Recent posts
Don’t forget the demographics!
In the spirit of fair and balanced coverage: the Christian Science Monitor cites a RAND Corp. study that found the United States does not have a shortage of science and engineering workers, and the number of STEM graduates actually exceeds the number of available STEM jobs.
But, what are the demographics of these STEM graduates? They don’t say.
Epistemic Games, on the other hand, provide a authentic view of STEM professional practices to try to increase the number of underrepresented and minority groups in science and engineering to further diversify the field.
Resources for further reading on games and learning
The Institute of Play, a nonprofit dedicated to applying game design principles to challenges outside the field of commercial game development, has put together a list of resources for anyone looking to learn more about the power of games to engage and their potential as learning tools.
Reflecting on reflecting
One of the ways that epistemic games help kids do hard, professional work is by giving them the opportunity to reflect with mentors on what they are doing. Reflecting on work is standard practice in many progressive classrooms as well, and there are educators and researchers out there who are examining how to teach kids to do a good job reflecting on their work.
One research project described in a 2009 article (called Looking in the Mirror: Helping Adolescents Talk More Reflectively During Portfolio Presentations) by Tim Fredrick, for example, describes how an educator teaches his students to be more reflective. He has his students reflect on their portfolios in 1-on-1 meetings, and he codes those meetings for reflective language. He then shares those coded transcripts with them later to teach them to use more reflective language in subsequent meetings. Giving students feedback on their reflective talk is not what we do in epistemic games, but it is a potentially effective technique, and we might consider whether there is some way to incorporate that kind of feedback into future games.
Another interesting point is that the author’s coding scheme for “non-reflective” language includes kids “naming things they did.” In our games, reflection meetings start with the players doing exactly that. This raises the question of what constitutes reflection at all. Talk that on the surface does not seem “reflective” may in fact lead to important reflective thinking.
The ability to reflect on one’s actions is essential to creative work. Preparing young people to do so can be a crucial aspect of good learning experiences, whether they be in classrooms, computer games, or in the course of ongoing life.
David Williamson Shaffer and James Paul Gee featured in WCER RESEARCH highlights
The latest WCER Research Highlights newsletter features David Williamson Shaffer’s and James Paul Gee’s thinking on the value of computer games as tools for assessment.
In the piece, titled Computer Games and the Future of Assessment, Shaffer says:
We only need to change three things about current assessments: what is assessed, how the assessment takes place, and the purpose of assessment in the first place.
In other words, just about everything.
Read the entire piece here.
STEM in Elementary Schools
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports about K-5 schools embracing STEM programs and how engineering in elementary schools is becoming a trend:
[There are] 40 STEM programs and schools across Minnesota. The STEM initiatives are spreading nationwide, spurred by an increased emphasis on science and math and pressure to fill a job market void with future engineers and science-savvy students.
This is one of the reasons why we built our virtual internship for freshmen undergraduate engineers. Go Nephrotex!
But of course, there are always critics…
The Center for American Progress cautioned that STEM programs aren’t all producing higher test scores.
Okay… but if you want to measure students’ critical thinking progression within STEM curriculum, standardized tests are not the way to go.
Ouch!
Researchers who study games and learning are rightly asked to provide evidence for the claims they make that games can achieve good academic outcomes.
Apparently not everyone thinks that evidence is needed to make educational policy, though. From a review of a report on charter schools:
This Progressive Policy Institute report argues that charter schools should be expanded rapidly and exponentially. Citing exponential growth organizations, such as Starbucks and Apple, as well as the rapid growth of molds, viruses and cancers, the report advocates for similar growth models for charter schools. However, there is no explanation of how the dramatic growth observed by these “exponential growers” is applicable or desirable for charter schools. The report‘s critical shortcoming is the almost complete lack of acceptable scientific evidence or original research supporting the policy suggestions.
Nice metaphors for education, though: viruses, cancers, and Starbucks.
Underrepresented Minorities in Engineering
From an American Institutes for Research report:
“Research also suggests that the freshman year experience in particular is important to a student’s decision to persist with a degree program; hence, attrition rates are highest in the first semesters of coursework (Kramer, 2005). For students interested in a STEM career, this pattern may especially be the case. The freshman-year STEM curricula consists of demanding, largely lecture-based classes that essentially “weed out” students who may not have the potential to succeed in the scientific and technical fields (Cooney et al., 1990; Kramer, 2005). Critics of engineering education commonly agree that this weeding process impacts the retention rates of individuals who are disproportionately represented and that the field could benefit from providing introductory courses that are more interdisciplinary.”
This is one of the reasons why we launched our virtual internship, Nephrotex, in an undergraduate freshmen engineering course.
An interesting take on the importance of education in the new economy
The AP (4/27) reports, “For the first time, American women have passed men in gaining advanced college degrees as well as bachelor’s degrees.” This increase in overall education has given women “greater access to a wider range of jobs, contributing to a shift of traditional gender roles at home and work.” The gender wage gap has also closed somewhat. And, experts say, the increase in degree-holding women will give them better protection against employment instability in the future. Some experts “have dubbed the current economic slump a ‘man-cession’ because of the huge job losses in the male-dominated construction and manufacturing industries, which require less schooling.”
Hat tip: The American Society for Engineering Education.
Mentor modeling: the internalization of modeled professional thinking in an epistemic game
Nash, P. and Shaffer, D. W. (2011), Mentor modeling: the internalization of modeled professional thinking in an epistemic game. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27: 173–189.
David Williamson Shaffer’s Presentation in the Digital Gaming Video Lecture Series
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.
David’s full presentation can be viewed here.
The Epistemic Games Group
The Epistemic Games Group is made up of researchers, educators, and game designers who create games in which players see what it is like to live in the world of adults. They learn ways of thinking that matter in the digital age.
If you’re interested in building and studying epistemic games and the future of education, find out more about who we are, and what we do. We’re always interested in talking with potential collaborators and new epistemic gamers….
