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>> Donald Brinkman: Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this monthly Playful Learning
Expert talk. Today I am delighted to introduce Dr. Constance Steinkuehler, Senior Policy Analyst
at the White House. She's currently working on a national agenda on game show learning. So
glad you could make it, and let's get started.
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: Great. So officially thank you for having me. Please enjoy
your lunches. This will be informal. So if I go into a direction that seems incomprehensible, put
your hand in the air so I don't keep on talking in ways that don't make sense.
Alex Gomez, thank you for having us. It's been an extraordinary trip. Just what I've seen so far
in the last couple of hours here on the Microsoft campus has been exceptional and mind blowing
and I'm really excited.
So I'm just going to walk through a little bit about -- well, let me first say who am I and what am I
doing. I am temporarily on leave from the University of Wisconsin Madison. I'm an academic
who studies games and learning, games in sort of the smarter side of fan dom and gaming at
large.
And I'm currently advising on policy in the White House, Office of Science and Technology. What
I want to do is give you an idea of the tenor around games impact broadly at the national level
and talk a little bit about some of the initiatives that we're working on.
Hopefully to inform the work that you're doing and we can start having a conversation about what
that might look like for the future.
Okay. All right. So in some ways I may be sort of repeating things you already know. Which is
nice. Usually I speak to audiences where I have to actually put many different numbers in front of
them of various sorts in order to help them understand that games are in fact a vital part of our
economy, a vital part of our culture, of our art forms, et cetera.
But in case you are not aware, you know they are in fact considered a vital part of our economy.
If you just look at the numbers of consumers spending even up around 25.1 billion, much to
everyone's surprise how this lines up with the music industry is a good and a half times, times
something like the box office income profits in America. It's also one of our fastest growing
economies, and global numbers, the forecasts, if you saw last, what, two months ago economists
had a nice spread on some of the predictions around the economy of video games and its global
markets.
But one of the more compelling statistics I find is thinking about it in terms of just our national
GDP. So from 2005 to 2010 that GDP rose by about 16 percent. So to give you a good
comparison point, video games are more than doubled.
So this is, compared to other economic sectors, this is a high growth area. But what has that got
to do with addressing national challenges? So my role in the White House is not simply making
the economic argument that games are an important part of our economy. Albeit though they
are, and that alone should have people paying attention. But in fact my work actually focuses on
how might we think about games as a go-to strategy for thinking about some of our national
grand challenges, our stretch goals and the administration's current goals right now.
So in this audience, I don't have to explain many things, but if you think about the potential for
games, obviously they have massive potential for engagement. That's what game designers do
is design experiences to be engaging. The fact that they are thoroughly social, they're also
ubiquitous across not just demographics. So we have -- this isn't ten years ago where a much
smaller variety of people gamed. In fact, it's now become a mainstream activity.
If you look at things like the apps store on something like your iPhone, games are the major push.
They're also ubiquitous across everyday routine. If you get on the metro in DC, it's hard to enter
a car where at least a good fourth of them are not playing some form of game on a touch screen
typically.
But there's other points that make this a particularly salient strategy. They're conceptually
transformative. So some of the work that we just heard a couple of hours ago upstairs about
thinking as games and gamefication as a way to do things like debug systems, they can be used
to explore space, et cetera, et cetera. They're obviously leading technologies. My computer
replacement rate given particular computer games that I happen to like is ridiculous.
So as games move into the home so do advanced technologies. They're also rich for data
analytics and assessment. And of course there are links to STEM careers. If you're not here at
Microsoft campus or in the tech industry, it is surprising to find out that games are in fact the
biggest hobby space that we all have in common.
Games have a huge influence on STEM-related careers on technology-related careers on
advanced manufacturing, but a lot of that influences left sort of unspoken unless you're in those
industries themselves.
So as far as potential go, games have a lot to offer in many ways. The research on video games
is equally compelling. And here's just a smattering of some of the findings.
So I won't dig into too much of this, but the empirical argument that games may do more than
convey certain cultural themes that are controversial, this argument has now been put to rest. So
there are growing bodies of research and academic disciplines dedicated to things like literacy in
games, basic reading and writing, all the way over to digital literacy, neural science, visual acuity,
attention. Scientific discovery, not just fold it and thinking about high end scientific discovery, but
games, there's a growing body of evidence as games as entre into thinking like a scientist into
doing hypothesis testing and doing things like theory crafting and World of Warcraft, et cetera,
and the research is equally compelling.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with any of the federal reports that came out but in 2009 -- was it
2009? The National Academies of Science put out a report called Learning Science Through
Computer Games and Simulations.
And in the front end of that, the goal for this report was simply that there has been a new call for
different strategies toward teaching science and science literacy in the classroom. With the
general idea of engaging students in, as it says, developing understanding of both science
concepts and science processes. And a conclusion of the report was that in fact computer
simulations and games have great potential.
In terms of the state of evidence for -- this is research studies around STEM in particular. Most of
the evidence -- so here you've got the five main core categories of STEM learning that show up
across things like our core standards, et cetera.
So here's five main sort of topical areas in STEM. And if you look at both the evidence in games
and evidence in simulations, simulations, by the way, in science have been used in the classroom
for the last, I don't know, 85, 95 -- 25 years. Something like that.
So you'll see that in fact games were marked as emerging but inconclusive. Of course if you look
over at simulations it has a huge leg up historically on games. If you compare the two games are
not faring poorly here at all.
So the evidence -- so National Academies of Science and other major institutions that are
basically the keepers of our collective knowledge from academia have now sort of concluded that
games are a ripe strategy for thinking about engaging kids in STEM, which is a plus for us.
But it's not just science. Now we've grown from -- when I first started studying games, there
maybe were, gosh, I guess zero at the time. But that grew to probably 2 to 3 programs at
universities studying the impact of games beyond studying simply violence. And now that
collection has grown to probably 28 different schools of tier one academic studying games. And
across a whole bevy of topics, certainly not just STEM.
So you have both the economic argument that games are a compelling part of our economy, and
you also have a growing body of empirical research showing that games can have really
interesting positive outcomes for kids and adults.
So this is sort of the background where the White House starts to get interested in games as sort
of a particular policy strategy.
So I want to talk a little bit about the history of the strategy with Obama's White House. Since the
campaign trail, President Barack Obama has been an advocate of science literacy and STEM
education more broadly.
This has not always been the case in the White House administration. Yet, for Obama's
administration, he does in fact see STEM education in so-called 21st century skills as absolutely
foundational to the other goals that we have as a nation.
So let me try and say that a different way. Unlike previous administrations, this administration
sees understanding science and understanding technology as core to our entire future as a
nation, which means that there's a lot of concern and energy and momentum behind topics
around that.
Back in almost a year ago at Tech Boston, Obama talking to a group of students actually issued a
challenge and said: I want you guys to be stuck on a video game that teaches you something
other than just blowing something up. So you start to see the general rhetoric and tenor and
conversation around games emerge.
If you paid much attention to games that the first family plays, this holiday season we had great
clips of Obama buying games for his own children. Of course, Michelle Obama, the First Lady,
has long been an advocate of fitness, nutrition, through her Let's Move campaign and has issued,
for example, the healthier apps choice. This had a game component to it that wasn't solely
focused on games. But here one thing that I found so interesting about this mobile apps
challenge, which was before my tenure at the White House, what I found so interesting here was
that the general strategy was release federal government data and then enable the private
market to innovate applications that might leverage those data for consumers.
Which is a really interesting strategy and one you'll see repeated again and again across various
agencies. And if you're interested in this kind of work, the HHS and Todd Parks, who is the Chief
Technology Officer of HHS, his entire team for innovation focuses on just this strategy, which is
release federal data and then help innovate and spur technology development toward leveraging
those data, which is fabulous to say the least.
Now, my own office is John Holdren's office. This is the Office of Science Technology and
Policies. Anyone familiar with this office? I wasn't either until I was having conversations about
joining it. John Holdren, this gentleman, he's Obama's science director.
In our office we really have four core topical areas. This office, it's a fairly small office in the
White House of about 60 people. 60, 75. There are four core topical areas science, technology,
security and environment and energy. It's revealing that I was originally asked to take on the
topic of games for impact and national agenda toward games for impact.
And originally that was straight under the director's office. So I kind of work with teams that do
innovation. And within the first couple of months I became assigned to every team except
environment and energy. I'm pretty sure I get some form of badge or achievement pops
[inaudible] at some point if I can conquer that one as well.
But I use this to illustrate the fact that games, the administration is open to technology strategies
including interactive technologies like games, not just for something like learning and education.
But, in fact, to think about improving our cyber security, issues of national security, to think about
how do you increase not just scientific literacy, but how do you actually spur innovation like the
work of Zorn Popivich and fold it. So think about scientific. Discovery, so games have been
construed for me as games for impact across almost every area. Health, fitness, energy
consumption, et cetera.
And when I joined Tom Kleele, who is the main person I report to, asked me two simple
questions. They're not so simple. But let me tell you a little bit about how we're starting to frame
and operationalize them. The first one is what games should be built. What are some really
sweet spots where the administration has set certain goals and games may be a go-to strategy or
a way we might think about accomplishing those goals.
And the second one was in some ways more challenging than the one I -- probably makes fewer
headlines, but I see as the longer lasting impact which is how do you think about creating an
environment for innovating in that space.
So in my assessment, games for impact are in some ways kind of a blue ocean market. Like
there are some people moving into that space and you guys are some of them. But in many
ways there's this market that's there waiting to sort of be actualized. So the question is how do
you think about spurring innovation into that market in ways that aren't happening yet?
And I should also ask the question: What is in fact the role of the federal government in doing
that? Right? I mean, the two basic rules of thumb of policy advising at the federal level, two of a
couple, probably, but one is that federal tax dollars should go to places where, on the cutting
edge of innovation. And although private market does things very well, if you look back at certain
major technological innovations like the Internet, they had federal dollars far before they were
monetized on the private market. That's one role of federal tax dollars. But the second role is
investing in spaces where there's no large enough clear return for private companies to be able to
invest in it themselves.
So when there are spaces in which the public good is very high but the individual profit to be
made for a particular company is just -- just isn't high enough for someone to invest in that way,
that's another important role of the federal government. So keep those two things in mind.
When I say something like how do you create an innovation ecosystem? That also means how
do you think about how to leverage the federal government dollars in ways you're either at the
cutting edge of innovation or you're trying to spur development in an area where it may just not be
profitable enough.
Topics I work on. This is literally a page from my current portfolio. So there's really kind of three
themes of things I'm currently working on.
The first one is thinking about games for impact in specific areas. So the question of where are
the sweet spots when it comes to games for impact and the administration initiatives,
administrative sort of goals. Topics like energy conservation. Neuroscience casual games,
well-being, financial literacy. You could add to the list several topics like civic engagement.
The second big thing is infrastructure. So how going back to how do you create that environment
for innovation. And the third one is really kind of trying to think about pushing discovery. So
there's a lot of work to be done. I mentioned some of Todd Park's work with releasing federal
data. But some of the big name of the game and the office in which I work are discussions
around data liberation. So what are the assets the federal government has that it can release for
its public market that are not simply just tax dollars?
So reliable datasets are one of them. Thinking about analytics. So learning analytics, and of
course discovery games of Zorn and other efforts in that space.
So to say a little bit more about infrastructure, because that's where my head is right now and that
probably relates to you guys the most.
So on the topic of -- so three main things that we've been working on at the top of that list. First is
sort of establishing some form of community of practice of the people who are investing federal
dollars in games.
It turns out that I expected, when I first convened a group of people working at the federal level
across agencies, so across like DOD, across Department of the Interior, et cetera, when I first
came in, people that were actually involved in games to do a landscape analysis of who is doing
what in this space, I expected to run into about 30 people, 40 people. That group has gotten
very, very large. It's actually -- the first meeting we had was 70 attendees, 23 agencies. It's now
at 147 and 33 agencies and that's actually a bogus number already. It's already like 170 people
who are actually immediately involved in games and game investments.
Now keep in mind that for many of the people who are attempting to invest in games from a
federal level, they're operating with a portfolio that spans all kinds of technologies and strategies.
Let's say within Department of Education. So Department of Education program officer has a
portfolio of projects that are funded through their particular program. And games may be one of
them. Those game investments have been around for 5, six, eight years. So the idea of the
government being interested in games, that has already been going on long before I started my
position at the White House. The differences that my role is to help coordinate that inter agency
conversation to help figure out are we investing in the right things? Are we investing in
innovation? Are we redundant in places? Are there gaps or redundancies in what we're doing?
So it's actually been a surprisingly large group. In terms of representativeness, you'll see the
three sort of predominant themes, the three kind of pre emphases right now in the government is
military health and education, that should come as no surprise. Though maybe the health one.
Those are kind of three biggest standing representatives in this particular group. And one thing
that we've done already is sort of form a more official cross agency wing called there's this
committee -- like sort of a committee, it sits above agencies at the sort of the cross-agency level
of we've just put in place a first-ever games committee with games in the title.
At some point I had to hold the charter up and sort of put it on my desk like I believe we've just
made a committee in the federal government that has the word "games" in it, which is not like a
press release about how it's going to wrap the minds of youth. I was like score personal triumph.
I just want to get that out there.
It's great. University. So the second major effort I'll talk about is just sort of building university
consortiums. So once we started looking around, that group of higher institutions academics that
are already engaged in thriving programs around games for impact has grown from just a couple
to a good large swath. So part of what we've been doing is putting those universities in
conversation to talk about things like, okay, how are we thinking about privacy? How are we
thinking about ownership? What are we doing that's open source versus closed? How do we
solve problems like sharing data in certain ways that we can build algorithms that might actually
trace what people are accomplishing without having to rebuild the wheel again and again at every
institution.
So thinking about what are some of the pain points we have in common are assets that we could
share -- excuse me, I have a terrible cold right now -- that we could get together as a community
of universities and actually start pushing the market in that way. Here's why this is so important.
This is the thing that plagues my existence and always has. Games for impact have to be great
games, and they also have to have demonstrable impact. It is simply not good enough to say we
think that it's -- we believe that our title is educational. We need to be able to build some form of
argument based on data that it has impact in whatever direction we claim it does. Well, that
means the marriage of two things that in some conversations have been sort of incommensurate.
It means you have to have really great design shops. You have to know how to build a game
that's worth playing. For me the golden standard is people should play it voluntarily and pay to
play it. It should be marketable not that I have to assign it in classrooms and bribe you with extra
credit to get you to do it. Right? It has to be a great game and it's hard and most of the talent sits
in the industry.
Some of it sits in higher ed a little bit, there's some. But for the most part it's an industry. Versus
the second, which is games that actually have impact. Games that there is an empirical
argument that they have impact and a nonbiased nonprofit-driven argument that they have
impact.
So part of the reason to build something like a university consortium is to say are there ways that
we can partner so we can start dealing with building games that are great games but also
researching those games in order to make that argument for the public and for ourselves that in
fact they're having the impact we say they have.
One thing I love about this is that on the abstract level, that sounds like good luck with that. Sure.
And yet I guess because I've gotten old in this field, I have yet to go to any actual meeting where
academics and designer weren't in the same space playing the same games, talking to each
other with absolutely no problem about like how to think about progression through a level.
So in practice, where I think in some ways there's a sort of culture clash between the two general
institutions of private sector industry versus academics, the truth is that all that is hogwash when
you actually just sit down and talk to each other.
And I see that happen again and again and again. Just the academic presence at GDC. I'm like
this is awesome, this is amazing. I remember when there were no academics at GDC, because
simply they believed that you didn't have to pay attention to great design. And then it turns out
you do. So it's great to have them attending to expertise that's already in industry and vice versa.
We're seeing more and more of game designers become interested in these topics and join
higher -- join both game design labs at universities but also take on tenured track positions at
universities and start teaching and building that next community.
Well, so what is the role of industry here? I don't know if you've noticed, but for many of the
serious video game titles, the publishers are not at all the commercial publishers. And while you
guys may be the exception to the rule. Most of what I spend my time wading through as far as
serious games or games for impact tends to actually have a publisher over here and just ask
yourself how well the Federation of American Scientists, for example, what do they know about
game publishing?
Yeah. Exactly. Right. Turns out that that's a whole nuther level of knowledge that is still way
over in commercial, and actually not in conversation yet with who right now is publishing some of
those main titles. So figuring out how to get these groups in better conversation would be a good
thing.
But here's some other ones. I can't stand that. So here's some sort of leadership roles I talked to
people in industry about. So thinking about things like sabbaticals, what I just talked about with
game industry designers actually taking sabbatical and teaching both undergrads and grads in
higher institutions or vice versa.
Thinking about professors and researchers, whether it's -- I keep focusing on academics, but
actually some of those researchers reside not just in industry but also in think tanks and
philanthropy to a smaller extent. But thinking about how do we start to cross-pollinate in ways
that it would be really -- how do we create a world in which it's viable for you to come to my
institution and intern for a year and teach some courses where people might learn from you.
And vice versa. Where someone in your lab, you might actually have a Ph.D. researcher on data
modeling of a particular ilk who works with you on thinking about how can you build that empirical
argument that impact is actually taking place.
So I've already talked about university relationships. Another issue, this second couple ones is
thinking about how can we start talking about assets that are shareable versus assets that we
want to hang on and monetize ourselves? Right.
So what are the assets, whether it be datasets or even in some cases I've seen some really
interesting examples of game engines that have been built on federal dollars and thinking about
how can we make those shareable, because they are in fact now a federal investment. So why
can't we make those shareable in some capacity? Or I guess to be more precise, like where can
you do that? Where do you actually need to keep it private?
And then the final ones are a little bit more general, but thinking about how do we actually enable
rigorous research on impact? There's precedence in other fields to do partnerships where you
create, you create some form of like I'm thinking right now of pharmaceuticals where in fact the
research arm is separate as a way to -- there's deep compatibility between both research and
development.
So thinking about how can you actually enable some of that research to happen. And I'm just
going to end there, and hopefully you'll have some questions as well. But I will say this: Part of
the reason why I'm here is because this is certainly an administration that believes in all hands on
deck. But right now some of the grand challenges that this administration has every single
intention of addressing requires people, requires input, not just from people who know the federal
government, but including folks like me that are not necessarily insiders to federal government
but they actually want input on how to do games for impact. And that also includes people in
industry who understand some of these problems much better than government or academic
may. Right?
The old adage that no matter how great your company, most smart people do not work for you.
That adage is true as well of administration of the federal government as a whole. So the idea of
having broad conversations and going on big listening tours is just simply part of how we get our
work done.
So I'm going to open it up to questions there. I think we have another 20 minutes with our room.
And I would love, if you guys were open to just having a conversation, whether about some of the
interesting things that you're working on here and how we might think about what are some
intersections between what's going on in the federal level and that work or questions you have
about what am I talking about with topic X and building a guild thing at the federal level.
Sound all right? All right.
>>: One of the things we struggle, I don't know how much Alex has talked to you about it. But it's
trying to go through the blue ocean of saying it's incredibly fun and also incredibly good for
[inaudible] and we struggle in defining exactly. So what is a good for you game? And we've had
serious games and commercial ones. Do you have a definition of what's a serious game? And
we have, for example, [inaudible] I don't know if you're familiar with scribble analysis. And that for
us was our guiding light which is very high on both.
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: That does set a very high bar on both. That's exactly where
it should be. I can't tell you how tired I am of seeing B plus B minus or frankly C minus games,
and then I guess I'm talking about like certain federal grants where it's like, look, we took a bunch
of money. We made a fairly mediocre to bad game and then we researched the crap out of it to
show that it's kind of a fairly mediocre to bad game, right.
So the bar needs to be way higher than where it is. So thank you for helping set that bar. I
mean, as far as defining like what is a serious game, that's a really tough question that I struggle
with.
You know, so to take my White House hat off a minute and play the academic person. My own
bias to date has always been studying commercial games, not because I don't believe in games
for impact, but simply because I'm as a researcher very interested in what everyday person plays,
not what niche community plays. So my interest has always been in kind of following the titles
that garner the largest crowds, and those are consistently commercial games, right?
So when asked the question of what's a game for impact, that's a really tough question, because
the games that I would naturally pull are often commercial titles that were intended to delight, to
entertain, to scare the crap out of you, to do whatever, to help -- to allow you to socialize, allow
you to frag one another. And the impact part was a byproduct but not an intended one, right?
So what's a game for impact? I think the hard part about that is I've seen games that had no,
simple casual games that had no intention to have impact but put in the right context, in the right
curriculum, the right activity, can do amazing things.
I've also seen games that had every intention to teach something or to change a practice that had
no effect whatsoever. So I don't know that there's like a hard definition.
I will say this. I will say that number one I do not see games for impact as a genre. One thing I
think is really stymieing both development and research is people tend to treat it right now
because the communities are too segregated as some sort of weird genre. Games for impact are
not a genre.
They're simply a way to talk about games that are hopefully good games. But beyond that, I'm
not sure -- I'm not sure that there's a clear way to sort of define it.
And the reason I brought this slide back up was that I will tell you this: So in this report I was part
of the committee that put this together. And I mean that was like -- I think we did most of our
work like in 2008. And it took two years for us to get this report out. By the time it came out
you're talking about games that no longer some of them exist, which is interesting. An interesting
lesson, I should say in how hard some of this work is.
But in this particular document, I worked with a gentleman named Carl Wyman, Noble Prize in
physics. And he and I were matched to do this state of the evidence part, wading through the
evidence about games and about simulations. Carl's expertise was the simulation side and my
expertise, the game side. It was an interesting conversation. Did a lot of thumb wrestling to see
who would win various arguments.
But the hardest part about this, about growing this, trying to even write a synthetic document
about the state of evidence was really difficult, because many of the studies you couldn't even
figure out like what the goal was. Right?
So I guess to make, to end this long answer, it's that I will say that like in the game titles that
you're working on, if you can even specify like what are the actual goals for impact that you want.
And I don't mean that in like an overly narrow way. I don't mean that in a way like our goal is to
increase students' performance on eighth grade science by one standard deviation. Like that to
me is pretty narrow and that's fine if you want to do it.
But I mean even in a broader sense. Like I would just like to have someone be interested in
science longer than they might have otherwise. Or I would just like to engage someone in
contributing to a group where your contribution makes a difference. And just to have that
experience. Whatever the impact goal is.
If it's specified, then you can get some traction on the research, right? The hardest part is when
there is no goal specified. There's just a design and some claims about it.
So I don't know if that helps at all. It certainly doesn't help you define it. But at least if we can get
specific about goals -- I mean games matched to particular goals, I think we might get some
traction.
>>: How is the White House spending their dollars for trying to increase the impact of games? Is
it more on the research side or is it like giving grants to independent developers, or how is that
sort of thing structured?
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: I assume you mean the agencies versus the White House,
because, by the way, my own salary is coming out of my own pocket of grants back at my home
institution. So I mean the White House. And the awesome part about this interesting job is that
we control no budget whatsoever.
We have no budget. Right? Things we do well, we do meetings really well. We do policy
advising really well. I can convene the crap out of a topic. Let's convene, let's do it. But you can
get a lot of leverage out of those things. But that said are you thinking about how the agencies
are ->>: Or even like what their goal would be to try to steer funds places.
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: Right. So okay so what would be the White House goals?
So the agency goals are truly very broad. So what, for example, is going on in Department of
Defense is even wildly different than what's going on in DARPA. So DARPA right now is much
more interested in sort of like crowd sourcing and exploration, and sort of cyber security and
much more cutting edge topics, Department of Defense, you see a whole lot more sort of military
training simulations, which are games but in a very narrowed sense.
So my role is to advise across all of these areas, which is fairly broad. And I can tell you what my
priorities are. And here they are. There. So my priorities right now, my -- the last couple of
months have focused primarily on infrastructure. So thinking about how to shore up what we're
doing with federal dollars and how to get much better communication between industry
academics and federal money. Like how do you make that triangle work.
Including things like can I create an event that's piggybacked on a designer event, where I can
literally take the program officers that control those dollars and put them in the same room with
people who do game design and have a conversation so that they can get a better sense of even
simple things like game design requires iteration. Your grants don't allow iteration. If you do not
allow iteration, you are stymieing the product, right? So just conversations like that.
So right now my head is much more in this infrastructure space. But I would say on the first
question that Kalil gave me of what should we be building?
I would say probably these are the five top themes in play. So thinking about fitness, energy
conservation, really thinking about how do we marry stuff like the emergence of smart grids and
better data, like consumers can now get much better data about their own energy consumption
and thinking about how could you use games as a way to engage people in their own energy
consumption. So that's another very hot spot.
Financial literacy is one that has actually been developing long before I came into the picture, but
on that topic the sheer fact that so many games, basic financial literacy concepts are already
embedded in so many games, is an interesting sweet spot to think about, well, for example, I'm
going to go back To World of Warcraft, some of the earlier work I did. Turns out there's a whole
thriving community, conversation, theory crafting, mod, part of the game, if you do not understand
how to sell high, buy low you simply don't go forward, thinking about what's the marriage there
how can you think about that as a game mechanic.
Does that help?
>>: Sure. So you guys are more like an advisement body is what you're saying, then, trying to
give people the sort of resources to help them build these sorts of games?
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: Yeah. And because we advise at the White House level, we
advise -- we do not get into the business of procurement on any level. Instead, we're much more
abstracted than that. So we advise on what are good investments.
So, for example, a typical thing would be to issue an advisory kind of paper that might say here
are seven areas I believe are high return on investment. We should be innovating, and that
document would then influence down the pipeline. That was abstracted but hopefully helpful.
>>: One of the goals we have and certainly one of the challenges is trying to help educate people
to be successful. And there's certainly no shortage of challenges there that we try to do with
[inaudible] and future products is giving them whether it's information or education or training or
tools [inaudible] so what do you see on a federal level as far as initiatives there that are helping
that?
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: That are helping teachers.
>>: That are helping really kind of make teachers be more successful kind of doing what we're
trying to see here.
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: Let me think about that. So on a federal level -- I mean,
there is -- it's interesting. We were having this conversation earlier today or yesterday about
education is a particularly sticky topic, because so much of education happens at a state level
versus a federal level.
And now we have like a common core, which is just even the beginning of a common language.
But in the Department of Education, I would say that they are one of the -- I'm being overly honest
here. But they are one of the slower branches to warm to games in certain ways. And yet, for
example, there's discussion of SBIRs that might spur small business. So an SBIR, I forget the
exact acronym it's essentially to spur small business partnerships with federal dollars to create
things like games for innovation.
Now, the discussion about teachers is always sort of a precarious one, and a hot political one as
well. I would say that probably the best work I'm seeing done right now is Jim Holdren's office
through the investment for innovation, I believe, it's called and Karin Kater our technology person
in the Department of Ed. Both of those are really big innovators.
But the interesting sort of rule of thumb that I've run into that I think is kind of a problem and why I
have nothing tangible to really report to you is that I think that in conversations about learning
technologies for anyone geeky enough like me to pay much attention to it, there is suddenly a lot
of conversation about technology and learning.
Three years ago this was not the case. Suddenly it's very hot. And there's a lot of venture capital
going in. A lot of new companies. A lot of large publishers moving into this space and buying
small companies. So it's just a lot in play.
And part of the big glory of this is really thinking about big datasets. There is almost a -- an
almost utopian view toward technologies for learning and then just if we just get the assessment
metrics right, if we just get the research right, then almost as though the technology will be the
solution to learning.
So teachers get left out of that conversation a lot. It's not very popular, and it doesn't make the
headlines to say that in fact like a technology tool, forget it just being a game, any kind of
technology tool is really only as good as the conversation around it. The same is true of every
medium I know. But that doesn't really -- it's not a very popular thing to say.
It certainly doesn't get the headlines and it doesn't get the kind of -- what's the venture capitalist
as opposed to to invest in. You're like conversations with good teachers. Hard to do, right? So I
would say that trying to get like teachers and even forget about teachers in classrooms.
I mean, I'm almost as equally if not more concerned with parent conversations or peer-to-peer
conversations like getting the phantom spaces in the equation where learning is taking place is a
tough nut to crack.
Of course, keep in mind I'm the only social scientist in my office. The only one. Right? So it may
just be that in my corner of the ones I hear a particular conversations and it may look differently
and optimistic when you go to the Department of Ed. I don't know. I just gave you a depressing
answer, and I'm sorry.
>>: So sad.
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: Which is actually a call to arms. It means keep doing your
work. Right.
>>: Can I ask you a question? Are there any policy roadblocks that you've run into in moving
forward educating teachers, we're getting technology in schools, particularly [inaudible].
>>: Well, I think -- Scott can probably speak to this, too. But it's just a big job, right? There's a lot
of teachers out there. Every day we're hearing teachers that, hey, we need some help. We'd like
to talk to you about the school. How can you learn to do it. And we're trying to do our best to
really reach out to these folks and help them.
And they really want to do it. They're excited. These teachers really like get fired up about this.
Gets us excited. But it's such a big job that it just seems like -- I know the UK is doing a lot of
talk. Alex is talking about that. Doing a lot of stuff over there trying to get that across the board.
Just seems like we're doing the bottom-up. Seems like there should be some sort of top-down
question help as well.
>>: Just to cap what Mike is saying. Training teachers is key to us. The teachers have this
barrier to technology. You can see how easy it is. It's just [inaudible] it's fantastic. In terms of
the technology. We've run into a couple of things. The graphic card issue. The schools are
typically running older systems explorer, don't have access to the Internet here sharing levels and
creating a community sometimes.
But we find workarounds and passionate about it. They actually do find things.
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: I would be very interested. I would love to hear, even here
I'm going to put out my e-mail right now. I would love to hear your thoughts about -- there you go.
How do you get it up.
I would love to hear your thoughts about ways to better enable that space. It strikes me that,
one -- all right. Let's see if I can actually get this big. Please write this down and keep me in
mind for future stuff.
But it seems to me that -- that would be terrible. That would be wretched for all of you font lovers
out there. I just ruined your mind, didn't I? Did I get that right? I think I got that right.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this and continue that conversation, because there isn't
enough movement in that space. And it occurs to me that one potential lever might be to also do
a better job in the sort of technology literacy skills that incoming teachers have.
I've watched a sea change. I sit in a school of ed for teachers. And I remember in 1998, literally
the attitude of incoming teachers was like not all schools have great technology so it should be
thrown out.
If everyone can't have it, then no one should have it. Then the field shifted into debates about
computing, computers, are they good for you or not? Discuss. And you're like it's like asking me
if the color blue is good for me. It's just so weird. And all that conversation has died now
except -- I think we see a new incoming generation that's just accustomed to games, accustomed
to technology.
But I'm not sure that we're seeing an equal level of innovation and moving forward when it comes
to sort of technology in schools and programs that are actually training teachers and then
supporting teachers and part of like their career ladders.
So I wonder what that space looks like. If that might not be another place to actually reach out for
a much -- I know it doesn't solve the immediate problem. But like on a much longer term
conversation about what does that teacher ed look like around things like interactive
technologies.
>>: In my mind there's a [inaudible] and this actually I think is something at a publisher level can
be influenced. That is what is the situation of the teacher to pick up technology?
And the current structure, the current structure of schools in -- I would argue probably 43 out of all
the states. There's absolutely no incentive to get a teacher to say, hey, I'm going to pick up or I'm
going to learn this new thing and that's going to give me some sort of benefit in my career.
Instead, if you're not teaching to that test and -- it's interesting to me right now that you're seeing
the moment that the administration made it optional to be part of No Child Left Behind states
started cropping up like flies. That's plain and clear why that's happening. But in my mind I think
there's an important piece of work to be done influencing the conversations and the thinking that
states are doing around those teacher incentives.
And I know that's being a central part of rethinking how you go about -- Obama has added
numerous [inaudible] how do we create success.
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: I would even -- I know we're out of time here, but I would
even raise the bar a little higher and much more long term to say that one of my great hopes for
games is that there are understandings that you can communicate in games. There are impacts
that you can have that are very difficult to get elsewhere. And like beyond all the conversation
about standards and common core and content and focus on content, standardized tests and all
that stuff, one of the things that I find really compelling about games for learning is that you can
get to a lot of really deep and important sort of content and practices that are far beyond what's
articulated in standards.
So on the one hand the standards have been -- things like common core have been helpful in
helping us have a conversation about what those goals might be. Like even putting people on the
same page it's been very helpful. But on the other hand, sometimes I think some of the things
that are the biggest bangs for your buck in terms of impact for games don't show up in content
standards at all. Right?
I mean, including simply knowing what it's like to really deeply understand a system and be able
to push on it and understand where it's going to push back. You're not going to see a content
standard dedicated to that specifically or to understand what it's like to contribute to a community
and have it matter in a way that once you have it happen, once you experience that, it's very hard
to not get engaged, to be too -- it's very -- it becomes very difficult to be cynical about civic
engagement once you actually find that something you do had real impact in the world.
>>: Something you said, that's what I do -- the dissertation, right? This is an area that should be
basic research. It's basic research you understand how are we thinking with games.
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: Right.
>>: We don't even know it. We don't understand it. And we're making claims about games
having impact or being good for learning or this or that. Based on different media. So just like I
couldn't say, hey, I'm going to evaluate if you are able to critique One Flew over the Cuckoo's
Nest by asking you to read an essay about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, shouldn't we try to
do the same thing?
>> Constance Steinkuehler Squire: Right, which is to say we have to set the future standards for
what understanding should look like. So there you go. There's a call to arms.
I don't know what people's schedules are, but I would -- again I would welcome more
conversation if people have time for it or simply e-mail me ideas. I've got probably another 12
months to work on this project. And I'm very interested in ideas about what people would task me
to do and pain points that you have in your own industry or things, observations that you've had.
Again, as I said this is an all-hands-on-deck kind of move. I will tell you this, the idea that the
White House has someone on video games in the first place is already a huge step in the right
direction.
So if you think about presidents who understand media, I think that Obama certainly
demonstrates an understanding of new technology that here-to-for we didn't really see. And I
think that alone is a certain win. But I will stand up and celebrate once we actually make some
traction and more stuff happens like what you're actually building now.
So I guess thank you for doing the work that you're doing. But I hope you don't hesitate in telling
me how to do my job better. [applause]