UW-Madison Journalism student writes about Epistemic Games

Epistemic games rely on the analysis of the authentic practices of professional practica to inform their design. Here is a case where a student engaged in the authentic practices of a Journalism practicum at University of Wisconsin-Madison, includes news about epistemic games in the content created through those practices…

Computer Games in Education

Oct. 22, 2009

by Emily Mawer

A research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will study computer games and learning with federal research grants.

The principal investigator on several of the grants, David Williamson Shaffer, a professor of educational psychology at UW-Madison, said computers games allow students to live in a simulated world where they can face real life problems.

“What computer games do is give young people an opportunity to prepare for the kind of innovative and creative real world problem solving that they need to deal with in a global economy,” Shaffer said.

The largest grant, from the National Science Foundation, is devoted to research surrounding the Urban Science computer game, previously created at UW-Madison.  In the game, middle school and high school students become urban planners and solve problems that planners typically face, including going on site visits, talking to stake holders and using feedback to create a design proposal.  The research will focus on creating mentors for the game to coach students through their questions.

Shaffer explained that students studying to be urban planners are given the opportunity to try out parts of the planning process and then talk about their work with mentors.

“It is those conversations that turn the action that they are doing into understanding about the way the profession works,” Shaffer said.  “So in the game we recreated that.”

As the game currently exists, students can seek help from adult mentors through online chats.  Shaffer’s team, in partnership with the Massachusetts Audubon Society, will collect a database of commonly asked questions and answers.  Then they will analyze the information and create a system within the game that can respond appropriately to students.

Shaffer hopes that this part of the research will be applicable beyond this one game.

“The real payoff is in being able to use this same approach to make high quality professional mentoring available in all kinds of fields and all kinds of games,” Shaffer said.

The Urban Science research will take place over the next five years, with the first trials over the winter.

In addition to the Urban Science project, research grants are funding the creation of a computer game to make the engineering school at the University more diverse.

Shaffer is working with Naomi Chesler, an associate professor in the School of Engineering, to create a game that will increase retention in the engineering school, especially retention of woman and minorities.

“The idea is that a diverse workforce makes it possible to communicate with other countries and other places more effectively, because you have people from a variety of backgrounds,” Shaffer said.  “It brings other ideas and other perspectives.”

In the game, Nephrotex, engineering students will build a component of a dialysis machine using nanotechnology.  Shaffer said the idea is to give students a realistic experience of engineering design and to allow them to follow the process from beginning to end.

“Learning to become engineers is not just about math and science, but also about learning to see the world through a certain viewpoint,” Chesler said.

It is the math and science coursework that may cause so many students to decide against an engineering major, according to Shaffer.

”It is this kind of humanistic perspective on engineering that is often missing from the early parts of the curriculum,” Shaffer said.  “So, you get people who want to solve problems for other people, instead they end up solving a bunch of math equations and they get discouraged and drop out.”

The Nephrotex game will provide the kind of real world experience students need to stay motivated in their other courses, Shaffer said.

Nephrotex will be ready within the next two years, according to Chesler.