Mingfong Jan

Mystery at the museum: a collaborative game for museum education

Through an iterative design process involving museum educators, learning scientists and technologists, and drawing upon our previous experiences in handheld game design and a growing body of knowledge on learning through gaming, we designed an interactive mystery game called Mystery at the Museum (the High Tech Whodunnit), which was designed for synchronous play of groups of parents and children over a two to three hour period. The primary design goals were to engage visitors more deeply in the museum, engage visitors more broadly across museum exhibits, and encourage collaboration between visitors. The feedback from the participants suggested that the combination of depth and breadth was engaging and effective in encouraging them to think about the museums exhibits. The roles that were an integral part of the game turned out to be extremely effective in engaging pairs of participants with one another. Feedback from parents was quite positive in terms of how they felt it engaged them and their children. These results suggest that further explorations of technology-based museum experiences of this type are wholly appropriate.

Learning Chemistry Performatively: Epistemological and Pedagogical Bases of Design-for-Learning with Computer and Video Games

Typical textbooks in chemistry present the field as a fait accompli represented by a body of “proven” facts. In the teaching and learning of chemistry, students have little, if any, agency to engage in scientific inquiry and to construct their personal understanding of the field. An emphasis on predetermined “knowledge” and the execution of laboratory experiments designed mainly to confirm predetermined “findings” can lead students to a grave misunderstanding of the nature of science. In this chapter, we argue that the learning of chemistry must be engaged in performatively if it is to be authentic. Using the multiplayer chemistry game “Legends of Alkhimia” as a context, we articulate the epistemological and pedagogical bases for the design of a game-based learning curriculum to help students imbibe the thinking, values, and dispositions of professional chemists. Drawing on Bourdieu’s construct of habitus, we seek to foster students’ capacity for practical reason as they become themselves via engagement in the scientific and inquiry-oriented practice of doing chemistry, rather than just learning about it. We explain how our design-for-learning seeks to develop epistemic reflexivity and professional identity, in relation to professional chemists, through performance, play, and dialog.

Issues and Challenges of Enacting Game-Based Learning in Schools

In this article, we postulate the issues and challenges when we bring game-based learning from an informal setting to a formal school setting. The understanding will contribute to the design of game-based learning programs in the mainstream classrooms. We highlight the issues and challenges by re-situating a successful game-based learning program designed to foster problem solving and argumentation—Mad City Mystery—from an outdoor learning setting to a school setting. We first delineate the conditions and mechanisms through which Mad City Mystery was made possible as a plausible twenty-first-century learning experience. Through the analysis, we unpack the enablers and critical conditions that made Mad City Mystery a plausible twenty-first-century learning experience. From there, we examine the plausibility and applicability of these critical conditions in the classroom context. In conclusion, we articulate eight critical challenges/enablers that sustain game-based learning programs like Mad City Mystery in the classroom. Among the challenges, pedagogical, technological, and logistical issues are Grade Two challenges—issues that can be solved when research and financial resources are in place and are more likely to be solved. Curricular, performative, social, and temporal issues are Grade One challenges—which are more resilient to changes even when external resources pour in.

From Ann Brown to Deanna Kuhn: a tale of two research perspectives on learning

ABSTRACT This paper examines two research perspectives on learning – developmental psychology and the learning sciences. We compare and contrast works from two leading researchers – Deanna Kuhn and Ann Brown – as a way to illustrate how questions and research on learning, such as problem-solving, inquiry, metacognition, self-directed learning, are raised and answered. The developmental psychology perspectives, represented by Deanna Kuhn, often highlight individual attributes, foregrounding deep understanding of what is in the head. The learning sciences perspectives, manifested by Ann Brown, inquire learning taking place within the material, social, and cultural contexts, foregrounding the design of what the head is in. The former takes an observer-evaluator-theorizer position to understand how learning develops over time. The later takes an ethnographer-designer-interventionist-theorizer position to understand how individual and group learning can be changed via design. This paper contributes to the delineation of two leading ways to understand how people learn. It informs researchers how research tool kits are shaped when their research commitments differ.