Integrate:
Different cognitions ????
Through our theoretical section, we have explored theories of learning, Flow and the adventure game genre to answer our problem formulation. We want to answer how a concept for an adventure game can be developed so the learning of
DSRI’s material becomes an integrated game element. In this section we will therefore first show how learning can become an integrated element of an adventure game. We will then discuss what the form of such an integrated learning experience is and what advantageous this integrating offers. Lastly we will discuss what criteria Space Adventures must meet for learning to actually take place. This discussion will revolve around our theory section and will end up with a bulletin list of points that the concept for Space Adventures must revolve around. This list will again be discussed and revised in conclusion 2 after our empirical section.
In a perfect world, a student is internally motivated to learn. When this is the case, it is simply enough to place a book in front of the student and his motivation will drive him to learn. Being internally motivated to learn means that there is a cognitive conflict between what you know and what you desire to know.
It is this internal motivation that will drive the student to flip through the book in order to solve the conflict. However, we do not live in a perfect world where we can assume every student to be internally motivated and Space Adventures should therefore be designed in such a way that it presents the student with such a conflict; an external conflict which the student can internalise and in this way desire to solve. The move towards resolution will go through DSRI’s material.
Adventure games are essentially storytelling games situated around a mystery that must be resolved. The player or reader identifies with a story by investing feelings in it and therefore experiences resolution when the mystery is resolved.
Space Adventures should present the player with a mystery that he can invest feelings in and identify with creating internal motivation to resolve it. Solving the mystery should then mean having to learn the material. The material should

present the player with a cognitive conflict that becomes a difference between what he knows and what he needs to know in order to solve the game’s mystery.
When a student is internally motivated to learn, a computer game might not even be necessary or should at least allow the player to go straight to the learning material. On the other hand, where this is not the case, the storyline of Space
Adventures can provide a dramatic conflict to pull in the player, letting him identify with the universe and its conflict thereby creating an external motivation to learn the material.
The learning of the material in Space Adventures should therefore be integrated into the progression of the game’s story. Learning should be the game element that progresses the storyline of Space Adventures. The player will be motivated to learn in order to resolve the story. Preferably, the rules for learning should be the same as the rules of game progression; the better you learn the material, the faster the game progresses. There are, however, restriction on this scenario in our case, as it is a class based game and to some extend the class will be playing the game simultaneously. It is however an objective worth striving for.
Progression in adventure games is tied in with puzzles and clues. A player cannot start the game and move straight to its ending because puzzles will block this progress. To solve these puzzles, the player must roam the game universe to find clues in order to solve the puzzles. It can be said that clues and puzzles are the progression mechanism of adventure games. Space Adventure will have puzzles that block the way towards resolution. To obtain clues to solve these puzzles, the player must learn the material. It is by learning the material that the player gets clues to progress in the game and in this way learning can become an integrated game element of Space Adventures. There must then be a consistency of style between the material that should be learned and the games mystery i.e. there should be an internal game logic that means that the material needs to be learned in order to progress in the game. Both a storyline and the puzzle/clue mechanism can accomplish this. Preferably, the two, the mystery and the learning, will blend together to one - Space Adventures.
When learning becomes an integrated game element of Space Adventures we must consider what sort of game this will be, or to use Papert’s own term, what sort of public entity Space Adventures will become. We have characterized the structure of adventure games as progressive i.e. as somewhat linear in structure, where the challenges of the game are set from the beginning, but where the

player has the freedom to roam around the game world. While adventure games like Blade Runner might have several endings, the endings of adventure games are characterized by being defined from the beginning. Much of the enjoyment of an adventure game therefore lies in the journey towards this ending and this journey is a spatial journey around the game world. Through environmental storytelling the spatial dimension can itself tell a story, a story which draws a player into another world and lets him play out fantasies or dramas in the game universe. In terms of Space Adventures, the public entity can be a place to project and play out the role of an astronomer, a place to feel the drama associated with incoming asteroids, discovering new stars, sending of a rocket etc. Astronomy, being a natural science, is based on hard facts and rationality, both of which are difficult to establish a personal relationship to. By integrating the material into the game, the player can establish a personal relationship to this material. This can help the player not only to learn the specific material in the game, but also create a motivation and interest for the entire subject of astronomy. The personal relationship with the material means the player can relate it to other aspects of his life and give him a reason to learn more and to be motivated to find new material.
Space Adventures as a public entity also means that the material can be presented differently. A computer has great possibilities for expressing different levels of abstraction. When having to learn new terms and concepts, ‘viewing’ them from different levels of abstraction can help the player understand these ideas. A computer can show a problem or situation in textform, as an animation, as an interactive element etc. That is, the game should take advantage of the computers multimedia dimension to display problems from different levels of abstraction. A term like frequency can be explained through a text, as an interactive animation or as part of a clue to solve a puzzle. All of these different levels of abstraction can each explain the idea of frequency. The computer can be used to illustrate these different levels of abstraction and a player can therefore get a broader understanding or focus on the level that fits his style.
Space Adventures therefore becomes a personal object. As opposed to traditional learning, Space Adventures can let the player invest feelings in the learning process. However, there are still some criteria that our theory demands be present for learning to take place.

Learning is always an individual process that relies on internal cognitive processes. We cannot simply impregnate Space Adventures with the desired knowledge and transfer it over to the student. From our theory, there are two points that are important to make in regards to how learning should take place.
Constructionism uses the term cybernetics to emphasise the way feedback processes can become visible when creating a public entity. When several students are creating pubic entities, it gives the students a way to reflect over there own ideas. They can see the result of their own work as well as those of others. By reflecting on this feedback, a student can become aware of and possibly alter his own ideas and perceptions that are the criteria for learning. In system theory, feedback is also important, but here the focus is different. Where
Construtionism emphasises the “learning to learn” principle through cybernetics, system theory distinguishes between learning and teaching. Learning occurs through continues communication where a student makes his communicative selections visible for the teacher. The teacher must then evaluate these selections and give feedback to the student. This feedback should let the student narrow his communicative selections in on the desired objectives. That is, the student and the teacher should engage in communication structured by the teacher according to our definition of learning. Feedback then, both from a teacher and from other students, is an important aspect of learning.
To meet the demand for structured communication, we feel that Space
Adventures should have a form of workspace – a place where students can answer questions and teacher respond to these answers. For this workspace to be a form of structured communication, it is important that there are several acts of communication. The student must evaluate the feedback from the teacher and base further learning on this evaluation. It is therefore important for the student to be motivated to both make their communicative selections visible in the first place and then to evaluate the feedback given on these. This can be done by integrating the workspace with the puzzle and clue mechanism of Space
Adventures. The students must answer and evaluate teacher feedback in order to obtain clues to progress in the game.
At the same time, students should be able to interact with each other. They should make their communicative selections visible to one another in order to relate them to how other students have understood the same material.
Preferably, the students can make some kind of joint public entity that the teacher can ultimately evaluate. Such a joint public entity means the students will constantly have to make their thoughts explicit and re-negotiate their ideas

and through such a process, the students can actively become aware of their own thought processes. There are different network solutions for students to jointly share and create stories and answers online though such devises as chat-rooms, on-line “whit-boards” and conference-technology. These solutions are, however, very expensive to implement and due to the nature of our specific case, we have thought about real-life group discussions as a possibility. That is, the players could at certain points have to leave the computer, form groups and in these groups, collectively negotiate an answer to a question.
Both of these suggestions revolve around learning through feedback. The game can make this process more likely because the students are involved in the game and motivated to solve its mystery. This motivation means that they are more likely to make their communicative selections visible and evaluate the feedback i.e. they are personally involved with the game and want to resolve the story. In terms of this story, the feedback should as far as possible be a form of in-game story telling. Even though the discussion might not happen on the computer in the game, it can still be considered in-game story telling as far as the storyline, which can partly be told through out-of-game storytelling and environmental storytelling, is still part of this communication and feedback process. That is, answering question, group discussions and evaluating feedback should be part of the progress of the story where the student is actively engaged in the stories development.
From our theoretical discussion so far, we can sum up some points which we fell must be present in the concept for Space Adventures.
 Space Adventure should draw in the students by presenting them with a mystery.
 The game universe should ‘tell a story’ so the students can personalize with the learning process.
 The learning process should become an integrated game element by being tied into a clue/puzzle mechanism. In this way game progression becomes a result of learning.

 The student’s communicative selections should be made visible to the teacher through a workspace where a teacher can also give feedback.
 The student’s should have to answer some questions in groups so they have to make a joint public entity.
 As far as possible, the feedback processes from teachers and other students should happen as in-game storytelling where the student is an active participant in the progression of Space Adventures.