Convergence: Theory into Practice

Developing the Script: Putting the Emphasis on Pedagogy

Script development followed a traditional print-culture paradigm. Our process began with an in-house review of the manuscript followed by a formal peer review. Below is an excerpt from the minutes of a meeting which took place in the early stages of development; soon after Ryan had turned over a rough draft of the script. This snippet is part of a discussion about whether the lessons in the game were sufficiently framed.

We struggled to figure out how to frame these directives and came up with the “Message from the Instructor,” blurb that appears at the top of each paper and is different for each paper. This convention gave us a way to shape the conversation around specific issues that routinely come up in student writing and in peer review. During playtesting one of the better players noticed that the message from the instructor, if read carefully, helped her improve her score (Ryan will say more about this in the “Playtesting” section).

What is evident in this transcript, and in other meeting notes, is the degree to which we struggled with how much help to give students throughout the game. At one point, we thought about letting a player see a hint after each answer. Textbooks and tutorials lead students through the process step by step (see Figure 4 for an example of in-house movement toward giving hints and Figure 5 for evidence from external reviewers). As textbook publishers, our instinct was to push the game in this direction. Ryan, however, pushed back and taught us that games are not tutorials. (see the Game Factor for more on why games—which are characterized by interactivity, immersivity and immediacy—are different from tutorials).

RM: JF’s directive to, “Figure out what we are teaching,” was always on our minds. We tried to keep a clear focus on the larger lessons of peer review even as our thinking sometimes got tangled and bogged down by specifics. Peter Elbow’s (1973) advice to readers was helpful in this way. He advises readers to “never quarrel with someone else’s reaction,” and to “give specific reactions to specific parts,” and to “struggle to include more [reactions]” (pp. 94-95). We drafted best practices for peer review and used them as guidelines for each response.

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.