Learning through collaboration: video game wikis

The wiki, wherein community-spirited players meticulously document their gaming experiences for the benefit of others, from simple guides to complex theories and strategies, has become the de facto online reference medium for video game players. This study sought to examine how players learn from one another about the systems that underpin their favourite games and how they engaged with social media – wikis, in particular – to facilitate this collaborative learning. It is argued that in collating, synthesizing and disseminating the often complex behaviours observed in a modern video game, the wiki author is displaying academic proficiency in a non-academic field. Drawing on a series of interviews with gaming wiki contributors and users, the practices of those engaged in using gaming wikis are discussed, together with an account of the research methods used. In undertaking such research, a number of challenges and concerns were encountered: these, too, are described

Using Video Games to Develop Communication Skills in Higher Education

Employers are increasingly concerned that university graduates possess the transferable skills – sometimes termed ‘graduate attributes’ (Barrie, 2006) – necessary to succeed in the workplace. Prominent among these skills are those which relate to communication; however, not all higher education courses are designed explicitly to teach or develop such skills. Many commercial video games, on the other hand, require players to communicate in order to succeed, particularly in an era of increasingly ubiquitous online multiplayer games. The pilot project described here sought to explore the use of commercial video games to teach communication skills in a formal higher education environment. The work could inform the development of self-directed game-based activities that students may undertake without intervention from already over-committed (and costly) academic staff. As such, the study aimed to begin to address the problem of how desirable ‘soft skills’ such as communication competence may be developed in higher education. The pilot was conducted over eight weeks, with a small group of undergraduate student volunteers asked to complete psychometric tests relating to communication skill in weeks one and eight. In the intervening period, students were asked to play selected commercial video games, for two hours per week. Each week, students were given loosely-defined tasks to carry out using the specified game. Games that rely upon some form of communication were selected with input from a panel of academic and industry experts and included Minecraft, Gone Home, Portal 2 and Never Alone. In Minecraft, for example, pairs of participants were asked to perform a number of loosely-defined collaborative tasks, such as building a home for both players. Portal 2, on the other hand, required participants to work together in order to solve a series of puzzles. All such in-game activities were thought to require some form of communication. Lab activities closed with a short group discussion, and participants were encouraged to blog about their experiences. It is possible that group discussions also had an effect on participants’ communication competence, and such discussions may form part of any future interventions. Few participants opted to blog about the project, so the impact of this activity on the communication skill measured here is considered to be slight. The Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale (McCroskey & McCroskey, 1988) and the Communicative Adaptability Scale (Duran, 1992) were used to measure self-reported communication skill before and after volunteers had played the selected games. In addition, the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1979), General Self-Efficacy Scale (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995) and Big Five Inventory (John et al., 2008) were administered to gather data potentially related to communication skill. For each measure, the change in the associated test score was recorded, for each participant, over the course of the eight-week study. Mean values of both communication measures were observed to increase between testing sessions. 95% confidence intervals for change in mean communication scores did not cross zero, suggesting this was not a chance occurrence. While the lack of a control group means it is difficult to prove that the games played were the cause of gains in communication skill, this finding is consistent with such a hypothesis, and motivates a further, hypothesis-testing, controlled study. In addition to the calculated confidence intervals, the correlation coefficients between each measure were calculated using Pearson's r. Correlation between the two communication measures was moderately strong (r = 0.76), which, as they are intended to measure aspects of the same attribute, indicates good validity. The pilot proved instructive and highlighted a number of challenges and concerns that must be addressed in any subsequent study. In the absence of a control group, it is unclear how much of the effect is a result of the intervention. However, the pilot did provide some indication of the measures that should be employed in a subsequent study. A more robust approach to student recruitment must be taken if any study that builds on this work is to attract and maintain a large cohort of volunteers, and meaningful statistical analyses are to be performed on the data. Logistical concerns must also be addressed: a greater number of participants would place greater demands on limited hardware and software available for gaming sessions. Technical issues encountered during the pilot were infrequent and relatively slight. Researchers were familiar with the chosen platforms (PC and PlayStation 3) and most of the games. Where there were unknown factors, such as the restrictions imposed by the university’s IT infrastructure, extensive testing of configurations was undertaken in advance. Other issues related primarily to participants’ attitudes towards the selected games. For example, a small proportion of our volunteers were somewhat dismissive of Gone Home, as the experience did not align with their own personal definition of what constitutes a video game. While these players rushed to complete the game without pause for reflection, the majority of players did, however, appear to become engrossed in the game’s elusive narrative. This situation is illustrative of one of the problems that can arise when using a prescribed game within a formal learning environment: not every game is to every player’s taste. Squire, for example, has documented similar problems (2011, p.117), where some proportion of the class in question isn’t interested in playing video games, or fails to see the educational value in doing so. The limited data described here, however, do appear to warrant further investigation. These data, coupled with informal feedback from student participants, suggest that commercial video games may have a role to play in developing communication skills in our graduates. Based on a small sample size, the pilot’s highly promising results have motivated a further, hypothesis-testing, controlled study which is currently underway

Games for Communication Final Report. Working Papers of the Communities & Culture Network+ No. 6

No abstract available

Press Start: the value of an online student-led, peer-reviewed game studies journal

In this article, an online student journal is described, and the ways in which student participants value the journal are discussed. Press Start is a peer-reviewed international journal of game studies, which aims to publish the best student work related to the academic study of video games. Content analysis of qualitative survey data (n = 29) provides insights into what students value about the journal, revealing six broad themes: community and support, inclusiveness and accessibility, the published research, feedback from peer review, experience of conducting peer review and the opportunity to publish. The article concludes by suggesting that engagement with online student journals should not be limited in terms of geography or the level of study, unless there are robust pedagogical reasons for doing so

Using Video Games to Develop Graduate Attributes: a Pilot Study

It may be argued that most higher education courses are not explicitly designed to teach or develop desirable soft skills such as critical thinking, communication, resourcefulness or adaptability. While such skills – often referred to as ‘graduate attributes’ – are assumed to be developed as a by-product of a university education, there is little empirical evidence to support this assumption. Furthermore, traditional didactic teaching methods do not typically require students to exhibit such skills, while prevalent assessment methods such as examinations are ill-suited to measure them. Many commercial video games, on the other hand, require players to exercise a range of very similar skills and competencies in order to progress. The pilot project described here sought to explore the use of video games to develop graduate attributes and to identify suitable instruments for measuring such elusive conceptions. A small group of undergraduate students were recruited and asked to play selected video games for two hours per week over an eight week period. A range of psychometric tests were administered at the beginning and the end of the experiment period in order to gather empirical data relating to the participants’ graduate attributes. Mean differences in the pre- and post-intervention scores associated with each measure were obtained and 95% confidence intervals calculated to provide an indication of whether results obtained might be indicative of a wider population. Participants were also asked to discuss their experience as a group following each session and to blog about it if they were so inclined. Despite the small scale of the pilot, the results were sufficiently encouraging to warrant a larger study, which is now underway. The challenges involved in obtaining empirical data on the effectiveness of a game-based intervention such as this are addressed and implications for the subsequent study are discussed

Video games can develop graduate skills in higher education students: a randomised trial

This study measured the effects of playing commercial video games on the development of the desirable skills and competences sometimes referred to as ‘graduate attributes’. Undergraduate students in the Arts and Humanities were randomly assigned to either an intervention or a control group. Previously validated, self-report instruments to measure adaptability, resourcefulness and communication skill were administered to both groups. The intervention group played specified video games under controlled conditions over an eight week period. A large effect size was observed with mean score change 1.1, 1.15, and 0.9 standard deviations more positive in the intervention group than the control on the communication, adaptability, and resourcefulness scales respectively (p = 0.004, p = 0.002, and p = 0.013 for differences in groups by unpaired t-test). The large effect size and statistical significance of these results support the hypothesis that playing video games can improve self-reported graduate skills. The findings suggest that such game-based learning interventions have a role to play in higher education

Student attitudes to games-based skills development: learning from video games in higher education

Qualitative interview data is presented in support of previously-published quantitative evidence that suggests commercial video games may be used to develop useful skills and competencies in undergraduate students. The purpose of the work described here was to document the attitudes of those students involved in the quantitative study and to explore how the game-based intervention was perceived. To this end, student attitudes to the use of specified games to develop communication skill, resourcefulness and adaptability are examined. A broadly positive perception of the games' efficacy for skills development is revealed, and the aspects of game play that students believe contribute to skills development are discussed. These aspects include the need to communicate with team mates in order to succeed, and the fluid, unpredictable nature of in-game challenges. It is suggested that while the games played an important role in skills development, interaction between students, facilitated by game play, was also a significant factor

Authentic tasks for revision [poster]

In this case study, the use of an authentic task for revision of a Masters-level Information Technology course, Multimedia Systems, is described and evaluated. Authentic tasks are designed to mirror problems as they are encountered in the real world, with often ill-defined or even conflicting requirements, and limited time and resources available to develop a solution. While authentic tasks are increasingly used in higher education for the purposes of assessment, the small-scale study (n = 8) described here highlights the applicability of such an approach to revision. During a two-hour revision session, an authentic scenario was presented to students wherein they were to assume the role of a software development company bidding for work on the development of a multimedia application. The presented scenario was deliberately vague from a technical perspective. Students were divided into two smaller groups to introduce a competitive element and to better facilitate group discussion. Students were asked to devise and present a pitch that would see their fictional company win the contract, drawing on material taught over the semester. Following the presentations and ensuing discussion, students were asked to complete a short questionnaire to determine their opinion of the exercise’s effectiveness. The students’ responses were uniformly positive, and suggested that such authentic revision tasks may provide an excellent opportunity for students to learn from their peers, to and gain valuable experience in an environment that mimics that with which they will soon be faced following graduation

Sometimes Students Make the Best Teachers: Developing and Enhancing Graduate Skills

No abstract available

Video game preservation in the UK: a survey of records management practices

Video games are a cultural phenomenon; a medium like no other that has become one of the largest entertainment sectors in the world. While the UK boasts an enviable games development heritage, it risks losing a major part of its cultural output through an inability to preserve the games that are created by the country’s independent games developers. The issues go deeper than bit rot and other problems that affect all digital media; loss of context, copyright and legal issues, and the throwaway culture of the ‘next’ game all hinder the ability of fans and academics to preserve video games and make them accessible in the future. This study looked at the current attitudes towards preservation in the UK’s independent (‘indie’) video games industry by examining current record-keeping practices and analysing the views of games developers. The results show that there is an interest in preserving games, and possibly a desire to do so, but issues of piracy and cost prevent the industry from undertaking preservation work internally, and from allowing others to assume such responsibility. The recommendation made by this paper is not simply for preservation professionals and enthusiasts to collaborate with the industry, but to do so by advocating the commercial benefits that preservation may offer to the industry