The Epistemic Games Group is working together to create games that change the way students and teachers think about education. Graduate students in our group are working with teachers across the country to bring theoretical ideas into educational practice.
“The issues that our schools face are too important to just be sitting in the ivory tower”
-David Williamson Shaffer
For the visual learners out there the Knewton Blog has created an info-graphic to visualize the gamificaiton of education.
People love to play games; They offer role-playing opportunities, simulations, and evoke feelings of investment and achievement. This graphic explains that gamification–defined as the use of game design in a non-gaming context–can bring that sense of ‘play’ to the classroom.
David Williamson Shaffer was invited to speak for Arizona State University Learning Sciences Institute’s ALL series.
This video presents a perspective on learning and assessment suited to the realities of modern work and education in a knowledge-basedsociety. Shaffer explores the research behind Epistemic Games.
“The work that I have been trying to do is to develop a game-like environment, a culture, where you would actually be able to learn, to think; in the way that people in the real world who solve problems; do.”
In particular he points to Nephrotex, an Epistemic Game that teaches students to behave like engineers, and the different engineering gender gap theories. Shaffer argues that students
“…actually came into engineering so they could be engineers. They spend the first three years of engineering doing calculus, basic science courses and they aren’t actually designing anything.”
Nephrotex lets first year students experience what it actually means to be a professional engineer by participating in authentic engineering design. Epistemic games like Nephrotex can be used to propel education forward in the 21st century.
This video created by Translogic, describes an after school program called Minddrive . Minddrive is a not for profit organization that reaches out to at-risk students in the Kansas city area.
This video highlights Minddrive’s Lola project, an electric car that students help design, build, and market. Similar to games like Nephrotex , mentors guide students through the engineering design process and model ways of thinking like professional engineers.
The students who participate in this program are having fun while they are learning, and changing their career goals. One young man explained,
“It has changed me a lot. Before Minddrive I was hooked on becoming a professional athlete, basketball to be specific. But since then…it’s really been about my future and what I want to get my degree in, in college.”
Another young woman enjoys the sense of accomplishment.
“Hey I’ve built a car. What have you done?”
Epistemic Games has seen similar results regarding the diversity of women in STEM education. Nephrotex and Land Science present an exciting platform and opportunity for researching other underrepresented or at-risk students in STEM fields.
In March 2011, David Williamson Shaffer was the third presenter for the Digital Gaming Video Lecture Series at the Goodman College School of Education at Drexel University.
In his presentation, David describes how epistemic games can teach innovative ways of thinking, and how epistemic network analysis helps us examine the process by which such thinking is learned. He suggests that since epistemic games can measure patterns of thinking and learning– as opposed to the single snapshot that a standardized test captures– they are ideal tools for assessment.
In Nephrotex, players are new hires at an engineering firm called Nephrotex. In the game, the players are asked to design new filters for dialysis machines. Watch this overview of the game to learn more!
