An innovative dog needs a creative tail
3.12.07 | I want to start this final entry in my brief stint as guest editor on the Macarthur Spotlight blog by thanking the Foundation for the invitation to join this important conversation, and more important, to thank the readers of the blog for their thoughts and comments.
I look forward to the continuing the discussion here, but also would like to invite those interested in these issues to my research group‘¯?s blog at epistemicgames.org, where some of the topics we’ve touched on here (and many others!) are examined in more depth.
I‘¯?d like to close this part of the conversation about what we know with a few thoughts on one of the critical issues for research on digital learning: figuring out how we assess what we think children (and adults) are learning from playing games and interacting with other digital tools.
Our current assessments—the standardized tests we read and hear so much about-focus on students‘¯? knowledge of basic facts and basic skills.
But here‘¯?s the problem:
To get good jobs in the digital age, to be informed citizens, to contribute to society, to express themselves, and to lead happy and fulfilling lives, young people need more than basic facts and skills. They need to learn to think in innovative and create ways about complex problems and issues.
So if we assess games and other new digital tools for learning using standardized tests, what we‘¯?ll wind up building are better and better tools to teach the wrong things.
My own work looks at how we can build games where players learn to think about real problems in the same way as people who solve those problems think in the real world.
What we find in building these games is that people who solve real problems use more than just basic facts and skills. Of course, they do need facts and skills. But what our studies show is that learning to think about real problems also means learning the values that guide the use of those facts and skills. It means developing a particular way of thinking—of making decisions and justifying actions. And it means seeing oneself as someone who thinks and acts in these ways.
Measuring real learning, in other words, means more than just testing what someone knows and what they can do. It also means assessing the values they hold, the way they make decisions, and ultimately whether they understand how their knowledge, skills, values, and decision-making process come together to form a way of thinking that they recognize as being both part of a larger community, and part of their own sense of themselves.
In the book How Computer Games Help Children Learn, I describe these ways of thinking as ‘¯?epistemic frames‘¯?, which is a useful term because it suggests how these ways of thinking color how someone sees the world: what questions they ask, what problems they see as important, and how they go about answering those questions and solving those problems.
That matters because:
Where a half-century of research in cognitive science shows that basic facts and skills learned by themselves are hard to apply to new problems and situations, our studies show that when people acquire a new epistemic frame from playing a game, they can use it to think in new ways about the real world around them.
So if we want to know whether a game (or anything else, for that matter) has helped prepare someone for creative and innovative thinking in the digital age, epistemic frames are one way to do it.
There may be other ways, of course. But one thing we know for sure is that when it comes to measuring whether someone is prepared for life in the digital age, our current standardized assessments just don‘¯?t pass the test.
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Mechelle De Craene (James Buchanan Middle School)
3/13/07
10:35pm
Professor Shaffer,
I agree with you, “But one thing we know for sure is that when it comes to measuring whether someone is prepared for life in the digital age, our current standardized assessments just don?t pass the test.”
To make matters worse many states are considering and some are starting to link teachers’ salaries with standardized test scores.
Mechelle
DJ Chandler, Ph.D. (Chimera)
3/16/07
2:29am
Yes, but the tides will turn with high stakes testing as it always does in education. With virtual environments springing up everywhere - people working from home or working off their laptops or cell phones - I believe we will move to a more fluid way of learning and teaching. Many, many families in this rural area where I live in Florida are choosing home schooling or other alternatives for their children. Why? The parents are dissatisfied with how the public schools are being managed and how that mismanagement results in their son or daughter becoming a disengaged person. That is the significance here: learning is lifelong and continual. As most anthropologists or students of anthropology know culture and learning happen in three educational categories: informal, nonformal and formal. The informal learning isn’t enough, in many cases, to prepare youth for not only work or careers but well roundedness and balance. Also, many families cannot provide the kind of education they want for their children without help. Nonformal is an excellent way to complement computer based or virtual learning through gardening projects, service learning, performing arts, sports, mentoring and field trips. Formal learning is shifting. I believe that some of us will move forward into a small group virtual and face-to-face world. We will have perhaps a small group here in the United States made up of educators, learners and parents that will converse on a daily basis in real time. That group will converse on a regular basis with a similar size group in another part of the world, for instance, Brazil or Kenya. There will be video stream conferences and “assemblies” where several groups may “meet” to discuss projects, demonstrations and issues. Children and youth respond well to small group or individual attention. If every educated adult was responsible for a small group of children then we would have a very engaged world - not to mention more tolerant.
Adams
3/19/07
7:28pm
Do you have any ideas as to how to apply the concept of epistemic frames to an actual assessment procedure? Obviously, the very nature of these frames makes it unlikely that a traditional test of declarative knowledge is going to work. One idea that might hold promise is the use of game or simulation vignettes, in which the individual being assessed interacts with one or more short test scenarios in a simulated environment. For instance, if looking to assess a digital learning curriculum that attempts to teach learners to be firefighters, providing them with an actual example of a tactical problem to work through might be a way of getting them to show the thought processes and values that appear to make up an epistemic frame.
Geoff McGovern (Binghamton University)
3/21/07
11:15am
Some of the work in experimental game theory uses online simulations to teach basic concepts of bargaining, strategic behavior, and cooperation. Though these are not so youth oriented, they do have “payoff” functions that could be used as an objective assessment point. How well you score depends on how well you play the game.
Mechelle De Craene (James Buchanan Middle School)
3/22/07
3:28pm
Hi Professor Shaffer et al.
It is my contention to assess digital learning teachers must consider assessing through digital media. I’ve found it very helpful and it is wonderful to be able to share with my students’ parents.
Also, it would be great if schools considered the elements of design, signs of divergent thinking, collaboration both virtually and real world, civic engagement, and global citizenship in the assessment process.
Yes, it’s time for the pedagogy to think outside the bubble. Thanks for bring up the topic. This is a great discussion.
Kind Regards,
Mechelle : )