Do Indiana students need help passing the ISTEP?

As of last year, only 66% of 9th grade students were passing the english / language arts sectionof ISTEP, and 70% of 9th graders were passing the mathematics section. The numbers are 67%and 66% respectively for 10th graders. Nearly a full third of Indiana students are not passing themandatory state tests proving that they have a 9th grade education (Indiana Dept. of Education,2008). Anything that would help improve these numbers would be a benefit for Indianastudents.

What is a video game?

A video game is a form of organized play that gives us enjoyment and pleasure, takes place inan interactive virtual playing environment, and involves a struggle against some kind ofopposition (Mitchell, 2004).

Are Indiana students familiar with video games?

According to Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, there willsoon be 75 millions Americans between 10 and 30 years old – and age bracket very familiar withvideo games. “Common sense tells us that a medium so basic to the lives of these ‘millennials’has potential beyond the living room,” Lowenstein said in an interview with reporter Ben Feller.“We would be crazy not to seek ways to exploit interactive games to teach our children,” (Feller,2006).

Also, we interviewed Tony Hollowell, a math teacher at Cardinal Ritter High School inIndianapolis. During the interview, he said specifically that students are very familiar with gamestructures, and would be more motivated and used to dealing with games than a classroomenvironment. He said it would definitely help their learning process.

Is a video game necessary for learning the skills used in ISTEP / Core 40 testing, orwould it be better to just go with traditional lectures / textbooks / excercises?

Video games are extremely motivating to students (Sandford, 2006). There are also severaladvantages that using a video game format provides, including:

1. contextual bridging (i.e., closing the gap between what is learned in theory and its use)

2. high time-on-task

3. motivation and goal orientation

4. providing learners with cues, hints, and partial solutions to keep them progressing through learning

5. infinite patience [as machines, games will never tire of a user]

These aspects of video games help the learning process (Summit on Educational Games, 2006).

Even non-educational games involve learning to a large degree – learning the rules of the game,how to use the environment, and how best to achieve the goals of the game. They are “modelsfor the production of expertise,” (Gee, 2003). It was proposed at SIGGRAPH ‘06 that many of theconcepts of learning from non-educational games could be applied to “models and methods fordesigning engaging interactive and game-based learning environments,” (Dickey, 2006).

Also, educational games may be very relevant to standardized testing. Games have emerged inEngland to support children in preparing for the Standard Attainment Task, a form ofstandardized testing given at ages 7, 11, and 14 as a marker of progress and learning(MacFarlane, 2005).

Why the Nintendo DS?

The Nintendo DS has a quick and usable homebrew development interface. Buying any one of anumber of retail products will allow users to access independantly developed games, without therestrictive requirements of the Nintendo development kit licensing process (M3, 2008). Thedevelopment kits are downloadable and usable by anyone (Devkitpro, 2008).

The Nintendo DS is also the only popular system that is a mobile device with wireless internetcapabilities (Lusch, 2007). The Nintendo DS has sold over 16 million units in America alone(Nintendo, 2007). They are visible and popular at the high school level (Hollowell, 2008). Thissort of mobile, internet-connected device is the next step in educational technology (Sa, 2006).Combining that information with the easily-available development kits, and the DS seems like aprime environment for experimental research in educational technology.

How do you plan to integrate the skills required into the gameplay?

We have done some preliminary research into how to properly integrate education into a gamestructure in a way that is fun and educationally relevant. Fisch proposes that three issues arecritical to integrating educational and game content in a consistant way (Fisch, 2005):

1. Matching specific educational concepts to their most appropriate medium.

2. Placing educational content at the heart of game play.

3. Designing feedback and hint structures in ways that support and scaffold children intodifficult content.

We have also taken the lessons of another educational games research group – to involve subjectmatter experts early (Kardan, 2006). We have already brainstormed potential game ideas withEnglish and Math teachers at Cardinal Ritter High School in Indianapolis. We have discovered thatgameplay cannot be a constant repetition of similar tasks (Crowder, 2008), but must be dynamicacross short segments to be effective. Previous research has validated that well-designed gameskeep even diagnosed ADHD patients still for long periods of time (Farrace Di-Sinno, 2001).

We have also talked with these teachers about concepts in reading, language skills, and writingas well as geometry and algebra that are important to the ISTEP / Core 40 tests. Concepts thatare important to the English side of the ISTEP / Core 40 tests include (Crowder, 2008):

reading comprehensioncause and effect

fact vs opinion

making predictions

inferences

conclusions

learning vocabulary through context

synonyms & antonyms

grammar

predictions.

The major problems on the math side of the ISTEP / Core 40 tests include (Hollowell, 2008):

Understanding equations.

Graphing Lines.

Perimeter, area, surface area, & volume.

Can you really complete a game by the end of the semester?

Here we will take lessons from some other groups that have done educational games research. Afull game is not always necessary – sometimes using only one or two levels is required for theresearch at hand (Kelly, 2007).

Though there is no standard game development process, certain core activities are required fordeveloping games (Tristan, 2006) including:

Construct a game design that captures the requirements for the game itself; this involvesconstructing stories, worlds, characters, and scenarios for game play.

Construct a game play specification that will drive the technical development.

Develop the game based on a decomposition of the game play specification, focusing

substantially on the implementation (coding) and testing phases.

This last element can be scaled back to meet our group’s needs, to the point of designing only ashort segment of the story or a small selection of gameplay elements intended for the finalversion.

Evaluation

Performing a full-scale learning objectives test that takes into account ISTEP / Core 40 test or practice test results does not seem possible, given the short development cycle and researchdirectives. This may be a good goal for further development and research by future 411 teams.

Usability testing, however, seems a more reasonable goal. Usability is “extent to which aproduct can be used by specific users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiencyand satisfaction in a specified context of use,” (ISO, 1998). Usability is critical to any type oftechnology-based learning (Wong, 2007). Without a usable product, educational games are notfun, and lose many of their advantages (MacFarlane, 2005).

Usability testing can be conducted in a single session, either with “talk-aloud” responses(wherein the subjects talk about their experiences while performing the desired task) or with apost-task interview (wherein the subjects complete the task at hand, then answer questionsabout the task they just performed). Either method will be effective in revealing usabilityproblems, even with children as subjects (Baauw, 2004).

We will have hueristics for usability to work towards when developing the game, and ourusability testing will focus on how effectively we adhered to these hueristics. Korhonenproposed a set of 11 hueristics for mobile games (Korhonen, 2006). Although these hueristicswere designed for expert evaluation, where a panel of 1-6 usability and subject matter expertsevaluates a product (Korhonen, 2006), they can also be applied to our project as a baseline forusability testing.