Shonda Kuiper
Grinnell College
April 27th, 2010
Outline
 Serious Reasons for Playing Games
 Short Activity
 Research Project
 Conclusions
Why Play Games?
♣ Games motivate students to learn because students
clearly see how knowledge is related to the goals of
the game.
“There is no reason that a generation that can memorize over
100 Pokémon characters with all their characteristics, history
and evolution can’t learn the names, populations, capitals and
relationships of all the 101 nations in the world. It just depends
on how it is presented.” (Prensky 2001a)
Prensky, Marc (2001a, October). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9 (5), pp. 1-6.
Why Play Games?
♣ Games motivate students to learn because students
clearly see how knowledge is related to the goals of
the game.
Today's students are “digital natives”. They grew up immersed
in technology and are accustomed to learning through physical
interaction and feedback.
“The single biggest problem facing education today is that our
Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated
language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a
population that speaks an entirely new language."
Prensky, Marc (2001a, October). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9 (5), pp. 4.
Why Play Games?
♠ Games have a low threat of failure and sequence
tasks to allow for early success. They maintain a
threshold at which players feel challenged but not
overwhelmed.
There is no threat of failing an exam or a tough assignment
where students get stuck, afraid to write something down
unless they are sure it is correct.
In electronic games, they simply restart the game and try
again. By lowering the threat of failure, students can feel
free to experiment. They can try new strategies and modify
the strategy until they are successful.
Papert, Seymour (1998, June). Does easy do it? Children, games, and learning. Game Developer Magazine, p. 88.
Why Play Games?
♠ Games have a low threat of failure and sequence
tasks to allow for early success. They maintain a
threshold at which players feel challenged but not
overwhelmed.
While students often complain about hard homework, these
same students want to only play electronic games that are
challenging.
Papert (1998) uses the term “hard fun” to describe how the
best electronic commercial games are educationally
compelling.
Papert, Seymour (1998, June). Does easy do it? Children, games, and learning. Game Developer Magazine, p. 88.
Why Play Games?
♦ Game based learning fosters a sense of
engagement. Students become immersed in a game,
share ideas which lead to peer-to-peer teaching, and
are inspired to seek out new knowledge to improve
their gaming abilities.
Our students’ fascination with such games is unlikely to fade.
Instead of swimming against the tide, educators should
consider the lessons that the gaming revolution can teach us.
(Jenkins 2005, p.48).
Learning is essentially hard; it happens best when one is
deeply engaged in hard and challenging activities (Papert
1998).
Jenkins, Henry (2005, April). Get Into the Game. Educational Leadership 62 (7), pp. 48-51.
Papert, Seymour (1998, June). Does easy do it? Children, games, and learning. Game Developer Magazine, p. 88.
Why Play Games?
♥ Games allow statisticians to create simplified
models of the world around us. Games can extend
students’ knowledge from a simple model to a variety
of more complex real world problems in a variety of
disciplines.
Before computers statisticians had no choice. These days we
have no excuse. ...Technology allows us to do more with less:
more ideas, less technique. We need to recognize that the
computer revolution in statistics education is far from over.
(Cobb 2007)
Cobb, George (2007). The Introductory Statistics Course: A Ptolemaic Curriculum? Technology Innovations in Statistics Education 1 (1).
ImPerfection:
♦ Place pegs in the appropriate
holes.
♥ Game “explodes” if you do not go
quickly enough.
♣ Relates to a common psychology research question: The
Stroop effect [red green]
♠ Structured but flexible data collection techniques.
http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~kuipers/statsgames/imPerfection/
Discussion Questions
 Design issues:
 Identifying the response variables
 Identifying factors and levels
 Determining sample size
 Choosing a design structure


Blocking for gender or paired tests
Interactions
 Model assumptions (data transformations)
 Multiple comparison issues
Advanced Project Goals
 Preparing students for research and real
world problems
 Read and evaluate primary literature
 Build upon current research to develop their own
research hypothesis
 Transition from a research question to a statistical
model
 Collect their own data, develop their own simulation
study, and determine appropriate analysis
 Oral and written reports with peer review
Steps in an Advanced Project
 Introductory workshop style lab
 Journal article or reading assignment that incorporates a
statistical concept into another discipline
 Students prepare a research proposal that identifies
 their own research hypothesis
 response variable, factors, and levels of each factor
 what factors they plan to control during the experiment
 an appropriate experimental design
 the contribution this experiment makes as it builds upon
previous work.
 Collect their own data
 Write a research paper or poster
 Use a grading rubric for peer review of other projects
Conclusions
♠ Low threat of failure: Simple questions can be
addressed with a low chance of data collection errors.
Games can be extended to very complex models.
♣ Knowledge is related to goals: Students want to
know how to answer there own research questions.
♥ Create simplified models: Research questions are
motivated from current research in psychology.
♦ Sense of engagement: Students choose their own
research question and enjoy sharing how their
research compares to others in the class.
web.grinnell.edu/individuals/kuipers/stat2labs
Thanks to Sam Rebelsky and Henry Walker
NSF DUE#0510392: Kuiper, Moore, and Collins