As I mentioned on my Twitter feed at some point, after reading Gee I feel compelled to offer students experience points instead of grades. At the time, this was my somewhat flip response to Gee’s “Committed Learning Principle,” where learners spend great amounts of effort and time, extending their real-world identities with their virtual ones, characterized by a sense of developmental commitment. The best analogy that I could think of comes from RPGs or “role playing games” (though the extension of this acronym makes me wonder, “aren’t all games “role” playing games?). Ever since the earliest, nerdiest inceptions of *Dungeons & Dragons*, the RPG has emphasized the role of roles, maybe even to the point of stereotypical absurdity. By “role of roles,” I mean using the idea of roles as a game mechanic. In D&D, players form groups of individual characters, all who (usually) fulfill a specific party role. For example, the aptly named “fighters” are generally responsible for…fighting. Clerics, on the other hand, heal the front-line bloodthirsty fighters. Not all of these roles are combative. Rogues specialize in espionage (and stabbing people from behind) while Wizards focus on learning copious numbers of multi-purpose magic spells (from the most innocuous Harry Potter-style mischief to hellish necromancy). In effect, parties must seek “balance,” a term frequently used in game mechanics, especially when “real life” rage is involved. For instance, a party comprised of nothing but fighters might be really good at beating people up, but not so much at breaking into castles or unlocking treasure chests for sweet, sweet profit. Or healing themselves. In short, they’ll lose the game. There are a number of “jobs” to fulfill in these kinds of games, and if one area is drastically underrepresented, the adventuring party faces dire peril: they’ll quickly become troll-food. Thus, should one or more members of the party fail to fulfill their roles—or fail to take up a much needed role—rage ensues.
Significantly, RPGs offer players a tangible system of character improvement. For example, in many such games, achievement is demarcated by “experience points,” and when a player obtains a set number of points, additional features of the game are opened for use by their characters. For example, a higher level fighter might gain the ability to attack more than once per turn. Wizards learn new spells. Clerics develop better healing abilities. All of these improvements result in greater responsibility: “game masters” (persons responsible for refereeing and developing game scenarios) level greater challenges on a group of players. As the cliché goes, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Really, this principle isn’t new in games, or even “real life.” We all have expected roles to fulfill in the workplace—for instance—and sometimes people rage at us when we don’t fulfill them. People who perform their roles especially well are often promoted and/or take on greater responsibilities. But those roles, however, don’t adhere to Gee’s “Psychosocial Moratorium Principle”: there are no infinite “re-spawns” or continues in “real-life.” Therefore, the learning curve is steep and the consequences can be permanent. Rage and other emotions ensue, but there’s no resetting to continue from where the gamer last left off. Even in Dungeons & Dragons, party members can create new characters or “retcon” (re-do) a failed quest. They can re-evaluate the learning environment, take into consideration the construction of the game and its rules, and move on to try out another solution. Players, as Alice J. Robison via Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman suggests, are able to engage with their environment, exploring its developmental implications (360). In other words, they can “meta-game.” While “meta-gaming” is generally seen as a bad thing by players of RPGs (“since my character has a high in-game intelligence score he therefore could figure out the theory of relativity even though I the player cannot” or “most of these quests contain a set number of monsters—I bet there’s one behind that door that we can’t yet see”), the principle is sound in a pedagogical context. Gee asserts that thinking about the relationships in the semiotic domain is in itself an exercise in critical thinking. Furthermore, Robison emphasizes, “writing assignments are interactive systems with win states and expected outcomes” (362), but students are very often at a loss concerning exactly what is expected of them. Therefore, she suggests that interacting with the primary design elements *of* the curriculum—the game mechanics—clues students/players in on how one can play the game in more than one way.
Okay, so I’ve pointed out what RPGs do and what a few scholars have to say about the kinds of critical thinking games can generate. Now how can I build a curriculum from these blocks, and present that curriculum in a coherent form to students so that they can meta-think? The following list serves as a potentially feeble attempt at incorporating some of both Gee’s and Robison’s principles.
Frame the curriculum as a game: I think, to start, students have to know the curriculum is being modeled *as* a game. That way, they’ll (hopefully) clue in to its rules, observe the potential for measured achievement, and seek to understand the relationships within this particular kind of semiotic domain. Hey! They can think of the semester as “getting out of the dungeon”! Players tend to see their characters/avatars as measurements of in-game achievement. The course’s final product should do the same—it should be an assignment that *requires* multiple, easily identifiable phases and steps to complete (sort of like gaining levels or progressing onto a different stage in a video game).
Encourage Risk: Develop a writing curriculum that encourages risk-taking. Students should on some level be allowed to fail, and that failure needs to be understood before continuing on the project’s next phases. While this notion presents a potential scheduling nightmare, some leeway should be exercised in allowing students to complete the benchmarks leading up to larger tasks at their own paces.
Measured objectives: Assignments should logically increase in difficulty, and ultimately lead to more complex, better composed products. Provide students with a ladder to success—measurable objectives that lead to tangible gains. They can think of it as “gaining levels.” Okay, too nerdy, but the sentiment is the same. These objectives should lead to…
Tangible yields: Besides completing measured objectives, student projects should have a shelf-life beyond turning them in for credit, something more than vague promises of junior writing portfolio greatness. In the past, Dr. Delahoyde had his students work on encyclopedia articles, many of which were published. Perhaps Wikipedia itself would be a good public avenue for the display of student work.
Most games have an “ending”: Cue final credits montage—the ending of the course should have an overall goal, a final project that’s being worked toward. Students who complete the project and all steps in between “win.”
Party-time: Should students work as a group on projects, framing the venture as a “quest” in Dungeons & Dragons might lead to many a rolled-eye. However, the mechanic can be present without the nerdery (or with…just saying). If students take on their roles as a part of their identities, they become at least on some level invested in their individual representation and work. For instance, instructors can create “classes” (or roles) from which students can choose from, outlining what tasks are the responsibilities of each class. Should groups wish to modify these (officially), they’ll be required to engage with the discourse and requirements (the game mechanics) of the project in question.
Identity: The most compelling connection between RPGs and writing is authorial identity. Players focus on narratology, the process of writing her/his character, and the social telling of those tales. Truly, the journey is what counts in this case—otherwise, there’s nothing to tell. “We started and then we got to the dungeon” makes for a pretty pitiful story. In a way, developing student writing needs to be the same. They must be just as invested in the process leading up to the final product as the final product itself.
Naturally, this method isn’t without its dangers. Primarily, it relies to some extent on variable scheduling. Benchmarks must be evaluated by the instructor for students to continue; therefore, the instructor has potentially more reading to do. On the other hand, if those benchmarks are attended to, end-commentary on the larger paper assignments might be sufficient, effectively spreading out the grading workload. Really, only a test run would tell. But, sadly, such a test run cannot be conducted within the confines of a no-risk learning environment (aka, a game). That’s a rather nasty catch 22.
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