Three Creative Ways to Learn from a Learning Game
Field Day is a research lab and game design studio based at UW-Madison. In October 2018, we launched a historical inquiry game called Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case. Now we’re sharing some of the cool research that we’re conducting around the game, almost two years later. Keep reading to learn more!
Even before COVID-19, teachers were in need of new, creative resources. The recent shift toward teaching professional practices, rather than just facts, is amazing for sparking curiosity and helping kids explore new career ideas. But it also means teachers can’t keep using the same textbooks from years (or decades) ago. Teachers need well-designed, practices-based resources based on current research.
That’s what we set out to create with Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case. Designed for grades 3–5, the game lets kids try on the role of historian — or, as we put it in the game, “history detective.” Players examine mysterious artifacts, look for clues in sources like old newspapers and dry cleaning slips, and argue from evidence.
Like with all of our games, Jo Wilder’s richness comes from collaboration. We designed the game alongside our amazing partners at PBS Wisconsin, the brilliant historians at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and a cohort of Wisconsin teachers who shared their expertise, came up with design ideas, and tested the game with their kids.
Now that Jo Wilder is out in the wild, we have tons of rich data to use in our research. As a research lab at UW-Madison, we’re always working to contribute to the greater understanding of 1) how people learn, and 2) how we can customize our design to support kids and teachers.
“We’re helping to translate the ideas of experts to kids,” explained Sarah Gagnon, Field Day’s creative director. “We need research to understand if we’re successful or not.”
Curious about some of the creative ways you can conduct research around a learning game? Keep reading!
- How are teachers actually using games?
This isn’t just an interesting question. It’s part of our DNA. “We don’t want to build things that don’t get used,” said Jim Mathews, Field Day’s fellowship director. “Our games need to be driven by teachers’ real needs, not our perceived needs.”
We want our games to amplify something that’s already happening, or fill a gap for teachers. That’s where this study comes in. We recruited teachers from across Wisconsin for our Doing History fellowship. The teachers used Jo Wilder in their classrooms and reported back.
“The high level thing to notice is that people use games in really different ways,” said David Gagnon, director at Field Day. “Jo Wilder is a pretty self-contained experience, but even so, we saw at least five distinct ways teachers used the game. It’s really exciting to see.”
Here are those five ways, if you’re curious:
-To improve reading skills (i.e. reading text)
-To deliver factual content like names and dates (i.e. content container)
-To practice historical inquiry (i.e. practice space)
-To model how and when historical practices are used (i.e. model)
-To launch out-of-game projects (i.e. launchpad)
One of the most surprising things we found was that teachers were using the historical inquiry game to teach reading skills. One teacher even used Jo Wilder as a text in their reading class! It was exciting to see teachers use the game to launch hands-on projects and activities, like interpreting real historical artifacts in class or taking a field trip to the Capitol.
2. Can games be used to assess kids’ reading level and enjoyment?
If a game like Jo Wilder could be used to assess kids’ reading level, this would be a pretty big deal. Research shows that kids don’t perform as well on reading assessments when they don’t care about the content or feel frustrated by the whole experience. On the other hand, if kids enjoy reading and feel invested, they’re able to read above their usual skill level.
“There was some research at UW about specifically boys who were reading game-based literature,” said Jenn Scianna, research intern at Field Day. “They were willing to read that, but not anything else.”
That means video games could be a powerful option for reading assessment. The question is, can we make it work? Is it even possible?
We’re using Jo Wilder to find out. This project is a collaboration with the WIDA Consortium here at UW-Madison. WIDA wants to explore how to make language learning assessments more engaging, particularly for kids who are learning English as a second language.
To collect data, we added three survey questions to the opening screen of Jo Wilder:
-Is English the first language you learned?
-How well do you read in English?
-Do you enjoy reading in English?
Want to contribute to the study? Play the game here!
3. Does humor and snark help kids learn?
If you’ve played Jo Wilder, you know the game is full of jokes and playfulness and plenty of snark (n. informal: Making critical or mocking comments in an indirect or sarcastic way.)
This wasn’t just fun to write. It was also an intentional design choice. Sarah, our creative director, is fascinated by the idea of humor as pedagogy. She guided our creative team in creating a player character who feels realistic, who cracks jokes and has her own agenda.
This makes sense instinctively, but as far as we know, humor in learning games has never been studied. David and Jim agreed that this was a topic well worth studying. So we embarked on a project called the Snark Study! We’re currently rewriting Jo Wilder with varying levels of humor and snark, including a totally strange (for us) version with no jokes and an earnest, “I love school!” sensibility. Our goal: to empirically measure the impact of humor and snark on learning.
“I love the idea that we can put different versions of a game into the wild, and we can have a theory for the changes we make, and then we can measure the outcome,” said David. “It’s really a unique place we have in the world. Most education researchers can’t do that.”
Interested in playing the game? Jo Wilder is free and online — check it out on our website here. If you want to learn more about our research, feel free to reach out! You can contact David at djgagnon@wisc.edu.
