Recent posts
Nephrotex: Teaching first year students to think like engineers
Shaffer, D.W., Chesler, N.C., Arastoopour, G., and D’Angelo, C. (2011). Nephrotex: Teaching first year students how to think like engineers. Poster presented at the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) PI Conference, Washington D.C.
Use of Professional Practice Simulation in a First-Year Introduction Engineering Course
Chesler, N., D’Angelo, C., Arastoopour, G., and Shaffer, D.W. (2011). Use of Professional Practice Simulation in a First-Year Introduction Engineering Course. Paper presented at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference (ASEE), Vancouver, BC.
http://epistemicgames.org/eg/wp-content/uploads/Chesler_ASEE_2011.pdf
Collaborating in a Virtual Engineering Internship
D’Angelo, C., Arastoopour, G., Chesler, N. & Shaffer, D. W. (2011) Collaborating in a Virtual Engineering Internship. Paper presented at Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Conference (CSCL), Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR.
http://epistemicgames.org/eg/wp-content/uploads/DAngelo_CSCL2011.pdf
Girls Sweep Global Google Science Fair
Google holds an annual competition to give talented high school students around the world a chance to showcase their ideas about science. NPR reports that Google has just announced their 2011 science fair winners.
The three winners, beating out over 10,000 students in the competition, were all young women. Girls can do science and engineering at the highest level, but we know that somewhere along the way they get turned off (see Goodman’s Final Report of the Women’s Experiences in College Engineering).That’s one of the reasons we are excited about Nephrotex, an epistemic game that offers something different from the typical engineering education curriculum.
We are already seeing results that women who participate in Nephrotex understand what engineering is and have motivation to persist after completing the virtual internship.
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.
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….
