Deconstructing Creativity: Motivation

What is motivation?

In Teach for America’s Teaching as Leadership (TAL) Rubric, motivation is called “I want.”  In order to achieve or create, one must first want to achieve or create.  Games research points to motivation as something games are excellent at cultivating, therefore, the exploration of creativity, motivation, and games prior to building an early concept or project idea is essential.

First, for there are the obvious motivation breakdowns of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivations.  In my experience, the best creatives are primarily intrinsically motivated, as somehow the act of creating is motivating.  Reflecting with my adviser, I told her that there is something extremely gratifying about feeling and watching a creation take shape, then holding it in your hands and reflecting upon it once it has been birthed.  How does that motivation develop?  What is needed?  Why do have I had it over the course of my life and, say, my mother has developed it only since my graduation from high school (and its still a work in progress), and some folks never get there?  There are a couple of theories of motivation I will discuss here that seem to provide some level of explanation for this.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Perhaps one of the oldest theories of motivations Maslow's Hierarchy of Human needs, (1943) is a pyramid shaped view of what is required to be motivated.  At the first level are physiological needs (food, water, shelter), followed by safety, love, then self esteem and finally self actualization.  Creativity and creative acts fall into the top of this pyramid.  In particular, the issue of self esteem, broken into achievement, recognition, mastery, and respect seems vital to creating.

 

2010-2011, Achievements and Goals

 From my 2010-11 MSU Progress Report

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Over the past year, I have attacked the goals set in my initial goals statement with zeal.  Due to gaps in my skills and theoretical knowledge of game design, I have pursued each course taken as an opportunity to build my knowledge in these deficit areas.  Due to the excellent instructional methods of Dr. Wei Peng and Dr. Carrie Heeter, I am confident in my background in design research and theories of serious games. I also am able to reach out into other disciplines in order to substantiate research and design.  In addition, I have had the opportunity collaborate with other students in the design of two substantial serious games, “Shades of Shakespeare” and “Pardon of the Sun”.  Each game was a lesson in game design and content design, that demonstrated the challenges inherent in creating games with meaningful play.

Deconstructing Creativity: Environment

For my masters project the area I want to explore is the intersection of creativity and games, a broad area, but one that allows me to touch on several areas of interest for future research.  Ultimately the project will have a much more narrow focus.  However, at this stage, I am general reflecting and researching in order to better understand what immediate research and design needs exist within emerging creativity studies.

To do this, involves deconstructing creativity, defining its elements so that I might be able to see what areas a game can build skill or confidence.  As it stands, "Creating" or "Synthesis" has long been at the top levels of Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain, being most recently moved to the very highest level.  This suggests that there are many processes and aspects to creativity to consider.

From "Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains"

If you look at the taxonomy, it is clear how many cogs in this domain are relevant to the creative process.  When considering creativity pedagogy or environments to encourage creativity, one must remember the level of cognition necessary, and the structure built up beneath it that allows success at creating.

To deconstruct from here results in a large number of relevant aspects of creativity: environment, motivation, process, and community being paramount.  However, to be more descriptive for the sake of exploring creativity further, I have broken those down into descriptive subsets:  Environment, Motivation, Process, Invention, Reflection, Exhibition.

 

Today I plan to focus on Environment, and explore each other area in depth at a later time.  There is a great deal of content to work with in the concept of a creative environment alone.

Developing a Framework/Process for M.A. Project Planning

This morning I've been doing so of the more boring work for an M.A. project:  coordinating research on best practices for planning and implementing media and education products.  I recognize, that what I am working on my be beneficial to everyone else, so I am sharing my top planning resources and approach.  Actually, following this approach will largely get me to the proposal submission phase, rather than final project (I hope). 

First off, frameworks:

1)  Backwards Design

Backwards Design (Wiggin) is an educational planning practice where you start with your objectives and evaluation and then ultimately plan your learning experience.  Although not user centered, it is objective driven, and I recognize combined with user centered principles can create a meaningful structure that provides positive outcomes.

Final Submission for Autism Connects: Keeper

Keeper is an SCI based tablet game for the practice of emotions in context in 9-15 year olds with ASDs.

What is it?
 
  Keeper is an Social Competence Intervention based tablet game for the intervention and practice of emotions in context, a component of mentalization,  in 9-15 year olds with Asperger Syndrome, PDD-NOS, and High Functioning Autism.  Since children and adolescents with ASDs demonstrate higher levels of engagement with interactive media a digital game is a great place for practice and intervention (Mineo et al, 2009). 

View a Vimeo of the paper prototype of a main level here.


Why is this an important design?
 
   Individuals with ASDs are often impaired in their ability mentalize. They struggle to interpret “ nonverbal … socially salient information from face, gesture, and body positions,”  causing atypical social responses leading to social anxiety and social isolation (David et al, 2009; Kuusikko et al, 2009). 

Keeper: Updated Digest Concept/Design

This is my entry of the design for Core77's Autism Connects Challenge.

     Individuals with ASDs are often impaired in their ability mentalize. They struggle to interpret “ nonverbal … socially salient information from face, gesture, and body positions,”  causing atypical social responses leading to social anxiety and social isolation (David et al, 2009; Kuusikko et al, 2009).  I propose a tablet game, Keeper, for the … read morepractice of mentalization, focusing on expression recognition in context, in 9-15 year olds with Asperger Syndrome, PDD-NOS, and High Functioning Autism.

History, Resonance, and Generation

I greatly enjoyed reading the chapter about the history of educational video games. I admit, long before I became nervous about playing games (performance anxiety maybe?) I enjoyed playing The Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I must have played both 100 times over the course of elementary school. 
 

I can still remember basic takeaways from Oregon Trail. If you started with a profession that had more money, you would likely be more successful. If you started at the wrong time of year, chances were that you would not survive or your party would not be in good condition. That, and if you shot a buffalo it would feed you forever and you couldn't always carry all the meat back. My sister and I liked to hunt in that game, what can I say.

As for Carmen I think that game was best for kids that were not like me. I enjoyed memorizing ridiculous and useless geography facts, so I would use the game to test my memory. In middle school, I could get to chasing Carmen before I had to reach for the Almanac, which I thought was cheating. At the time it had never occurred to me that this was a goal of the game. Actually, Ben Sawyer was discussing at Meaningful Play 2010 how games need to push out more. Clearly, this game was already doing just that. It is funny how easy that is to ignore. Pushing out of the game isn't new, it just isn't common. By the way, I never caught Carmen Sandiego. The bell always rang before I could catch her. Everyday I would almost have her and “riiiing” computer class was over.

On Essential Experience and Remembering How to Fly

I am excited to be approaching Schell's book, The Art of Game Design, with a class. Last year around this time, I purchased the book and read it from cover to cover. It was one of the final pieces of my decision to attend the Serious Game Design program. Much of what I found appealing was tucked throughout the book, but the first three chapters that we are discussing this week drew me in as a person with a content background in English and Linguistics, with hobbies of writing, art, and design.

First of all, the opening demonstrates the overlap of content areas with game design. One of my problems before coming into this program, was I had no vision of myself in a single content speciality area. I had two majors and for all I cared could have ten more and be extremely satisfied. I enjoy the process of learning and the act of using knowledge. After reading this chapter, I saw this once personality flaw something of great value to a game designer. This appealed to me and kept me reading. 

Memories from girlhood: On becoming a kick-butt maiden in games

It is a bright, sunny March day. My sister and I are wearing windbreakers out in the newly thawed lawn of my grandparents. We are not sitting with dolls, having a picnic, or playing house. We are sitting under the Goomba Tree digging a cavern to the hollow inside where the goombas come from at night. In this way, we planned to travel to Mario World.

If you read a certain slice of research on girl play habits, then girls who play in this kind of fantasy world are either rare or do not exist (Kafai, 2009). However, today I will take you on a journey of gender identity and the development of a girl who likes games, watches games, plays games, studies games, and most recently, makes games.

Design Decisions for Digital Game Based Learning

When considering pedagogy in a given delivery method, including games, there are always specific student-centered concerns. As in a regular classroom environment, one must take several factors into consideration. These factors include the learner, the desired outcomes or pedagogical objectives, the methodology, and the assessment of desired outcomes.

How Video Games Can Facilitate Learning

In education, there is much discussion about environments for learning and how a positive learning environment will foster life-long learners. From this view, digital games, as a scene based medium, in contrast to page and time based mediums, can be perceived as a learning environment. There are several theoretical concepts to support this view.

Real Life Culture and Game Culture Considerations in Games for Social Change

When constructing games for social change there are many mediating factors, as in games for health behavior change. In social change, however, the greatest level of change can be accomplished at the community/group levels and policy levels. In particular, the group and community in which individual players are situated play significant roles. This is because a player is always effected by cultural norms (Klimmt, 2009). One must always plan to address the real life cultural when creating a game, in particular with regards to the message design.

However, games as a system of delivery for social change messages provide a unique twist: the game culture. When the individual enters the “magic circle” of the game, they are in turn entering a distinct system based culture with rules and procedures far different from the everyday cultural norms, otherwise so many players would not be drawn to games such as Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt. In this way, games also embody their own, self contained culture, what Ian Bogost defines as cultural activities with a “social practice of playing” (2008).

Player Experience is Paramount: Report and Discussion on Come Closer

There is much discussion in modern game design about the concept of "playercentric design" and the importance of the player experience.  However, most would find it difficult to boil that down into a basic vision statement.  At the 2010 Meaningful Play Conference, Jamie Antonisse and Sean Bouchard attempt through their presentation to give a formula for such a design statement.

What makes designing playercentric games particularly challenging is that there are two sides to the design.  One, the creator's side, is what Antonisse and Bouchard describe as the statement "I want to make my game about ..."  Sometimes, the design process stops there.  However, the two emphasize there is another important side, and that is absolutely the player's side, described in the statement "when playing this game the player should feel ...".  They believe that there is a disconnect in many designs between these two sides, caused by the fact that designers often think of player experience soley as accessiblity and engagement.  These two elements, although important to the design of a quality game, ignore another key feature:  player experience. 

Antonisse and Bouchard argue that one must have two design statements, one related to the topic the creator designs the game about and the other what the player should feel, or the player experience.  The trick to this is that the experience must resonate with the topics.

Differentiating Games to Motivate Learners as Players

Differentiation is a buzz word in the modern education world. It comes in the context of student centered instructional strategies. In the world of teaching, that means thinking about what students will do and what the teacher does to facilitate this process. Outcomes and objectives are formed in this same way: Students will be able to (SWBAT) … with the objective finished by a descriptive verb that in the best instances describes also the process(es) by which the students will demonstrate the desired outcome. With the advent of differentiated student centered instruction, there are often a list of several processes by which students will demonstrate the desired verb/outcome. I am admittedly, citing from my own experience, Teach for America's extensive curriculums, and probably a large library of teaching books that I have read in the past for years that have become a part of my “educator mindset.”

The point I am making is that differentiation is no new concept. However, how to apply to digital learning games is a relatively new challenge. Serious Games are at a young stage of development, and it is likely impossible to create a different game for every learner at this stage. Therefore, we must work as researchers and designers to, in the words of Teach for America, “have the most significant impact with the smallest amount of effort.” This is not about being lazy. This is about being strategic. There are a great many problems in education today. Tackling them, even in digital games, requires this mindset.

Reflections on Learning: There must be a better way

I am going to apologize in advance. This paper will be a far more reflective paper than I typically choose to post in regards to recent readings. In large part, this is due to the large amount of meaningful input I received this weekend between readings for this class, the coursework, and Meaningful Play 2010. As a result, I need to create a more casual, letter like format to process these ideas.

This week, I have been reading James Gee and also had the opportunity to attend his keynote and many presentations by researchers and academics influenced by his writings on games and learning.  My first take-away from Gee's work, his presentation, several other Games for Learning based presentations and interactions at the conference is there is a common theme: there must be a better way to teach and learn. This resonated with people I talked to in education or formerly in education that had been drawn to the conference.  

MSU Creativity Initiative

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the MSU Creativity Initiative Kick Off.  This is an amazing new interdisciplinary project that has the potential to be interinstitutional as well as involving community partners (wonder how TFA could use empirical data on creativity and creative pedagogy).  As it centers around creative processes across disciplines, there is a potential for Serious Games to get in the mix

Overview:

Creativity Initiative Website
Twitter:  msu_creativity
Facebook Group: The Creativity Initiative

There is also a hash-tag list.  #msucreativity
This program is innovative.  They want it to be decentralized and act as a hub (which is why it is an initiative, not a center).  The areas of research are arranged in clusters, but these are not silos and collaboration and movement between clusters is both expected and encouraged.

Digital Game Based Learning: Defining a Road Map to In Game Achievement

In a world of “Digital Natives” Digital Games Based Learning is becoming a desired instructional strategy in different educational environments. However, there is much trepidation in the community about the promising demonstrations of effectiveness, due to Shavian reversals in the “edutainment industry” where early attempts at creating learning environments from games resulting in the worst instructional practices combines with the most boring game formats (Van Eck, 2006). As confidence builds due to the growing numbers of studies demonstrating games are effective learning tools and environments, it is important to create a design framework to ensure games continue to be a successful media for instruction, rather than reverting to prior failed mergers.

So Games Can Be Effective, Now What?

Researchers agree that there is plentiful research supporting the effectiveness of games. However, most of these evaluations answer the simple “yes” “no” question of “Is Digital Game Based Learning effective?” (Van Eck, 2006). It is agreed that games are largely effective due to a combination of engagement and interactivity (Prenksy, 2001). Although the question of “why are games effective?” still needs further empirical study, there are many theories and suggestions as to why games work for instruction in skills, such as creative problem solving and creativity, that are notoriously difficult to measure (Van Eck, 2006). Games provide a meaningful learning context and allow a continue construction of cognitive disequilibrium where the learning actively participates in hypothesis making (Van Eck, 2006). Prenksy cites work by Ahlers and Garris that suggests games 1) provide chances for success, 2) curiosity, 3) simulated danger, and 4) social reinforcement. This still leaves us with the other question, how do we construct effective and engaging Digital Game Based Learning?

In Somnia: Negating a Potential Insurmountable Obstacle

So I've decided when thinking about my “in Somnia” that once Orphe has begun a cycle of sleep debt it is altogether too easy for it to spiral down to the Erebus “reset” scenario (I think especially for less skilled players). This could provide a lot of frustration for a player who would then see no way to beat the game, as clearly the obstacles to a good night's sleep are too much. This would also, admittedly, negate any positive effects the game could have on their sleep choices as it would increase the “perceived barriers”.  Hints about potions being bad aren't going to do much good when it requires a potion for Orphe to be able to avoid monsters or fight one because he is so tired and slow otherwise.

So instead of going back to the story (which I am dying to do), I instead feel I should balance the game further so that it is more fun. I think what is largely missing is the system of positive rewards.

Evaluation: Collecting Data to Prove and Improve

Evaluation is a vital component of the design and research process. However, games provide unique challenges as well as unique opportunities for measurement. Games allows the opportunity to measure far more than “task-related” assessment or assessment of “targeted skills” (Bente et al, 2009). Games allow to collect and code information for states such as “arousal, attention, and workload, as well about their mutual affiliations, transactions, and workloads.” Games also provide a variety of built-in assessments, such as health bars, leader boards, end of missions stats, and more that can be manipulated to monitor and provide feedback on selected serious goals (Bente et al, 2009). The ultimate goal of such evaluation is three-fold, to provide assessments that harvest data to improve in-game learning experiences, to provide assessments that quantify player data to adapt or tailor gameplay, and to provide assessments that measure the effectiveness of the serious game in meetings its target outcomes(Bente et al, 2009).

in Somnia: The Snooze Button Mechanic.

I have to say, this was a challenging assignment, as a result of the language of systems dynamics.  Developing a solution to this design problem felt natural visually, I just hope that I am able here to articulate everything in the correct terms.

Enter Phobetor:  God of Nightmares

In order to make the "Snooze Button" make sense in the representation I have added a new character:  Phobetor.  Phobetor is Morpheus's brother and the god of nightmares.  Yes, he's Orphe's uncle.  Don't you love family dynamics?  This means Phobetor's overarching responsibility is to call Orphe on all the sleep mistakes he has made in Vigil while he is in Somnia, making sure he is ready to meet Morpheus.  As such Phobetor has multiple jobs:

1)  To ring the bell for each potion Orphe drinks (up to 4 different bells).

2)  To turn into nightmares for each stress threshold Orphe meets (up to 4 monsters). (I am not focusing on this Job of Phobetor, but am trying to decide whether Orphe faces these seperately or together).

[Note there is a limit, as you only spend 8 hours in Somnia).