Shiv on Learning

Games are motivating. No matter how many times their character gets killed or loses, players keep trying over and over again until they have overcome that particular challenge. Here is a theory explaining why.

Attitudes of Learners

Extensive research has taken place into the attitudes of learners, their approach to learning and its effect on their ability to learn. Dr Carol Dweck, a leading researcher into psychology at Stanford University, describes entity and incremental theories of intelligence.

In a very small nutshell:

• Entity Theorists believe their skill level at a task or discipline to be a fixed entity, something that cannot change.
• Incremental Theorists believe that their skill level improves step by step incrementally and with hard work skills can be mastered.

Dweck’s research shows that incremental theorists are far more likely to rise to difficult challenges while incremental theorists are prone to quit when the going gets tough. More interestingly, it is not intelligence that determines whether one is a Entity or Incremental theorist but social conditioning. Someone with a high IQ with the attitude of an Entity theorist is less likely to complete a very difficult challenge than someone with a low IQ and the Incremental Theorist attitude. The incremental theorist will say ‘I need to work really hard to do this’ while the entity theorist will say ‘I am not smart enough to do this’.

For more on Carol Dweck’s work see her books.

How are Learners attitudes determined?

The attitude to a particular task can be determined by social conditioning. A subtle, seemingly trivial, difference in the way a task is presented or perceived can determine which of the above attitudes the learner takes.

Tests have been done in influencing children’s learning strategy. In once such test two groups of students were told to solve the same set of problems. One group was told that they would be judged on the results, the second were told that solving the problems would help them in their future education. The first group adopted the entity theorist mindset, the second adopted the incremental theorist mindset. The second group got better results.

What does this have to with computer games?

Computer games condition people to be Incremental Theorists. The level & feedback structure present the challenges of the computer games in such a way as to create the Incremental Theorists attitude in the player.

Games are designed so that players learn new skills as the game progresses. Mastering the skill set required to complete a level or task is never seen as the end in itself. It is only a small step towards completing the game. Players are never judged on their last performance. There is no limit on time or number of attempts allowed to master a skill. Players proceed through a game at their own pace. The time it takes a player to complete a game is usually of no significance.

Feedback provided by computer games to players tells them if they persevere they can succeed. Far from being judged on failure in a task, failure at a task is considered normal. Every failure to complete a task is immediately followed by an immediate opportunity to try again and again until you succeed.

It is usually not necessary to wait until the completion of the task to receive feedback. A task is comprised of many actions, most games will instantly tell the player how well they performed each action. The high frequency of feedback while completing tasks stops a user from continuing along the wrong path for too long. Players know that they can course-correct at any moment and change the outcome of the activity.

Throughout the game the attitude is fostered that if you try again you can succeed.

A key feature of Languagelab is the social community. The core of our offering (the English City People), the platforms we use to teach and interact with students (Second Life, Twitter, Blogs, Social Networks), and even our business model is designed around the idea of community.

Community is important for two reasons. First, when part of a community students interact outside of time-tabled sessions, they spend a lot more time using the target language than they would otherwise. The second is engagement, education strives to achieve student engagement, our lessons are designed to achieve maximum engagement, being part of a social community keep students engaged.

If a student only spends an hour or two per week using the target language it will take them a very long time to become proficient. Being part of an English speaking community lets them use the language a lot more. Every Languagelab student has access to 60+ hours of time with an instructor each week and this number increases as the number of students grows. A social community encourages them to keep using the language even when they are outside languagelab.

Our focus on community and engagement as part of the pedagogy makes Languagelab very different to other language schools. The English City People are characters in the city that you have social interactions with. There are relationships between the characters and a progressing plot which the students are part of and fascinated by. Instead of lecture based class rooms students find them selves part of an interactive soap opera, communicating with all the characters in real situations. The students relationships with the characters are as real as any on line relationship. (Occasionally too real.)

ECP has been repeatedly tested and redeveloped since its creation and now involves real lawyers, doctors, historians, Shakespearian scholars and more playing themselves, spending time in the city interacting with the students.

A great deal has come out of the community, events have been organized, story lines have changed, new groups have formed and activities have been created. The main benefit of course is that our students spend a lot more time using English and become proficient a lot quicker.

Here is how virtual worlds can cater to auditory, visual and kinesthetic learning styles.

Auditory learners can:

• Listen to the people talking. Be it the instructor or other students, learners can increase the volume of the person they wish to focus on and turn down everyone else.

• Discuss the topic – with instructor or peers, use a private chat channel if you don’t want to disrupt the group.

• Read out written material. Students can mute their microphones and read written text out loud without disturbing the rest of the group.

• Audio material – Audio material can be streamed in to the virtual world. Learners can play pause and replay it without disrupting others listening to it.

• Sound effects with self learning activities

Visual

• Information can be presented as images, charts or 3D objects.

• Avatar gestures can be used to add body language while talking.

• Learners can move their cameras so they can only see the information they want to focus on and not anything else.

• Make notes withing the virtual world client as you go.

• Copy chat text and annotate it.

• Take screen shots and annotate later.

• The 3D environment can be designed or adapted specifically for the lesson.
  
  Picture: a lesson about in an art gallery.

• Noise can be muted so learners can focus on visual material.

• Movement in the virtual world can be used to visualize a point.
  
  Picture: illustrating a point with movement.

• Video can be streamed in, played paused and replayed.

Kinesthetic

• Partaking in role play / simulation.
  
  Picture: Role play, checking into hotels

• Activity based classes – actives involve moving around worlds.

• Let learners find information instead of the teacher presenting it.

• Learners can build things in the 3d world as part of the activity.

• Learners can move their avatars around while learning.

• Learners can move their camera around and keep their avatar still.

• Adjust their physical body without it distracting the rest of the group.

When learning languages students make lots of mistakes. There are different schools of thought on correcting these mistakes. After my first Spanish class I was disappointed to discover that my teacher did not correct my mistakes and allowed me to say the wrong thing over and over again. How was I to improve if I did not know what I was doing wrong? The argument against correction is that if done excessively it destroys confidence and can stop students from practicing.

Computer games give you feedback constantly. If you do things correctly you progress to the next stage if you don’t you remain where you are. This is done without destroying confidence or discouraging practice. Why can’t the same be done in the class room?

There are a lot of factors to consider here. How well you do in a computer game is usually trivial, there is no real consequence to doing badly. This is not usually the case for language classes.

The key factor in computer games is that the feedback doesn’t discourage the payer form continuing. This is partly because of the low cost of failure, negative feedback doesn’t mean much because you can try the same task again immediately and get better feedback. Repeating the task and doing better brings instant reward. Whenever you receive ‘negative’ feedback you get also chance to perform the task and immediately and get rewarded.

In a game you must improve to get to the next phase. You can’t get there without performing the task you just failed at again and accomplishing it. When learning a language, you can get to the next part of the lesson or course regardless of how you perform in the current part. So there is immediate downside to getting things wrong but no immediate benifit to getting them right. In short: making mistakes have an immediate downside, the upside of getting them right is not of such great value because you will progress to the next stage anyway.

Classes need to be an environment where feedback encourages not discourages students. If this is achieved feedback can only be a positive.

One of the reasons computer games are such great learning environments is that the cost of getting things wrong is low - usually zero. If your playing a first person shooter and your guy gets killed, he instantly re-spawns and you try again, and again, and again. This is the norm, you keep getting it wrong until you get it right. Sooner or later you develop enough skill and move on to a more difficult challenge where this process starts again.

“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field”

- Niels Bohr

This is certainly true in the world of computer games. Even in multilayer game or a MMORPG players do not expect their team mates to complete each task first time.

If you are in a language class and you get things wrong in front of your class it can be embarrassing. More than this you don’t have the freedom to keep getting things wrong until you’ve got them right. When children are growing up and learning their first language they do have the freedom to make lots of mistakes and keep trying over and over again. This luxury is lost to adult learners.

The English City People were created to allow such practice. You are in a city populated with native speakers where you carry out a range of tasks in the target language. If you make a mistake it is fine, the natives and your peers will help you. Most importantly you can go back over and over again until you achieve mastery.