Convergence: Theory into Practice

Playtesting

We conducted a playtest of Peer Factor at Utah State University with second-year composition students (Utah State makes its second required composition course a second-year requirement). The students were a little more than half way through the semester, and they had completed several peer review sessions prior to playing the game. The instructor, whose class we observed, conducted a model peer review session around his own writing before asking students to comment on each other’s work. He also provided instructions for each peer review session and a worksheet that the writer filled out after each review. He asked students to read their papers aloud, ask specific questions, listen to their peer’s comments, and take notes.

After a brief introduction to the game and to our research, students played Peer Factor for about 30 minutes. During that time they stayed on task and seemed intent and engaged. We observed students playing the game by circulating through the computer lab and taking note of students’ questions, gestures (frustration or laughter), and behaviors while playing the game. Nobody drifted off to surf the net, chatted with their friends, or displayed any indications of distraction or boredom. One student did check his email for a few minutes, but he returned to the game without being prompted. Students played several rounds of the game with varying levels of success. Casual observation of meter scores indicated that many students were challenged by the game (most had low to middling scores). Students seemed to like the game and were amused by the dialogue and by the green monster. We observed some smiles and laughter, but mostly intense thinking. Students took the game seriously.

After playing the game through several rounds, students were asked several questions to prompt discussion about the game. The following is a summary of that discussion.

One student said he thought the game was a good way to learn how to do peer review. While playing the game he learned how to identify good and bad comments. Good comments, he noticed, were more specific and directed and bad comments were more general and “fuzzy.” This is one of the meta-level concepts we wanted to teach, so it was nice to see this student pick up on it. However, we realized that students were able to assess the difference between high- and low-scoring answers fairly quickly, but they were not able to articulate the difference between the good answers and the very good answers. Instructors need to work with students to help them articulate more subtle distinctions between the two. The game may help students begin to form ideas about what a good comment is and may give them a good jumping off point for discussion and deeper understanding, but these learning opportunities need to be reinforced and explained by writing professionals.

Students said the game gave them good ideas about what to say and how to say it. Especially how to say something negative in a positive way. This made us think that perhaps the game could succeed in getting students to abandon the “praise crutch” and get them to see that constructive criticism can result in goodwill among the group members. Students did not seem to pick up on the subtlety of the “Goodwill” meter, though. They were able to address the fact that the “writing issue” and the “message from the instructor” (see figures 9 and 10) gave them hints about how to approach the paper. Our goal with each paper was to provide models for how to unpack an essay and how to discuss a larger issue, bringing the author to a realization about how to resolve that particular problem. It’s good if students can begin to “see through” this construct. This is true even if they think it’s a way to “cheat².” As one student said, the message from the instructor, “gave me the answers.” There is a growing body of research on game hacks and cheats as being legitimate moves within particular game environments, but we will suffice it here to say that even if students think they are cheating by reading the instructor’s message, they are still READING THE INSTRUCTOR’s MESSAGE!

One student reported that the game was not challenging because she could figure out the answers without reading the paper. Some students nodded their heads, but there wasn’t an outpouring of widespread agreement on the lack of challenge. Students who didn’t do as well in the game may have been afraid to admit that they found the game challenging after this comment was made aloud. Everyone seemed to think that the second episode was challenging. In fact, students felt that the second episode was even more difficult than the first. They liked that the game gave them ideas about how to get more/better feedback from peers. They listed the fact that peers: “don’t care, don’t want to help, are too nice, or don’t say anything” as their top peer review peeves and they thought the game addressed these issues directly and gave good advice for dealing with them.

Abstract

We see the computers and composition community rapidly accepting the idea that using computer games in the classroom can be a very effective way to teach writing.

Introduction

The Peer Factor game is designed to be an easy-to-use, interactive Flash game. In two separate episodes, Peer Factor introduces students to the full process of peer review:

Game Pedagogy: What is the Game Factor?

The Game Factor is the term we use to describe the educational potential of games to teach student players complicated concepts and processes.

Convergence: Theory into Practice

In this section, we would like to discuss our processes for designing the game. In software and game design terminology, what we do here could be referred to as a postmortem: we describe what went well, what went wrong, and why.

1. Convergence: Theory into Practice /
   The Idea
2. Pitching the Concept / Facing the Challenges: Budget / The Game Design Document
3. Building a Pedagogical Foundation for the Game
4. Scope Creep: How We Saved the Game from Violet Beauregarde Syndrome
5. Developing the Script: Putting the Emphasis on Pedagogy
6. Peer Reviewing the Peer Review Game
7. Designing the Characters
8. Playtesting

Rethinking the Textbook: Toward a Participatory Paradigm

Just as the word book is an inadequate term to describe the electronic media and platforms that are creating book alternatives, textbook is a less than adequate term for emerging digital learning tools.

References

This webtext draws upon these resources and experiences to discuss how we took the next critical step and designed an interactive educational text that employed game elements.