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Matthew Sharritt, Ph.D.
WWW.SITUATEDGAMING.COM
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CIS Ph.D. Program
University of Hawai`i
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Research
Dissertation | Other Publications | Additional Resources
"Be the change that you want to see in the world." -- Gandhi
Dissertation
Title
CommitteeDaniel D. Suthers, Chair |
 |
Abstract
Extensive literature has shown that games can provide an engaging, dynamic, and authentic learning context. Many of the studies on the use of games in education indicate that games can support teaching standards and outcomes; however, they do not describe actual uses of video games for learning. Through the analysis of affordances employed by student gamers, an understanding of how learning takes place can inform the design of effective educational games and aid their integration into contemporary classrooms. Informed by ethnomethodology, this study used methods of grounded theory provided a detailed description of the use of video games for learning in educational contexts.
Results demonstrate that learning occurs across multiple levels: the mastery of the computer interface, followed by the mastery of the game interface and upon which students can achieve advanced strategy aimed at goal achievement. Learning also occurs across multiple granularities: occurring either in short episodes, sequences of episodes, or trends. Learning can be triggered by multiple cues, such as failure, game visualizations or specific representations, as well as by peers or teachers in the social environment.
Students used affordances provided by the game interface and learning environment, specifically: the visual representations of games afford particular actions; the persistent display of historical context as well as present and future potentials motivates learning; specific cues can grab attention, helping to focus efforts on new or underutilized game tasks; consistent and well organized visualizations encourage learning; and information presented in a plurality of channels is most effective for learning.
The use of social peers in collaborative learning had several effects on the learning process: peers disclosed information to achieve shared meaning of objects’ purposes, and negotiated to collaboratively choose game strategies. Peer
teams served cooperative roles as information sources and competitively as a performance gauge.
Implications for students, educators, and game designers are offered to better play, implement, and design games for learning. A brief comparison of findings with existing theory discusses similarities among collaborative learning and activity theory, and suggests opportunities for future work. Overall, findings indicate a great potential for the use of games in education for learning.
Other Publications
Sharritt, M. J. (2008). Forms of learning in collaborative video game play. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 3(2), pp. 97-138.
Extensive literature has shown that games provide engaging, dynamic, and authentic learning contexts. An understanding of how learning takes place while gaming can inform the design of effective educational games and aid their integration into contemporary classrooms. This study used inductive methods to provide a detailed description of the use of video games for learning in a school setting. Results demonstrate that learning occurred across multiple levels and multiple granularities, and can be triggered by particular cues in the game or social environment. Characteristics of the most frequently occurring instances of learning are discussed. Results of this study suggest great potential for the use of games in education for learning, and can inform future game design.
Sharritt, M. J. & Suthers, D.D. (2009). Video game representations as cues for collaboration and learning. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 1(3), pp. 28-52.
Received 'top-paper award' at the Meaningful Play conference, Michigan State University, October 2008.
Literature suggests that games can support learning in schools in several ways: by enabling creative problem solving, allowing dynamic resource allocation, by providing a motivating, immersive activity, and by supporting explorations of identity. However, research is needed to examine how exactly games are utilized for learning. A descriptive, inductive study was carried out to identify how high school students in a school setting make use of the video game interface and its representations. Results demonstrate that specific cues direct attention, helping to focus efforts on new or underutilized game tasks. In addition, consistent and well-organized visualizations encourage learning and collaboration among students by providing shared referential resources and scaffolding coordinated sequences of problem solving acts during gameplay. Conversely, when affordances are inconsistently represented, students' focus can shift from problem solving at the goal level (game strategy, etc.) to problem solving why the game interface is frustrating their goals. In general, the design of game representations and behaviors can help guide or hinder student learning.
GCMS-sharrittSuthers-1-3.pdf (1.3 MB, 45 pages)
Sharritt, M. A. (2009). Make Your Website a Growth Engine: Learn how to maximize your Internet presence. Signs of the Times, 231(11), pp. 66-68.
SignsTimes11-09-MASharritt.pdf (0.4 MB, 4 pages)
Sharritt, M. J. (2010). Evaluating Video Game Design and Interactivity. In R. Van Eck (Ed.) Interdisciplinary Models and Tools for Serious Games: Emerging Concepts and Future Directions. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
An emergent, bottom-up construction of video game interaction is presented, drawing from influences in ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967), grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), and activity theory (Vygotsky, 1978; Cole & Engeström, 1993; Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006). Following, a qualitative case study highlights the use of affordances, or potentials for action, during video game player interaction among peers and the game interface. Relationships among affordances and levels of activity are presented, which broaden the concept of affordances to include motivations. Additionally, activity theory will complement analysis by introducing the mediational triangle (Cole & Engeström, 1993), providing a guide with which to analyze game player interactions and motives. The mediational triangle sheds light on the motivated activity itself, the tools available to complete the activity, and peer relationships (such as role specialization and rules of interaction) to evaluate game designs and their ability to fulfill serious purposes with meaningful outcomes.
Sharritt, M. J. (2010). Designing game affordances to promote learning and engagement. Cognitive Technology Journal, 15(1). (Special Issue on Games for Good: Video Games as Cognitive Technologies.)
Applied research will be presented from a qualitative study that highlights high school students' learning and use of several game interfaces, describing how particular affordances and interface designs (Norman, 1988) created by the game can encourage learning. Inductive generalizations from several 'commercial' games for good, including Civilization IV, Making History: The Calm & the Storm, and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 will describe patterns of learning among student game players, describing how the design of in-game visualizations either led to success or failure to learn to use basic game controls. Analysis of patterns from gathered video data of student game play, with inspiration from ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967; Koschmann, Stahl & Zemel, 2005) and grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2006), will highlight learning episodes and patterns of interface use among student game players. Patterns in affordance use (uptake of a perceived action potential) during collaborative game play will examine relationships among the video game interface and player behavior, with focus on how an interface design can guide game player interaction. In line with Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), a proper balance of difficulty (between feelings of boredom, and too much difficulty) encouraged player engagement and learning. As evidenced in transcripts of collaborative game play, feelings of frustration with a game interface often led students to abandon in-game tasks, as did boredom with a given task. However, frustrated goal achievement often led to the re-negotiation of in-game strategies: an indication of engagement. Additionally, games which presented information using multiple channels served to encourage learning, as did the use of specific visualization techniques such as the animation of in-game objects. Finally, a discussion of the affordances created by different game designs will offer educators and game designers some guidelines that can encourage motivated game play.
Sharritt, M. J. (2010). An Open-Ended, Emergent Approach for Studying Serious Games. In L. Annetta & S. Bronack (Eds.) Serious Educational Game Assessment. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
A case study is presented with a very useful discussion of how to conduct qualitative, inductive, open-ended research in the context of Serious Games. An emphasis on conducting open-ended, inductive experiments is extremely useful for investigating new situations where a theory-driven approach (deductive hypothesis testing) may not be appropriate. A case study will be presented whose methodological influences borrow from ethnomethodology, grounded theory and activity theory to inductively construct a picture of what is occurring as video games are being played. While strict adherence to these fields of study is not followed, many features of the fields are described and explained along side of a case study that describes how learning occurs during collaborative gameplay. The hybrid method presented can assist researchers in discovering what is happening on a moment-by-moment basis as video games are played, and will guide researchers in finding patterns during game play to abstract patterns in gamer behavior. These inductively-generated hypotheses can be used to test highly relevant aspects such as a video game's usability or ability to create an engaging learning experience. Emphasis will be placed on how particular methodological influences were insightful in the case study, and recommendations will be offered to future researchers on how to incorporate the most relevant principles into their work in order to inductively study video game play.
Aune, R. K. & Sharritt, M. J. (2010). Gamer Talk: Becoming Impenetrably Efficient. In M. Cruz-Cunha, V. Carvalho & P. Tavares (Eds.) Business, Technological and Social Dimensions of Computer Games: Multidisciplinary Developments. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.