Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

JODI ASBELL-CLARKE

EdGE at TERC, TERC
Presenters’
Choice
Public Discussion

Continue the discussion of this presentation on the Multiplex. Go to Multiplex

  • Icon for: Al Lewandowski

    Al Lewandowski

    Social Studies Content Consultant
    May 11, 2015 | 09:58 a.m.

    This is fascinating.
    Is it possible to access/sample some of the games you’ve developed? Have you published any results of the data analysis you have conducted to date on the instructional benefit of the games?

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 11, 2015 | 12:13 p.m.

    Thanks Al. Yes – you can access all our games and our publications at http://edge.terc.edu. If you still have questions after poking around there please let me know.

  • Icon for: Priscilla Laws

    Priscilla Laws

    Research Professor of Physics
    May 11, 2015 | 12:30 p.m.

    Wow! I can imagine some games that include opportunities for students to make and test real world predictions in a gaming context.

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 11, 2015 | 12:46 p.m.

    which games are you thinking about Priscilla? Any we should be considering for research??? :)

  • Icon for: Brian Drayton

    Brian Drayton

    Co-Principal Investigator
    May 11, 2015 | 02:03 p.m.

    Hi,
    Nice presentation. Would be interested to hear more about what level of learning is facilitated — fact, concept, process, model? Are there teacher barriers that you’re encountering? That is, what are the issues (IF ANY) that teachers have to reckon with in order to work with the students in the language of the games?

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 12, 2015 | 05:06 p.m.

    Hi Brian – sorry I have started this response several times but because it is detailed I get interrupted before I finish and I lose my progress :( ….so our research looks at conceptual learning of fundamental physics such as Newtons laws of motion and law of reflection (optics). Our pre/post are as conceptual as possible, trying not to rely on terminology or representations taught in school, but rather more intuitive animations and puzzles. The barriers we found were technical and administrative (time crunch) but not uniform and in some cases (particularly in an AP class) the teacher didn’t understand the game mechanics and thus the kids underperformed. Our further studies seem to indicate that teachers need supports to understand how the data from games can help them assess learning in their classes so we are working on that next.

  • Icon for: Randy Kochevar

    Randy Kochevar

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 11, 2015 | 06:03 p.m.

    What a nice-looking video! How do you approach producing educational games, when it puts you “head to head” with multi-million dollar titles competing for the kids’ attention?

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 11, 2015 | 06:43 p.m.

    thanks Randy. Our focus is not in getting the broadest audience (though we do try to make games that people WANT to play) but we put our efforts in crafting the research models that allow us to learn about learning through play. Having said that – TERC is about to re-release The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis this spring which should be a marriage of research and popularity. Can’t wait – do you know about Zoombinis?

  • Icon for: Rachel Older

    Rachel Older

    Lab Manager
    May 11, 2015 | 07:32 p.m.

    Is there more information available about Martian Boneyards? An educational MMO is an interesting idea, and could easily capitalize on many of the “gamification” aspects that typically engross people in that genre.

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 12, 2015 | 05:08 p.m.

    Hi Rachel – Martian Boneyards was a game we ran in an MMO called Blue Mars. It was a beautiful HD MMO that was in beta in 2010 – we took advantage of the enthusiastic beta audience who were looking for something to do – we had over 600 participants in the game over 4 months. But Blue Mars never got out of beta as far I know, and the game was not replicated elsewhere. We would LOVE to redo the game with augmented reality tools outside in the real world….a big outdoor science mystery game – wouldn’t that be fun? Funders anyone??? :)

  • Icon for: Ben Sayler

    Ben Sayler

    Facilitator
    Professor of Physical Science and Mathematics
    May 11, 2015 | 10:51 p.m.

    I"m wondering if you might have given thought to the educational value of students designing and coding their own games as related to or different from the educational value of playing games. Thanks for thought-provoking project!

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 12, 2015 | 05:10 p.m.

    Hi Ben – we have lots of colleagues doing that work. The Scratch community (from Mitch Resnick at MIT), Gamestar Mechanic, and many informal programs are doing stuff where making the game is the learning process. I think that is very cool and really support those who are doing it…but we haven’t delved into that as much ourselves.

  • Icon for: Kathy Perkins

    Kathy Perkins

    Director
    May 12, 2015 | 02:06 a.m.

    Great video! Teon mentioned using the backend click data to look for patterns of play, and I am wondering how much success you have had with that line of work, and correlating the click data with learning?

    I’d also like to hear the reply to Brian – what learning is facilitated — fact, concept, process, model, and how you’re measuring that?

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 12, 2015 | 05:14 p.m.

    thanks Kathy – as I explained to Brian – we are after conceptual learning (and it is implicitly learned in the game – it needs to be leveraged by an educator to make it explicit, expressible knowledge – I hope that is clear :) And yes, we have many publications about using the backend data for learning. We have shown, in two different games so far, that we can build data mining models that predict learning in games. We have already blended those data with pre/post measures, as well as Experience Sampling Methods of measuring in-game Flow measures, and we are now working with partners to integrate those data with physiological data – such as eye-tracking and EEG models_ to build even more comprehensive models of learning. We are working towards building adaptive games that can customize learning for individuals based on their patterns of play from the data.

  • Icon for: James Laffey

    James Laffey

    Professor
    May 12, 2015 | 09:50 a.m.

    Jodi, nice video. I am really looking forward to learning more about what you are learning from your projects. I need to tryout Zoombinis!! What environments are you using to develop your games. regards!

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 12, 2015 | 05:16 p.m.

    Hi James…I am pretty sure we have been sitting around more than one table at an NSF conference room – am I right? Our Leveling Up games that we did for the high school studies are in Flash. They are all available for free – desktop and mobile versions from http://edge.terc.edu

    We are also developing experiences in HTML5 as well as augmented reality and geocaching apps. Zoombinis is being developed in Unity. So we are all over the place :)

  • Icon for: CHARLES MATTHEWS

    CHARLES MATTHEWS

    Research Scientist
    May 12, 2015 | 03:29 p.m.

    Thanks for http://edge.terc.edu. I’m just beginning to explore the site. Do you send alerts to new posts?

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 12, 2015 | 05:17 p.m.

    I am not sure about your question Charles – if you want this is a test to see if you are getting an alert about this :)

  • Icon for: CHARLES MATTHEWS

    CHARLES MATTHEWS

    Research Scientist
    May 12, 2015 | 05:44 p.m.

    I meant alerts about new posts to your website.

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 12, 2015 | 08:13 p.m.

    hmmm…. I don’t think we have that feature but I will look into it.

  • Icon for: CHARLES MATTHEWS

    CHARLES MATTHEWS

    Research Scientist
    May 12, 2015 | 09:09 p.m.

    Otherwise, I can just check your website from time to time. We appreciate what you’re doing.

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 12, 2015 | 09:17 p.m.

    thanks Charles – your “Ask A Teacher” stuff looks cool too!

  • Icon for: CHARLES MATTHEWS

    CHARLES MATTHEWS

    Research Scientist
    May 12, 2015 | 09:20 p.m.

    Thanks for viewing “ASK a Teacher.”

  • Icon for: Jacqueline Miller

    Jacqueline Miller

    Senior Research Scientist
    May 13, 2015 | 02:10 p.m.

    Really interesting project, Jodi. Regarding Priscilla Law’s comment above, I also see potential for games to enhance learning in several areas. We are in the midst of a project developing online tools for studying emerging diseases such as Ebola and a game that would help student understand how different infectious diseases spread and concepts such as Rnought would be very powerful.

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 13, 2015 | 02:23 p.m.

    Hi Jacquie!
    there are a few games like this out there…such as https://www.brainpop.com/games/immunesystemdefe... and
    http://immuneattack.org/ as well as others I think.

  • Icon for: Richard Hudson

    Richard Hudson

    Director of Science Production
    May 13, 2015 | 05:48 p.m.

    Very well produced presentation! But I yearned for the voices of the kids who are playing the games! What do they say?

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 15, 2015 | 02:46 p.m.

    thanks Richard – As you know putting kids in video is tricky so we didn’t do that this time. But we use what they say in think-alouds to groundtruth our data mining models – their voices are very important and very well represented in the research.

  • Icon for: Jackie DeLisi

    Jackie DeLisi

    Facilitator
    Research Scientist
    May 14, 2015 | 10:31 a.m.

    Nice video. I’m wondering about the social component of these games— how do you make educational free choice games a social experience? Also, the video mentioned something early on about students’ talk. Are you examining the ways in which students talk around the science changes?

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 15, 2015 | 02:48 p.m.

    Hi Jackie – these tablet games are not social because we were going for something different with them, but our Martian Boneyards was a collaborative scientific mystery game and we developed a model for framing social games as a player-led experience. I can send you a paper if you want or you can find it at http://edge.terc.edu

  • Laurie Brennan

    Guest
    May 14, 2015 | 03:44 p.m.

    Such an important area to study. As you collect more data on the learning experience while students are engaged in game play, it will be interesting to see where it could lead.

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 15, 2015 | 02:48 p.m.

    thanks Laurie!!

  • Icon for: Gregory Moore

    Gregory Moore

    Doctoral student
    May 14, 2015 | 07:24 p.m.

    Since you are creating lots of different games, I was wondering how you approach the challenge of making games that are both fun and educationally relevant? What has worked well for you? Are there any pitfalls that you have fallen into along the way? Any specific experiences that other learning game designers should learn from?

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 15, 2015 | 02:49 p.m.

    Hi Gregory – we like to say we develop game ideas that fit in the intersection of a venn diagram with the questions:
    - Can they learn important STEM through this game?
    - Will they choose to play this game in their free time?
    - Can we afford to do a good job with it?
    If the answer is yes – it is a great candidate for us to try.

  • Myriam Steinback

    Guest
    May 15, 2015 | 02:39 p.m.

    What an interesting project and great video. Capitalizing on what students are already engaged in is such a great way to hook them. All the student images I see are of boys – was that because girls don’t engage in these games? I’d like to think that’s not the case, but am curious to hear.

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 15, 2015 | 02:51 p.m.

    Miriam – we had many girls in our research study – it just so happened that the day we had arranged to video this, only boys showed up. Females are the fastest growing game audience, largely because it was so male dominated for a while. Many popular games still have terrible female characters and models so there is much work to be done there, but our games seemed to appeal to both boys and girls.

  • Icon for: Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Jodi Asbell-Clarke

    Lead Presenter
    Director - EdGE at TERC
    May 15, 2015 | 02:52 p.m.

    Thanks everyone for all the wonderful and helpful comments and questions. Enjoy the rest of the show!

  • Icon for: Deborah Kariuki

    Deborah Kariuki

    Computer Science Teacher
    May 15, 2015 | 10:17 p.m.

    EdGE had found an excellent way to reach the students and get them learning. Where can a teacher find these resources. What subjects are you currently developing games for? Great work!

  • Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.