MOTIVATION THROUGH NARRATIVE

And it’s Connection to Situated Learning Theory

Research Questions

What is Situated Cognition? What is Cognitive Apprenticeship?

What Motivates Players to Play Games? Malone Tuzun

What are the Results of an Effective Narrative? Waraich Barab

Relationship between Narrative, Motivation, and Situated Cognition?

Situated Cognition: An Overview

Lunce “Community of practice”

Peer-based Novices learn from experts Observe actions and communications of experts Role-playing

Learn to use tools in real life situations to accomplish real world objectives

Halverson Become “critical consumers of information”

Situated Cognition: Cognitive Apprenticeship

Brown and Collins (1989, 1991)

Challenging the assumption that schools make “Cognitive strategies are central to integrating

skills and knowledge in order to accomplish meaningful tasks”

Cognitive Apprenticeship: "tries to enculturate students into authentic

practices through activity and social interaction" Moving beyond the tangible to the abstract Allow students to generate their own solution

path

Situated Cognition: Serious Games

Lunce Fidelity Non-Threatening, Few Negative Consequences Other Advantages:

Active participation More interesting, intrinsically motivating and closer

to real world experiences Transfer of learning Flexible in that both student and instructor Facilitate learning by omitting what would otherwise

be distracting elements in a real-world situation

Malone: Evaluating Game Preference

Malone: Evaluating Game Features

“Without a clear goal, the game was not really a game at all.” (Malone, p.348)

Malone: Applications to Narrative

“Unless fantasy is carefully chosen to appeal to the target audience, they may actually make the environment less, rather than more interesting.” (Malone, p.355)

Framework for a Theory of Intrinsically Motivating Instruction• Goal

•Personally meaningful goals•Obvious or easily generated goals•Performance feedback

• Uncertain Outcome• Self-Esteem

Challenge

• Intrinsic and Extrinsic Fantasy• Cognitive Aspects of Fantasy• Emotional Aspects of Fantasy

Fantasy

• Sensory• Cognitive• Feedback (Immediate vs Delayed)

Curiosity (evoked through narrative)

Motivation: Tuzun’s Results in Quest Atlantis

Tuzun: Quest Atlantis

Keys to Success:ExplorationInteractionImmersion

Motivation: Tuzun’s Findings

Findings Significant learning gains Statistically significant higher intrinsic

motivations Statistically significant lower extrinsic

motivations learning in the game-based environment

More independent while participating in the game-based activities

Less concerned with grades

Why use Narrative?

Narrative then can be viewed as a mechanism to make sense of the material that we are presented with or as a fundamental property of meaning making.

Goal: Engage players in a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi)

Provides context Explains problem Moves player towards solution

Narrative: Waraich’s Research in ILE

Overview: Analyzed the role of both narrative context

and game goals as features for motivating and conceptualizing learning in a 2-D interactive learning environment (ILE)

Problem: Increase learning and motivation to learn

when the content is difficult : Use of narrative to solve this problem

Narrative: Waraich’s Results

For the Combined Honorsstudents (who used the software) there was a clear improvement in test scores.

For the MS control group (who did not use the software) there was a slight deterioration in test performance and this may be due to “test fatigue”.

Narrative: Waraich’s Conclusion

Conclusions: “For any learning task to be meaningful to

the learner they must have both a sufficient context for the learning and motivation to perform the tasks that will help them to learn. We believe that game based learning environments that incorporate a strong narrative can meet these requirements if the learning tasks are appropriately designed and tightly coupled with the narrative”

Narrative: Barab Quest Atlantis

Study: Performed mixed methods

research on game called Quest Atlantis, where “participants use an avatar to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities (Quests)” (62)

Students were interviewed regarding their engagement in the narrative Players took on characteristics

of their avatar and grew frustrated with other characters who’s actions worked against the solution (players became participants rather than bystanders)

Narrative: Barab Example Interview

Teacher: How did you find that information?

Girl 1: You just talk to Anna and Tom.

Girl 2: Yesterday and earlier this morning, I talked to them and—

well, I didn’t really talk to them, we were just having a discussion

Teacher: Are you getting new

information by talking to the people again?

Boy: Yeah.

Teacher: Oh, good.

Girl 1: They’re saying many different things and they all know that you’ve submitted the

quest.

Boy 1: Oh, so you can get the water samples but you can’t analyze them until you have

powercells.

Girl 1: Actually you have to do your quest then you can go to the Mission Terminal next to Ranger Bartle to get the powercells.

Boy 1: So you go to the mission terminal—

… then I go to the bottles, to the other side of the room and

then I click on—

Boy 2: You click on the ‘Analyze here’ sign.

Girl 1: But have you actually collected anything yet? Any

water?

Narrative: Barab’s Findings

Results: “Statistically significant gains Demonstrated rich insights in terms of

their submitted work Clearly engaged, Participated in rich scientific discourse” Overall: “Students developed a rich

perceptual, conceptual, and ethical understanding of science”

Narrative: Barab’s Conclusions

Design Framework: “Ensure that the narrative actually immersed

students within an issue that was meaningful” “Educational promise…lies not in engagement

with the media, but with the narrative” The narrative establishes the problem within a

situation that requires interpretation so that students can engage in inquiry

Learners still need different supports in order to successfully learn from virtual environments

Guidelines for Narrative

Hook: Play begins with players being immersed into a narrative and the introduction of the problem

Engagement: Narratives continues to be revealed and grow increasingly more detailed as players become comfortable with the environment

Rich narratives full of detail in order to create context and immerse player

Don’t make the problem area too complicated to the point where players are too busy sorting out the storyline rather than engaging in the solution of the problem

Gee states that “well designed game play immerses the player in a rich network of interactions and unfolding storylines where the player must learn about the underlying game grammar to solve real and imagined problems”

Tying it All Together

Goal: Promote learning for all students, especially unengaged or underperforming students

Brown and Collins (1989) Games are an "opportunity to practice the skills and knowledge they

have spent (in some cases) years studying." Make sure there is no dissonance between narrative and content Coaching, modeling, and scaffolding needs to be present in

narrative Games and virtual environments should “include a rich narrative

and interactive rule sets that work to position the users as an active protagonist in a storyline in which they have solve game specific challenges” (Gee)

Games immerse player in ideological worlds where the player takes on the philosophy of the characters in the game and immerse themselves in their role

Bibliography

Barab, S. A., Sadler, T. D., Heiselt, C., Hickey, D., & Zuiker, S. (2007). Relating Narrative, Inquiry, and Inscriptions: Supporting Consequential Play. Journal of Science Education and Technology , 16 (1), 59-82.

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher , 18 (1), 32-42.

Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible. American Education , 6-11, 38-46.

Csikszentmihaly, M. (1980). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Collins.

Halverson, R., Shaffer, D., Squire, K., & Steinkuehler, C. (2006). Theorizing Games in/and Education. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Learning sciences (pp. 1048 - 1052). Bloomington: International Society of the Learing Sciences.

Lunce, L. M. (2006). Simulations: Bringing the benefits of situated learning to the traditional classroom. Journal of Applied Educational Technology , 3 (1), 37-45.

Malone, T. W. (1981). Toward a Theory of Intrinsically Motivating Instruction. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal , 5 (4), 333-369.

Tuzun, H., Yılmaz-Soylu, M., Karakus, T., Inal, Y., & Kızılkaya, G. (2008). The effects of computer games on primary school students’ achievement and motivation in geography learning. Computers & Education , 52, 68-77.

Waraich, A. (2004). Using Narrative as a Motivating Device to Teach Binary Arithmetic and Logic Gates. Paper presented at the 9th annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education., (pp. 97-101). Leeds, United Kingdom.

The End

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