Digital Media and Learning Conference 2017

Games and Learning Research
Provocation: How do we study learning transfer and problem solving practices through games?
Discussant: Andrew Phelps
Abstracts: Are available here and are attached as a resource file below. 

Failing Up: The Role of Difficulty and Failure in an Educational Video Game
Craig Anderson, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Smarter and Faster: Integrating Intelligent Tutoring Systems Into Video Games
Elizabeth Whitaker, Georgia Tech Research Institute

From Dragon Slayer to Problem Solver: Video Games as a Warm-Up for Problem Solving
Beth Veinott, Michigan Technological University

Games as Complex Spaces: Operationalizing Steinkuehler's Six Modes of Participation in MMOs
Jeff Kuhn, Ohio University

Where the Wild Things Are: Call of Duty, Boys
Jason Engerman, East Stroudsburg University

An important challenge that remains for supporting teaching and learning in digital-age contexts is developing systems that can help unify the diversity of pedagogical approaches aimed at supporting students through digital media technologies. This panel highlights three projects examining what such systems might look like across varying degrees of virtual, face-to-face, and blended contexts of learning. 

Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems, or DTALS (Gee & Gee, 2016; Holmes, Gee, & Tran, 2017, in press), can provide a useful framework for characterizing and analyzing elements of such systems. In a DTALS, teaching and learning are enacted not through a top-down model of knowledge transfer, but rather across a spectrum of designed and emergent experiences, negotiated between learners and experienced teachers, peers, mentors, or leaders in the community. 

In this panel, Jeff Holmes’ examination of “Videogames as Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems” in the Dota2 gaming community presents a model for characterizing core features of a DTALS. Kelly Tran’s research on “Informal Teaching and Learning in Pokemon Go” examines how DTALS in an augmented reality game can reveal how teaching and learning is enacted across physical and virtual contexts of gameplay. Finally, Earl Aguilera's presentation, “Library Code Clubs: Who is Doing the Teaching?” highlights tensions, challenges, and critical considerations of facilitating a DTALS as part of a blended learning experience. Together, these three projects demonstrate varying dimensions of DTALS as a means for unifying innovative pedagogies in a digital age.

This interactive presentation invites audience members to actively participate in constructing a DTALS during the presentations in order to experience (and challenge) the relevant implications for teaching and learning in the 21st Century.

References

Holmes, J. B., Tran, K. M., & Gee, E. R. (2017). Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems in the Wild. In M. F. Young & S. T. Slota (Eds.), Exploding the Castle: Rethinking How Video Games & Game Mechanics Can Shape the Future of Education (pp. 240–256). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Gee, J. P., & Gee, E. R. (2016). Games as distributed teaching and learning systems. Teachers College Record, Special Issue. Virtual Convergence: Creating Synergies between Research on Virtual Worlds and Videogames.

Education research sites have begun to use a community approach to conduct their research. Understanding these partnerships between places of learning and activism work together, we need to understand the theories of engaging in communities and research. We aim to organize educators, researchers, and teachers to discuss the methodological, epistemological, and ontological shifts of engaging in community research.

Lew’s talk is about how although there have been studies about the nature of deficit thinking (Valencia 1997), especially among historically marginalized communities, there are much fewer studies that explore community empowerment (Cummins 1986) and resilience models (Rios, Carias, and Bredenoord 2014). We will conceptualize how digital literacy practices enable youth to explore hero narratives in an after-school program and inscribe the world. 

Liu will talk about how one of the greatest moments of disrupting power dynamics in science education is not knowing the scientific answers. Educators believe they need the scientific content knowledge to be able to teach science. We will explore the idea of educators and teachers learning about science alongside with students. 
Godfrey’s talks about how she wrestles with the many identities that came into play during her fieldwork in a middle school classroom and how she negotiated these identities- and differing positions of power - as she tried to balance an authentic alignment with participants' perspectives with the type of objective detachment, so often assumed to be a defining quality of "good research." 

Zinger will be discussing in typical professional development (PD), teachers are often passive recipients of skills, knowledge, or practices that may or may not be useful for them. PD designers and instructors often do not consider the needs and backgrounds of teachers. In this talk we will share what can happen when teacher considerations become central to PD.

Sandoval will be talking about how improvement science has emerged as an approach to educational research. Its commitments—to student- and practitioner-centeredness, networked collaboration, and iteration—are conducive to promoting equity and justice. I will reflect on my identity as an “improvement person” and the contradictions I encounter as a doctoral student at a research university.

Scot Osterweil in conversation with Tara Sorensen, Head of Kids Programming at Amazon Studios.

This workshop will demonstrate possibilities for educating preservice and inservice teachers about integrating participatory practices across the school curriculum. As Nicole Mirra (2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2016) has beautifully documented in her series of DML blog posts on developing teacher education coursework around multimodal literacies, we are only beginning to explore how to create teacher professional development around “strong, technology-enriched pedagogy” within schools.

Specifically, we’ll engage participants in a cycle of “Tabletop Movie Making” in which we introduce the basics of video making and the vocabulary of film. As Huerta (2015) writes, the collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking and “pitching” of filmmaking in classrooms is distinctly meta-cognitive work for all students, especially those with special needs.

We will use iPads, miniature diorama set construction, puppet-like character creation, and script development in a series of “build/make/ break” exercises. Small groups will each produce a short video incorporating a range of shots, editing techniques, and voice-over audio recording. Participants will pass through the 5 active verbs of the method: write, build, shoot, edit and share. 

The presenters have teamed to offer these rapid-iterative, collaborative, and creative sessions across preservice and inservice teacher education courses on one university campus. One presenter has also done multiple Tabletop Movie Making workshops across school and community settings. Dreamworks animation used these methods for internal professional development with staff. He has also trained over 500 Los Angeles teachers to bring video work into the classroom in partnership with Los Angeles County Museum of Art Art + Film Institute (which has adopted Tabletop MovieMaking as their core method for educator workshops). 

In the 90 minutes, we will provide context of the “why” of film-making in K-12 schools and in teacher education, produce the videos through a progression of exercises, screen the videos, and then reflect and discuss together the integration of these methods across the curriculum.

We will provide iPads, all “analog” materials for set and character construction, and other equipment.

This panel presents research from three different yet related youth media projects designed to challenge cultural and structural inequities. Each project identifies and discusses the benefits and challenges of pairing youth with college students as near-peer mentors within the context of media and technology engagement. 

#1: Gender inequity in technology spaces persists: women hold 12% of engineering jobs and 40% of women with technology degrees leave the profession. Seeds of Change is a leadership-training program for high school and college women in technology. Participants learn foundational frameworks to recognize gendered dynamics and strategies to navigate tech environments where their participation is affected. A key curricular framework is the Train the Trainer model: Stanford technology undergraduates receive feminist training and impart this knowledge to high school students interested in media and technology majors and careers. This model empowers women to be leaders and provides high school students with relatable mentoring relationships.

#2: Despite available statewide funding, only 4% of former foster youth in Texas graduate from college. As a way to lower some of the barriers, UNT hosted a summer digital storytelling workshop that paired teens in foster care with college students majoring in media arts. The workshop taught teens basic media production skills as an avenue for sharing their own stories with peers, caretakers, and CPS. The teens reported that the experience was personally empowering and rewarding. The mentorship aspect helped to challenge misconceptions teens in care had about college as an institution and as an opportunity.

#3: The "Making Movies that Matter" Film Festival places former CalArts students in 30 LAUSD schools to teach youth how to use smartphones to make short films about something that ‘matters’ to them. The content of the films generated deeper insights into how participants perceive today’s political, social and environmental landscape. Pairing youth from communities that typically do not support the arts as a career option with students from an elite art school generated a significant need to understand how mentor/mentee relationships can cross political, class, and cultural boundaries.

Together this panel presents original research that lends a deeper understanding to the role of near-peer mentorship within youth media and technology curricula.

Francesca Henderson, park ranger at Crystal Cove state park in Laguna Beach, California, has been teaching Castlebay Lane Charter Elementary's kindergarten class about the park’s natural wonders for the past few weeks. But the students are more than 80 miles away nestled in their classroom in Porter Ranch. Thanks to new technology, Henderson is able to interact with these students remotely, providing on-site demos while answering questions in real-time. This school year, Henderson will engage over 7,000 students most of which are California communities unable to make an educational field trip to the beach.

Over a decade ago California State Parks established a distance learning program called PORTS (Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Schools). Using video conferencing technology and high speed data connections, PORTS enables park rangers to interact with kids in real time, taking them on virtual field trips in 10 California State Parks. Units of study include topics such as kelp forests, redwood ecology, monarch butterfly migration and historical subjects like the Gold Rush.

PORTS is constantly looking for ways to employ technology to enhance learning experiences and to provide engaging experience for students and recently partnered with Belkin to help with hardware and software solutions that make real-time communication easier and more fun.

Belkin’s Tablet Stage is an adjustable platform transforming any tablet into an interactive presentation tool. The Tablet Stage has been added to indoor studios and remote ranger vehicles like the EduGator, which functions as a mobile studio. With this enhanced functionality, park rangers are now able to use the iPad as a document camera and video presentation system to better showcase the park’s natural, cultural, and historical resources. 

By also installing the Tablet Stage in the classroom, teachers have the ability to customize the view for their students and park rangers are able to see the entire classroom and speak directly with students who can ask questions and share their experience with park staff. The accompanying Stage App lets rangers annotate over live video and draw on the screen, enabling a truly interactive learning experience.

The new features have expanded the quality and reach of the customized online learning solutions. This school year, the program will serve 100 school districts statewide and reach more than 50,000 students. During this session, Brittany Lollier and Brad Krey will share insights from the program and will incorporate an actual demo with a park ranger so attendees can experience firsthand the power of these virtual field trips.