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.

 

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.

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?

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).

Message Design: The process of planning, implementing, and evaluating objectives

In developing serious video games, it is important to refer to current and commonly used concepts of message design. Conventions of design provide constructs with which to engage with a target audience. When constructing messages for games, like other platforms, it is necessary to answer several questions, conforming to “Who, What, Why, and How?”

1. 
   
   
   Who? Who is your target audience?
2. 
   
   
   What? What is your target objective?
3. 
   
   
   Why? Why should the audience care and what evidence supports this?
4. 
   
   
   How? How will you accomplish the target objective and measure the accomplishment?

By putting these questions together, one arrives at a process for planning, implementing, and evaluating objectives within a game construct or other more conventional platform. These steps can be broken down into three main parts: Formative research, Presentation of Objective (the core message element), and Evaluation of Effectiveness (Atkin, 1994).

The Construction of a Health Behavior Change Game

Outside of the process of design, there are several key features of the construction of a game for health behavior change. Created a game with serious content is a complex process involving game designers, content experts, funders, and other parties, who are often in conflict as to the direction of a game (Tate et al, 2009). However, with appropriate negotiation of different elements of the game design, significant, fun, and effective games can be created. Today I will address two of these: Team Expertise and Before, During, and After Gaming Content.

Narrative, Storytelling, and Games for Behavior Change

In serious games, much attention is put on game mechanics, and with good reason. The rules that define a game are ultimately what is often used to cause the desired outcomes or “phenomenon of interest” (Briggs, 2006). However, there is clear room to explore the effect of premise and within that, narrative or storytelling as a tool used as a layer of the game (Winn, 2006). In fact, a key take away from this week's reading is that more research is needed on the optimal use of stories and fantasy within games for health behavior change (Baronowski et al, 2008).

In fact, research makes it a point to show that in games with the objective of increasing physical activity, whether the game had a narrative component or no narrative component made a difference in whether the game sustained positive outcomes for more than a few weeks (Baranowski et al, 2008).

From my experience, storytelling adds a very specific element that is desirable in game play.

Reflections of Theory and Design, Learning and Fun

for TC831
Theory and Design

Having spent time in a K-12 classroom in the United States, I find it hard to argue against a concept of evidence-based and theory-based design. In education, the concept of “best practices” guides teachers in selecting methods for instruction that are proven to increase student achievement, thus avoiding failures. These practices, like propositions, are based in cause and effect. Teacher action equals student action. Therefore, to create a quality instructional environment, one must modify teacher practice to achieve the best student outcomes. In the world of education, student achievement in a given subject becomes Briggs's “Phenomenon of Interest” (2006).