Debbie Denise Reese

Community Networks: Where Offline Communities Meet Online

This study explores the design and practice of the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV), a mature networked community. We describe findings from longitudinal survey data on the use and social impact of community computer networking. The survey data show that increased involvement with people, issues and community since going online is explained by education, extroversion and age. Using path models, we show that a persons sense of belonging and collective efficacy, group memberships, activism and social use of the Internet act as mediating variables. These findings extend evidence in support of the argument that Internet use can strengthen social contact, community engagement and attachment. Conversely, it underlines concern about the impact of computer networking on people with lower levels of education, extroversion, efficacy, and community belonging. We suggest design strategies and innovative tools for non-experts that might increase social interaction and improve usability for disadvantaged and underrepresented individuals and groups.

Weak Ties in Networked Communities

Communities with high levels of social capital are likely to have a higher quality of life than communities with low social capital. This is due to the greater ability of such communities to organize and mobilize effectively for collective action because they have high levels of social trust, dense social networks, and well-established norms of mutuality (the major features of social capital). Communities with “bridging” social capital (weak ties across groups) as well as “bonding” social capital (strong ties within groups) are the most effective in organizing for collective action. People who belong to multiple groups act as bridging ties. When people with bridging ties use communication media, such as the Internet, they enhance their capability to educate community members and to organize, as needed, for collective action. This article summarizes evidence from stratified household survey data in Blacksburg, VA, showing that people with weak (bridging) ties across groups have higher levels of community involvement, civic interest, and collective efficacy than people without bridging ties among groups. Moreover, heavy Internet users with bridging ties have higher social engagement, use the Internet for social purposes, and have been attending more local meetings and events since going online than heavy Internet users with no bridging ties. These findings may suggest that the Internet—in the hands of bridging individuals–is a tool for enhancing social relations and information exchange, and for increasing face-to-face interaction, all of which help to build both bonding and bridging social capital in communities.

Elaborated Metaphors Support Viable Inferences about Difficult Science Concepts.

Instructional metaphors scaffold learning better when accompanied by an elaboration. Applying structure mapping theory, we developed and used an elaborated instructional metaphor (text and illustrations) for introductory chemistry concepts. In two studies (N 1 = 44, N 2 = 57), college students with little chemistry background read either the elaborated metaphor, sub‐concept metaphor statements (e.g. an atom is like a tile) only or (Study 2) sub‐concept labels (e.g. atom) only. When asked to write what they knew about the sub‐concept, those in the elaborated metaphor condition wrote more sophisticated domain inferences than those in the other condition(s), p < .05. The elaborated metaphor helped participants construct accurate pre‐conceptual mental models that could prepare them for future learning (i.e. acquisition of new knowledge). The results also suggested that acquisition of high‐level concepts may require active learner transactions with the analogue, as can be had in interactive instructional game worlds.

Timed Report Measures Learning: Game-Based Embedded Assessment

Is the CyGaMEs (cyberlearning through game-based, metaphor enhanced learning objects) Timed Report tool (embedded assessment for game-based instructional environments derived from analogical reasoning and instructional design theory) a sensitive measure of learning? Using gameplay assessed every 10 s from 221 volunteers (primarily 13–18-year-olds distributed within and outside the United States playing the online videogame Selene), an algorithm identified a targeted learning moment, designated Timed Reports as “before” or “at and after” learning, and calculated Pearson correlation coefficients and slopes for both learning trajectories. Three studies compared the strength and quality of the Timed Report: a multilevel model using raw Timed Report values, repeated measures using slopes, and repeated measures using Pearson correlation coefficients. The three studies supported the same conclusions and replicate, elaborate, and generalize earlier findings. Timed Report successfully distinguishes player progress before and after learning. The strong effect supports the CyGaMEs approach to instructional game design and Timed Report embedded assessment for educational data mining. Timed Report also distinguishes between players who are Always Progressing and those who experience a learning moment. Participants who watch gameplay before playing have early success; however, participants who play without first watching gameplay make the largest gains in performance, and their after-learning performance equals that of watchers. Watching instructional videos about targeted game content in addition to watching gameplay before playing did not enhance performance.

Digital Knowledge Maps: The Foundation for Learning Analytics Through Instructional Games

The CyGaMEs (Cyberlearning through Game-based, Metaphor Enhanced Learning Objects) approach to instructional game design and embedded assessment provides a formalism to translate domain knowledge into procedural gameplay. As such, CyGaMEs learning environments are transactional digital knowledge maps that make abstract concepts concrete and actionable: translating what experts know into procedures learners do (discover and apply). CyGaMEs produces games designed to provide viable prior knowledge as preparation for future learning. After knowledge specification through a task analysis, the method applies cognitive science analogical reasoning theory to translate targeted learning goals into game goals and translate targeted knowledge as the game world (e.g., rules and core mechanics). The CyGaMEs approach designs gameplay parameters as the Timed Report measure of player performance to quantify and trace trajectories of learning and achievement. The approach is one way to address design for alignment and shortcomings and limitations documented in the literature that plague current learning game design, embedded assessment, and research. Chapter discussion introduces the national initiative for cyberlearning and embedded assessment and insights from evidence-centered design and cognitive tutor development practices, especially regarding task analysis and cognitive task analysis. Then CyGaMEs’ Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME design artifacts, screen captures, gameplay data, and analyses illustrate this approach to design and embedded assessment. A case is made that instructional game design with embedded assessment is an enterprise requiring complex expertise among teams of professionals—topped by talent and creativity.

Engineering Instructional Metaphors Within Virtual Environments to Enhance Visualization

Digital games worlds are systems of objects, their properties, behaviors, and the relations between them. They are immensely popular with people of all ages, currently especially the young. The educational community has begun to notice that game worlds present an attractive possibility for enhancing conventional educational achievement. The greatest potential of instructional games actually derives from the structural isomorphism between game worlds and conceptual worlds. This chapter describes how that isomorphism can be achieved through the use of structure mapping theory. A game world designed through applied structure mapping provides a way to introduce novices to expert thinking by making that thinking visible and embodied through a concrete metaphor.

An Instructional Design Approach to Effective Instructional Game Design and Assessment

CyGaMEs is a formalism for instructional game design that aligns an instructional game with targeted content. The CyGaMEs method derives from instructional design, cognitive science analogical reasoning, learning science, and game design theory. The author summarizes the theoretical foundations, introduces the method, describes the CyGaMEs assessment tools, and summarizes research that demonstrates how game-based technologies can be used to authentically assess knowledge growth as it occurs during game-based learning. The author argues that theoretically and empirically sound instructional design methods like CyGaMEs enhance the effectiveness of game-based learning and assessment.

CyGaMEs Selene player log dataset: Gameplay assessment, flow dimensions and non-gameplay assessments

The Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME instructional video game is a robust research environment (institutional review board approved) for investigating learning, affect, and the CyGaMEs Metaphorics approach to instructional video game design, embedded assessment, and informatics analysis and reporting. CyGaMEs applies analogical reasoning theory to translate fundamental scientific phenomena into embodied, procedural, goal-driven, instructional gameplay and concurrent metrics of learning. Selene also collects integrated measures of affect operationalized as flow dimensions skill and challenge. Selene is a free, online Flash/Flex game available 24/7 to registered players. The player (agemean = 13; N = 3882; nfemale = 1915; nmale = 1908; nSpanish-language version = 157) dataset, collected between April 6, 2010 and May 30, 2014, is anonymized, open and downloadable within Wheeling Jesuit Universitys data repository. Dataset files contain timestamped, tab-delimited, player log data for gesture-level gameplay; Timed Report progress toward each game/learning goal; flow dimensions; non-gameplay assessments; demographics; paradata; and repository lexicons. Dataset analyses using traditional statistical methods (eg, multilevel modeling, interrupted time-series) study learning trajectories, learning moments, affect (flow dimensions), persistence, gender differences, dashboard effects and the interactions among them. CyGaMEs Selene translates Timed Reports into real-time, online dashboard report visualizations players and their registered educators can understand and use.

CyGaMEs: A Full-Service Instructional Design Model Harnessing Game-Based Technologies for Learning and Assessment

CyGaMEs harnesses the power of game-based technologies for enhanced learning and embedded assessment. CyGaMEs is a principled and formal approach to instructional game design, assessment, and formative evaluation through applied analogical reasoning, learning science, entertainment game, and instructional design theories. CyGaMEs makes learning more intuitive by creating game-based environments that are analogs of targeted learning domains. Players construct viable intuitions (prior knowledge). Experimental research using CyGaMEs’ Selene, an instructional game targeting lunar geology, supports the approach.

Enhancing E-Solution Animations Through Conceptual Metaphor

Abstract Graphics-based e-commerce, e-learning, and e-communication solutions often employ computer animations in order to increase the effectiveness of message communication. Cognitive scientists have found that metaphor and analogy characterize a good deal of human cognitive structure and processes. We suggest that animators and motion graphics designers might enhance their control of design and development processes as well as the effectiveness of message reception, if they develop and employ an enhanced awareness of the underlying metaphors that populate their animations. We discuss the underlying theoiy of conceptual metaphor and provide an example of how that theory is embodied within a typical animation series.