creativity rather than continue to train people in the basic skill sets needed to do jobs likely to go to more competitive offshore countries. His set of game features should challenge us to consider how our workplaces and learning environments can better develop individual initiative, collaboration and commitment.

The attraction of games for learning can be seen in the advent of the term “serious games”.
Two sites worth exploring are:
• Serious Games Initiative
• Department of Defence Game Developers Community

The DOD game Saving Sergeant Pabletti asks players to engage in creative problem solving in a highly situated context. It is a game dealing with a life and death repercussions. And if you thought games were all violent then consider Peacemaker, Food Force or French Budget.

There is criticism of the serious games movement’s worth and predictions that it has to show some gains quickly or it will die in the bud. I hear in this criticism the same things I hear about communities of practice. The need to show tangible and immediate return on investment and a government or corporate sponsorship that is following a trend rather than being heartily committed to the concept and a new way of doing things. Tomorrow as promised I would like go back to the gals and guys who are researching the knowledge, skills and attitudes developed in games and examine the potential relevance and returns of these to organisations (and offer some examples).

- Bronwyn

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 2: Do we know what a game is?

I am sorry this second message took so long to arrive but a sizzlingly beautiful (42c) Sydney weekend was hard to resist! Back on deck now and posting each day this week.

It might be best today to take a closer look at what should actually be considered games and to weed out some of the hype that surrounds them. One  thing that really bothers me is the way that, in marketing and much of the popular media,  any virtual space is touted as a game.  (perhaps much the same way that almost every web site is a community - sigh).

For their social learning potential, I am a big fan of three of today's most engaging online enterprises; MySpace  (personal portfolio, networking and social communication), Second Life  (virtual world architecture) and World of WarCraft  (massively multiplayer online game). All have the potential to involve us in identity and relationship building, within perhaps some varying degrees of fantasy ;-). But only one of these can be unambiguously and by design considered a game.

Programs and services such as Active Worlds  and Second Life allow us to build, enter and share 3D spaces. These spaces contain objects that we can act on, and engage in, amidst opportunity for real time dialogue with others in the space. Instead of wandering in text, visual representations of ourselves known as 'avatars' wander around in a three dimensional spaces. Instead of clicking on hypertext text links we click on objects in the world.  These virtual worlds might have a dedicated purpose or require goal-driven behaviours or they might be purely social spaces. In the media these architectures are often described as games but to me that denies the role of intent, design and implementation in game making. Three dimensional virtual spaces are no more inherently games than buildings are amusement arcades.

What is a game then? Diana Oblinger  suggests "...games include elements of urgency, complexity, learning by trial-and-error and scoring points. They also support active learning, experiential learning and problem-based learning. Games make it possible to use information in context and are inherently learner-centered and provide immediate feedback". There is a great deal more infrastructure and complexity in a game than simply embedding traditional learning activities in a simulated or fantasy world.

Marc Prensky suggests there are 6 key aspects to complex game designs:

1. Focus on the user's engagement
2. Have  frequent important decisions
3. "Level up" toward clear, important goals
4. Adapt to each player individually
5. Work by iteration & playing, not theory
6. Emphasize Gameplay, not Eye Candy!

One virtual world implementation that does appear to take up the challenge of game design is Well's Fargo's Stagecoach Island where young adults explore financial management. Stagecoach Island contains, in a simple form, many of the elements described by Prensky and hints at one element Prensky overlooked; a community of players supported by many-to-many communication in forums, zines, and online events.

We might need to ask ourselves how much has the current rash of 'virtual world' learning environments seized upon the sexiness and 'eye candy' of 3D worlds.  Many instantiations of Second Life are dedicated training spaces or distance education classrooms.  Take a look at the SimTeach  list of organisations building Second Life islands and you will get the idea that many are 3D implementations of rather conventional online curriculum delivery processes.

A fantasy world designed to hold  together thinly veiled learning tasks cannot be called a game. Just ask Sasha Barab  and the team at Indiana University designing Quest Atlantis. They discovered early in their R&D work that a virtual world, even with a rich and integrated backstory, can lose its lustre very quickly. If the environment does not offer a critical mass of others to communicate with or some ultimate game challenge to match yourself and others against, then one might just as well be downloading course materials in a Learning Management System.

Clay Shirky , Dan Farber & Larry Dignan , virtual world economist Ted Castranova and others have asked is what’s happening in educational and organisational contexts in these virtual worlds as innovative or exciting as the headlines might have us believe? Are they leveraging what the technology and game design affords? When you consider the research trajectories being explored by Constance Steinkuehler , Diana Oblinger , Lisa Galarneau and Melanie Zibit (and yes deliberately all females) we should answer 'no'. There is a great deal for us to learn about the skills, competencies and practices gamers are developing and the enormous motivation and commitment they have to do so. I want pick up on what these gals (and some guys)  have to say about the value of games for 21st century skills tomorrow.

- Bronwyn

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 1: The zeitgeist of virtual games

Avatars, MMORPGs, serious games, 3D virtual worlds, clans, grinding and twinking are all part of the everyday language of online gamers. More and more this language is becoming relevant for those of us in educational and organisational contexts and yes you might need to get the tourist dictionary to converse.

If you are still in any doubt about the arrival of games, after Jenny's introduction, consider the corporate sponsorship of clans in massively multiplayer online games which might have gone to sporting teams in the past. Mexican and Chinese farmers game in the in 21st century digital sweatshops to acquire game assets that can be traded as commodities in an open market. Wells Fargo and Sony Music have open virtual worlds to market their products and services. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra was the first to perform in the 2005 version of PLAY a symphony of game themes. But the arrival of games offers up much more than opportunity for CAPITALIST US to act entrepreneurially in THEIR WORLD.

I have worked for the past three years as part of a team exploring virtual world architecture Active Worlds for educational purposes in Quest Atlantis. My interest in this area arose not from some inner desire to join geekdom but to further explore and understand online social contexts and how identity, relationships, knowledge and skills can be developed within them. I came into this from several years working to understand and build Internet-mediated communities of practice. As an ex-teacher I had some understanding of the use of games and simulations in learning but I was totally unprepared for how engaging and socially-oriented the new breed of online games and virtual worlds would be.

Over the next couple of days I want to differentiate games and virtual worlds and explore what makes them exciting prospects for us. While there might be little argument over the popularity of games and virtual worlds there is a lot of debate about the reasons for their coming of age. A recent post on the Wired Game Life Blog opens up a number of the issues I would like to explore in the coming days in relation to games. You might read this post and the ensuing comments and consider how reflective (or not) many of the gamers are about their "play" and what your current position is on this issue of games as social contexts.

Bronwyn

Welcome Bronwyn Stuckey- Virtual Worlds & Social Learning Contexts

Bronwyn Stuckey's public profile is most associated with her consultancy and coaching in a Communities of Practice program with Etienne Wenger, (communities of practice pioneer credited with inventing the term) and John D. Smith at CPSquare. 

But Bronwyn is also a thought leader and researcher in online contexts and virtual worlds as social learning environments. Her PhD research investigated "Internet-mediated communities of practice" (IMCoPs) and over the past three years as visiting scholar at Indiana University she has explored the development of identity and community in games and virtual worlds.

Bronwyn's visit with our 21stCenturyOrganization blog is timely.  Reuters has recognized the growing value of virtual worlds and reports  Second Life news. The size of the virtual  economy is becoming large enough to attract attention from the United States Congress and a growing number of real world companies are participating.

Google's $1.6b YouTube purchase raised awareness of the value and skill sets of youth audiences and the impact "digital natives" (the under 25 generation) are and will have on organizations as they enter the workforce. The FT.com interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and CNBC video on the Virtual KaChing are recommended listening as context for Bronwyn's visit as is reading Victoria Axelrod's Second Life or Life 2.0 May 1, 2006  post here.

Please join us in welcoming Bronwyn and contributing to an exploration of games and virtual worlds and their application for organizational learning by posting your comments.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Valuing "I don't know"

"But any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life....

This is why I value the phrase: "I don't know" so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings.  It expands our lives to include spaces within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended..."

~ Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel winning poet accepting her 1996 Prize for Literature

Wislawa Szynborska Poems New and Collected 1957 -1997 Harcourt Brace & Company New York 1998

 

Building on the Past: IBM & Sears in Second Life

No doubt as for others, 2006 departed in a rush.  Belated 2007 New Year greetings to all.

I've been wondering what is an appropriate post to start a New Year but yesterday IBM and Sears delivered the answer with their announcement of partnering to give Sears a presence in Second Life. 

As a PRODIGY Services Company alumni (and thanks to fellow alum Gary Belden for pointing to the story), I have to wonder if connections built two decades ago when IBM and Sears worked together in PRODIGY to create the online consumer space,  laid the foundations for this latest partnership. 

I'm betting that they did and hope that somebody involved in this Second Life initiative (that testifies to business interest in this burgeoning virtual economy in 2007), can confirm.   

~ Jenny Ambrozek