 | The examples and perspective in this article may not include all significant viewpoints .(February 2016) |
Reacting games are educational role-playing games set in the past, with a focus on student debates about great texts.
| The examples and perspective in this article may not include all significant viewpoints .(February 2016) |
Reacting games are educational role-playing games set in the past, with a focus on student debates about great texts.
Reacting games developed as a genre of experiential education games in the United States in the late 1990s from work done by Mark Carnes at Barnard College. [1] [2] The prototype for these games is the Reacting to the Past series originally published by Pearson-Longman and currently published by W. W. Norton & Company and the Reacting Consortium Press. This pedagogy was originally developed for use in freshman seminar and history classes [3] [4] and quickly expanded into religion, [5] political science, [6] and science. [7] [8] Unlike the video games that are central to the serious games movement, [9] reacting games rely almost entirely on reading, writing, and speaking. This quality of the games has made them effective for developing academic literacy, noted by the use of the games for English language education in Japan. [10] The dissemination of this pedagogy has largely been through annual national conferences held at Barnard College and regional conferences held at institutions throughout the United States. [11]
Reacting games have the following attributes: [12]
Reacting games might also include the following common elements:
A growing number of reacting games also make use of in-game currency or Personal Interest Points (PIPs).
The earliest reacting games all centered around a single, classic text and were played during half or a third of a semester. As the format of reacting games evolved, the requirement for a classic text was dropped and shorter games emerged. At present, reacting games fall into the following categories:
Full games consist of 1-3 sessions of setup, 5-8 sessions of game-play, and 1-2 sessions for debriefing.
Short games consist of 1 session of setup, 2-3 sessions of game-play, and one session for debriefing. Many of these games are designed to replace a single textbook chapter and typically span a week of class.
Microgames consist of a single session of game-play, but usually require some setup and debriefing in the preceding and subsequent class sessions. A grant from the National Science Foundation launched a dozen new game prototypes with a shorter format. [13] These are useful for conference workshops or for first-time reacting game players. They are meant to introduce the game format as much as they are to teach the content.
Case studies have long been used in the medical, business, and legal education. They might involve discussion, debate, problem-based learning, or role-play. [14] By contrast, reacting games require debate and role-play. Unlike case studies, reacting games also must be set in a true historical setting.
A live action role-playing games (LARP) has participants assuming roles and playing them out in costume. While reacting games do indeed have students playing historical roles, this rarely involves costumes. Reacting games are used for education while LARP is primarily used for recreation. In addition, while LARPs usually include a fantasy element, reacting games are historical.
In educational debate (or debate team), students competitively debate a topic following explicit rules. While educational debate involves only two teams ("for" and "against"), reacting games can involve multiple teams, including an undecided, indeterminate set of players. Educational debate also involves no role-playing and is not set in a historical setting. In addition, while debates focus on a single issue, reacting games feature multiple intellectual collisions, which necessitates shifting coalitions of players. Thus, those that are "for" and "against" change with each successive issue.
While reacting games and Model United Nations have many similarities (e.g. educational usage, roles, factions, voting) Model UN simulations frequently focus on a fictional, rather than a historical scenario.
Historical simulation games are designed to model historical events. Both tabletop and electronic forms can be used in classes with the intent to challenge students to work through difficult scenarios and explore possible alternate historical outcomes. [15] Reacting games may contain components of historical simulation games including random events and alternate historical outcomes, however, they are more typically focused around the clash of ideas and people than the direct modeling of military or historical events.
Economic simulations are commonly used in economics courses to model the outcomes of decisions made by groups of students in competition. Reacting games may include aspects of economic simulations: for example, the acid rain and the European environment game [16] incorporates pollution credit trading as a primary game mechanism.
Psychological studies of students participating in reacting games have shown students to gain an "elevated self-esteem and empathy, a more external locus of control, and greater endorsement of the belief that human characteristics are malleable compared with controls." [17] Additional assessments are being conducted to gauge science content learning in some reacting games. [18] Studies of reacting games played online (rather than face-to-face) show similar learning gains but lower student satisfaction. [19]
There has been little critique for the time being of reacting games. While there has been a great deal of enthusiasm for the methodology, much of that is in opposition to traditional lectures. Some students prefer a game format to traditional lecturing, but not all. The question of learning style as well as the oft-neglected teaching style should be taken into account. In the past, new methodologies have frequently been met with great enthusiasm initially, only to eventually confront realities of the classroom learning environment. The games do not lend themselves to all course material. Also, if students are exposed to too many games, it is likely there would be a "boredom" effect, perhaps as strong – if not even stronger – than that which may exist for some students to traditional lecture courses.
In September 2019, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a profile of Reacting to the Past, discussing its popularity as well as the debate surrounding the "idiosyncratic" pedagogy.
Reacting games are published by W. W. Norton & Company or by Reacting Consortium Press, an imprint of University of North Carolina Press.
As of November 2019, the following is a complete list of all published Reacting games:
Scholars at many universities around the world write Reacting games. The Reacting Consortium maintains a Big List of Reacting Games (BLORG), listing many dozens of unpublished Reacting games according to five levels of development:
A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by real-world environments while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may be mediated by game rules or determined by consensus among players. Event arrangers called gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play.
A teaching method is a set of principles and methods used by teachers to enable student learning. These strategies are determined partly on subject matter to be taught, partly by the relative expertise of the learners, and partly by constraints caused by the learning environment. For a particular teaching method to be appropriate and efficient it has take into account the learner, the nature of the subject matter, and the type of learning it is supposed to bring about.
Educational games are games explicitly designed with educational purposes, or which have incidental or secondary educational value. All types of games may be used in an educational environment, however educational games are games that are designed to help people learn about certain subjects, expand concepts, reinforce development, understand a historical event or culture, or assist them in learning a skill as they play. Game types include board, card, and video games.
Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content. The term is not interchangeable with experiential learning; however experiential learning is a sub-field and operates under the methodologies of experiential education. The Association for Experiential Education regards experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities". Experiential education is the term for the philosophy and educational progressivism is the movement which it informed. The Journal of Experiential Education publishes peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical academic research within the field.
Experiential learning (ExL) is the process of learning through experience, and is more narrowly defined as "learning through reflection on doing". Hands-on learning can be a form of experiential learning, but does not necessarily involve students reflecting on their product. Experiential learning is distinct from rote or didactic learning, in which the learner plays a comparatively passive role. It is related to, but not synonymous with, other forms of active learning such as action learning, adventure learning, free-choice learning, cooperative learning, service-learning, and situated learning.
Clark Aldrich is an American author and practitioner in the field of educational simulations and serious games for education and professional skills.
Constructionist learning is the creation by learners of mental models to understand the world around them. Constructionism advocates student-centered, discovery learning where students use what they already know to acquire more knowledge. Students learn through participation in project-based learning where they make connections between different ideas and areas of knowledge facilitated by the teacher through coaching rather than using lectures or step-by-step guidance. Further, constructionism holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are active in making tangible objects in the real world. In this sense, constructionism is connected with experiential learning and builds on Jean Piaget's epistemological theory of constructivism.
Business simulation or corporate simulation is simulation used for business training, education or analysis. It can be scenario-based or numeric-based.
Quest Atlantis (QA) was a 3D multiuser, computer graphics learning environment that utilized a narrative programming toolkit to immerse children, ages 9–16, in meaningful inquiry tasks. Quest Atlantis combined strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. The project was unique in its goals to combine the best aspects of learning, playing, and helping, as a means to motivate and engage students. It allowed users to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities, talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. The project was intended to engage children ages 9–16 in a form of transformational play comprising both online and off-line learning activities, with a storyline inspiring a disposition towards social action. More than sugar-coating content to coerce dis-empowered students into caring about disciplinary knowledge, the goal of Quest Atlantis was to establish educational worlds where children become empowered scientists, doctors, reporters, and mathematicians who have to understand disciplinary content to accomplish desired ends.
An educational video game is a video game that provides learning or training value to the player. Edutainment describes an intentional merger of video games and educational software into a single product. In the narrower sense used here, the term describes educational software which is primarily about entertainment, but tends to educate as well and sells itself partly under the educational umbrella. Normally software of this kind is not structured towards school curricula and does not involve educational advisors.
A serious game or applied game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is generally prepended to refer to video games used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, politics and art. Serious games are a subgenre of serious storytelling, where storytelling is applied "outside the context of entertainment, where the narration progresses as a sequence of patterns impressive in quality ... and is part of a thoughtful progress". The idea shares aspects with simulation generally, including flight simulation and medical simulation, but explicitly emphasizes the added pedagogical value of fun and competition.
The browser-based IndustryMasters product is a range of business simulation games that allows students, business people and others to sharpen their entrepreneurial and strategic management skills by building their own company and competing in real-time against each other
Medical simulation, or more broadly, healthcare simulation, is a branch of simulation related to education and training in medical fields of various industries. Simulations can be held in the classroom, in situational environments, or in spaces built specifically for simulation practice. It can involve simulated human patients, educational documents with detailed simulated animations, casualty assessment in homeland security and military situations, emergency response, and support for virtual health functions with holographic simulation. In the past, its main purpose was to train medical professionals to reduce errors during surgery, prescription, crisis interventions, and general practice. Combined with methods in debriefing, it is now also used to train students in anatomy, physiology, and communication during their schooling.
An instructional simulation, also called an educational simulation, is a simulation of some type of reality but which also includes instructional elements that help a learner explore, navigate or obtain more information about that system or environment that cannot generally be acquired from mere experimentation. Instructional simulations are typically goal oriented and focus learners on specific facts, concepts, or applications of the system or environment. Today, most universities make lifelong learning possible by offering a virtual learning environment (VLE). Not only can users access learning at different times in their lives, but they can also immerse themselves in learning without physically moving to a learning facility, or interact face to face with an instructor in real time. Such VLEs vary widely in interactivity and scope. For example, there are virtual classes, virtual labs, virtual programs, virtual library, virtual training, etc. Researchers have classified VLE in 4 types:
Marc Prensky is an American writer and speaker on education. He is best known as the creator of the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" which he described in a 2001 article in On the Horizon.
Spongelab is a science education website for teachers and students created by Spongelab Interactive. The website provides a free online collection of multimedia including educational games, videos, images, and lesson plans, with a focus on game-based learning. Spongelab.com is a web-based teaching platform that allows educators to combine science, discovery learning tools and technology to create a visually engaging interactive whole. The website is a self-described “global science community” that has seen its base grow to more than 50,000 active monthly users. It stitches together interactive multimedia, online teaching and classroom metrics. Users gain points and credits for exploring the website, which can be used to unlock access to discounts for science education products.
Jason Morningstar is an American indie role-playing game designer, publishing mostly through Bully Pulpit Games. Morningstar's games often forgo a game master and are set in situations that quickly go unfortunately for the player characters. Grey Ranks, for example, is about doomed child soldiers in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and Fiasco is about impulsive crooks pulling heists that are sure to go terribly wrong. With these two games, Morningstar became the only named person to have won the Diana Jones award twice as of 2023. Morningstar also works with academia and industry, consulting on using games for teaching and learning in education, with a focus on health sciences.
The gamification of learning is an educational approach that seeks to motivate students by using video game design and game elements in learning environments. The goal is to maximize enjoyment and engagement by capturing the interest of learners and inspiring them to continue learning. Gamification, broadly defined, is the process of defining the elements which comprise games, make those games fun, and motivate players to continue playing, then using those same elements in a non-game context to influence behavior. In other words, gamification is the introduction of game elements into a traditionally non-game situation.
Games and learning is a field of education research that studies what is learned by playing video games, and how the design principles, data and communities of video game play can be used to develop new learning environments. Video games create new social and cultural worlds – worlds that help people learn by integrating thinking, social interaction, and technology, all in service of doing things they care about. Computers and other technologies have already changed the way students learn. Integrating games into education has the potential to create new and more powerful ways to learn in schools, communities and workplaces. Games and learning researchers study how the social and collaborative aspects of video gameplay can create new kinds of learning communities. Researchers also study how the data generated by gameplay can be used to design the next generation of learning assessments.
Nicola Whitton is an academic, author, and speaker.