Proposing Amusement Land , an Educational Multi-Player Game, to Foster Social Skills

Currently many studies have centred exclusively on interweaving academic contents in digital games but comparatively little has been researched on the innovative use of digital games based on principles of behaviour modification. These games might prove to be a useful platform to support the enhancement of social skills in children.


In particular, to the best of my knowledge, there is little to no empirical data regarding the use of digital games for educating students in social skills. Can a social skills intervention programme that incorporates digital games be able to offer an engaging and pedagogically sound learning environment for fostering students’ social skills?


My research seeks to develop a Social Skills Intervention Programme which incorporates a digital game, Amusement Land, a web-based MMORG. The goal of the game is to offer an engaging and pedagogically sound learning environment for enhancing social skills of kids. This research will explore the experiences, outcomes and learning gains that the kids will derive from game-playing for the learning of social skills and the extent the use of digital games is effective in educating them on how to develop social skills.


An important decision will be selecting the right genre. Over the years game design has evolved to becoming very sophisticated in design and now MMORGs which incorporate narrative, role-playing, multi-player environments, representations of three-dimensional spaces and interactive elements are gaining immense popularity.


With this mind, the game designed will be modelled after the concept of Disney Club Penguin, an MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) involving a virtual world containing a range of online games and activities. Avatars are cartoon penguins which waddle around, chat, play mini-games and participate in other activities with one another in a snow-covered virtual world. This site teaches children social interaction skills and makes social networking possible for children.


For my research, Amusement Land will have mini games as exercises. The features will include an avatar which can navigate and walk around and a wide range of design objects such as different interesting rides and sceneries and environment for exploration and learning. Narratives will be presented and instructions on game rules can be found by mousing over objects in the game world. A coach or guide, represented as a mascot will guide the player as he or she navigates along his or her way.

For my research design, I hope to adopt a mixed method approach within a case study framework (Stake, 1995). I wish to employ the case study approach because this methodology has the ability to examine, in-depth, a “case” within its “real-life” context (Yin, 1994). This study will take the nested case study approach that employs an embedded design, that is, two levels of analysis within a single study. The units of analysis are case studies of two elementary schools and ten case studies of students in each school. Methods include unobtrusive observations , interviews and digital records of ten students from each school.


I hope that this game can be seen as a prototype for future development of digital games for fostering social skills in children. Do give me your comments and ideas? Will this study be feasible?



References:
Disney Club Penguin. Retrieved Sept 22, 2009, from http://www.clubpenguin.com/
Dickey, M. D. (2007). Game design and learning: A conjectural analysis of how massively multiple online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) foster intrinsic motivation. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55, 253–273.
Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Yin, R. K. (2005). Case study methods. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli & P. B. Elmore (Eds.), Complementary methods for research in education (3rd ed., pp. 111-122). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Mixed Methods Research? Which Paradigm to take?

During our course on Advanced Qualitative Research Methodologies , we interrogate different approaches to qualitative research using the OEPTMm (Ontology, Epistemology. Paradigm, Theoretical Perspective, Methodology, methods) Framework . Mixed methods research was one of the approaches that were uncovered during the course.
Before writing this blog, I came upon a post entitled “In search of pragmatism and mixed methods” by Christina K. Pikas, a science and engineering librarian and a doctoral student in information studies. Her viewpoint resonates well with mine as I am also now at the crossroads of decision-making of the research design. I am thinking that at the end of the course, which technically ends this evening, that I will be able to make up my mind on which paradigm or viewpoint I will take.

She wrote about her 2 types of professors who seemed to have purists’ views of their paradigms towards research. The qualitative purists are passionate about constructivism and reject positivism. Positivism stems from a belief that an understanding of phenomena is solely grounded on scientific methods with no value judgements. It emphasises observable, empirical facts that excludes metaphysical speculation about origins and ultimate causes. The other group, the quantitative purists perceive that their social science inquiry is the ideal for research. These 2 groups of purists advocate the “incompatibility thesis” (cited by Howe, 1988 in Johnson & Onwuegbuzie (2004) and strongly argue that there should be no integrating of the 2 research methods within a single study.

The third group of professors with the “third research paradigm” (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004) conduct mixed methods using well-integrated, methodological diverse research effort ( Raudenbush, 2005). Raudenbush argues that to decide on which is the effective research regimes is to ask the question “what works” and to be clear” how our efforts can be integrated to support the broad goal of discovering and warranting the best practice” (p. 27).

I share the same sentiments as Christina that “people haven't completely made peace with mixed methods”. Though the professors in my faculty (division) seem open-minded and willing to take the pluralist position in accepting mixed methods, they largely use quantitative methods themselves and are typically fascinated with numbers. Johnson & Onwuegbuzie (2004) offers taking the pragmatic approach to better understand real-world phenomena which includes psychological, social and educational phenomena. Mixed methods research offers a more workable solution by putting together the insights from both the qualitative and quantitative paradigms. Pragmatism is an ontology that can help bridge the conflicting philosophies and epistemologies of these 2 approaches.

In short, I am a converted pragmatist like Christina….!! Do post your comments below…

Details of Christina’s Blog
Posted on: June 28, 2009 11:01 AM, by Christina Pikas
In search of pragmatism and mixed methods
http://scienceblogs.com/christinaslisrant/2009/06/in_search_of_pragmatism_and_mi.php

References:
Johnson, R. B., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2004). Mixed methods research: A research paradigm whose time has come. Educational Researcher, 33(7), 14-26.
Raudenbush, S. W. (2005). Learning from attempts to improve schooling: The contribution of methodological diversity. Educational Researcher, 34(5), 25-31.

Looking at Digital Games From a Theoretical Angle

Lately I have been doing a great deal of reading on literature that could help me better understand digital games from a socio-cultural perspective. I hope that reading more literature in this topic will illuminate the direction of my research design which still remains hazy up till today. I hope to revisit and enhance the theoretical framework for my research design too.

I am quite amazed by the vast amount of literature I stumbled on digital games and how they are placed at the nexus of a large sector of the humanities computing community. Maybe this is due to the astonishing growth of digital games compared to other media technologies and the huge amount of money invested in digital games. There are many theorists out there attempting to theorise digital games by developing a literary theoretical structure. These theoretical tools will surely help us think more critically about digital games for what they are and help us better understand their characteristic effects and applications. In fact, Ian Bogost, the author of the lucid and well-written book "Unit Operations: Approach to Videogame Criticism", points out that the marriage of literary theory and information technology will help technologists better understand software and videogames as rhetorical cultural artifacts suitable for critical study. Digital games should not be treated as play things but instead be taken seriously as cultural objects that are being read, interpreted and interrogated. This is good enough reason why we should take games seriously and not cast them aside as trivial activities.

Read more on Ian Bogost’s work at his homepage is at http://www.bogost.com/

Another interesting website is “Water Cooler Games” at http://watercooler.games.org/
a forum for "videogames with an agenda". It covers the uses of video games in education, advertising, politics, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

Happy Reading, Happy Interrogating!!

Questions..., questions... & more questions.....

Specifically I am interested in how digital games can foster social skills in our kids. I will work with the game developers engaged by School of Communication and Information, NTU, to design different genres of web-based digital games The goal of these games is to educate children of the age group of 10 to 12 years on how to develop social skills. These games are targeted for children that have not been diagnosed with mental health conditions. An assumption made is that learning through games will motivate children to interact with the application as well as increase their learning experience. The ultimate objective is to find game formats that are attractive to children and, at the same time, are suitable for learning particular concepts on mental health. I hope that the findings of my research will be able influence health authorities and educational practitioners in their efforts to come up with game s to promote social skills in children.



Currently I am taking this Advanced Qualitative Methodologies, designed for doctoral students. What attracted to me to this course I hope this course will provide me the avenue to have ongoing discourse with the 2 instructors, Dr Steve Zuiker and Dr Kate Anderson that are well-versed in game pedagogies and my classmates. I hope that it would ground me in the OEPTMm framework behind these qualitative research methodologies. However the going is tough as the readings raise many unanswered questions, doubts and fears.


I am now pondering on whether I should use a mixed method or just the qualitative approach. Should I adopt the case study approach in order get a better understanding about whether the game-based solutions is effective as according to Yin (1994), a case study is a good approach for answering ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ type questions, but not for answering ‘how many?’ type questions. Will this case study approach be suitable to examine complex phenomenon, such as the multiple factors and issues that influence a child when he or she interacts with the game world?


I hope I can receive some suggestions and help on my research design!


Games in Schools
http://games.eun.org/#