Jim and David talk about games and the future of education.

Originally posted 2008-03-29 11:03:35. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Final examinations reflect an antiquated and largely discredited theory of learning, which equates knowledge with factual recall. By discouraging exams, then, Harvard is hardly forsaking academic rigor. Instead, it’s clearing the way for a more engaging, challenging, and truly educative college experience.

The recent Gee/Shaffer essay on Looking Where the Light is Bad make the same point–and even goes further…

Intellectual Property is a critical component of our present and future success in the global economy. The UK’s economic competitiveness is increasingly driven by knowledge-based industries, especially in manufacturing, science-based sectors and the creative industries.

According to some sources, nearly half of the GDP of the United States is based on intellectual property.

The report focuses on copyright issues, and clearly and appropriate policy for protection of intellectual proprety (that also doesn’t constrain the development of new intellectual property!) is critical in a knowledge economy. But so are the processes that lead to the generation of new ideas: innovation and creativity.

Originally posted 2006-12-10 10:26:27. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

In computer games, students can learn by solving problems that are realistic, complex, and meaningful. So games have great potential to teach the kind of thinking that young people need in the digital age, says educational psychology professor David Williamson Shaffer. But after years of designing and testing digital learning environments emphasizing learning in action, Shaffer has turned to the problem of assessment. Shaffer’s research is housed in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Originally posted 2009-06-03 03:37:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

This time, the problem is something that a new study calls the N-Effect, which shows that having more competitors lowers test scores.

The abstract is below the jump, but the conclusion is clear: standardized test scores are anything but standard. Even something as simple as the number of other people in the room while you are taking the test can affect your score.

In other words, context matters. And if we want to know what people really can do–how they can solve complex problems, and think about things that matter in the world, we need new ways of thinking about learning and about assessment.

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The paper is The N-Effect: More Competitors, Less Competition, by Stephen M. Garcia, University of Michigan and Avishalom Tor, University of Haifa – Faculty of Law

The discovery that increasing the number of competitors (N) can decrease competitive motivation. Studies 1a-b found evidence that average test scores (e.g., SAT scores) fall as the average number of test-takers at test-taking venues increases. Study 2 found that individuals trying to finish an easy quiz among the top 20 percent in terms of speed finished significantly faster if they believed they were competing in a pool of 10 versus 100 other people. Using a social comparison orientation (SCO) scale, Study 3 showed the N-Effect occurs strongly among those high in SCO and weakly among those low in SCO. Study 4 directly linked the N-Effect to social comparison, ruling out the “ratio-bias” and finding that social comparison becomes less important as N increases. Finally, Study 5 found the N-Effect is mediated by social comparison. Limitations, future directions, and implications are discussed.

Originally posted 2009-10-11 21:05:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

What was so wonderful about it is that when I read his name and biography, I realized that two decades ago when I was teaching in California, David gave a talk that I attended, and his talk was part of my formative thinking about graduate school and my career beyond.

And now, 20 years later, not even realizing that he had been one of my inspirations, here was an email from him, talking about the similarities in the work we were doing.

Needless to say, a great phone conversation ensued.

One of David’s recent pieces talks about some of the connections between his work and epistemic games, and I look forward to continuing the conversation….

You come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer.

For more information, visit http://www.dmlcompetition.net/kidscomp/.

An Experimental Study of the Effects of Monetary Incentives on Performance on the 12th-Grade NAEP Reading Assessment
by Henry Braun, Irwin Kirsch & Kentaro Yamamoto
This article describes a randomized field trial conducted to estimate the impact of modest monetary incentives on performance on a version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 12th-grade reading assessment. Monetary incentives have a statistically significant and substantively important impact on both student engagement/effort and achievement.