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Educational egaming: the future for geoscience virtual learners?
Jamie K. Pringle
School of Physical Sciences & Geography, William Smith Building, Keele,
University, Keele, Staffs, ST5 5BG, UK.
Email: j.k.pringle@keele.ac.uk
Abstract
Current student learners will mostly comprise so-called Generation Y who have
grown up with personal computer and egaming technologies. They are used to a
variety of digital learning environments and educational egaming may therefore
provide effective complementary learning to more traditional learning and
teaching methods. This paper briefly reviews current geoscience digital
educational methods and details three case studies of online educational
geoscience egames. These are shown to provide a consistent experience, 24/7
accessibility and effective learning. Links to use these resources are given.
Introduction
The structured nature of traditional lectures and associated laboratory practicals
still dominate in today’s science teaching and learning disciplines. Whilst these
are appropriate learning and teaching methods for some students, there are a
whole variety of other ways that practitioners have found that are used to learn,
for example, mutual group learning, interactive learning and problem-based
learning to list but three. Some of these can be usefully applied in practical
sessions. Outdoor fieldwork-based geoscience learning has well documented
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Pringle, J. K. (2014). Educational egaming: the future for geoscience virtual learners?.
Geology Today, 30(4), 145-148. doi:10.1111/gto.12058, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gto.12058. This article
may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving'.
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and obvious benefits of ‘learning through doing’, potentially greater student
engagement with the topics, exploration learning as outcrops are investigated
and analysed, etc., and it is not the intention of this paper to suggest egaming as
a replacement for fieldwork. However, the opportunities to actually undertake
geoscience fieldwork for learners during their studies can be relatively few, due
to, for example, formal timetabling constraints, fieldwork logistics and the
expense incurred for both learners and providers. Some of the best field areas
are relatively inaccessible, especially for those who may not be physically able,
the trip may additionally suffer with inclement weather, etc., which can make
them not as effective as planned, even taking the same field trip over different
years.
The current college and undergraduate University student cohort have changed
from the so-called Generation X to now mostly comprise Generation Y (generally
defined as having 1982-2001 birth years). Generation Y learners have grown up
with computers and computer gaming, are fully digitally conversant and able and
indeed wanting to be connected to the internet 24/7. Surveys on 61 current
Geoscience students at Keele University have found three quarters play
computer games daily or weekly and half have already used online resources for
learning (e.g. BBC™ Bitesize online examination revision tools). Researchers
taking Generation Y as a whole, they are found to be used to instant messaging
and therefore tend to want instant results from learning, are bored by routine and
additionally need active engagement in tasks to remain focused on learning.
That said, however, they are highly competent users of information technologies
and have been shown to integrate a variety of tasks simultaneously, responding
particularly well to goal-orientated tasks. As an example, a particularly popular
multi-player fantasy world online game (World of Warcraft™) involves navigating
a personal virtual avatar of the user around a virtual world, various online and
interactive tasks needing to be completed and additionally the ability to verbally
communicate with virtual avatars of other users, all of which is undertaken
simultaneously, which obviously involves a variety of learning methods!
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Virtual educational learning
On-line learning environments are all but most compulsory for teaching modules
at college and University, the best resources being a rich mixture of taught and
online materials. These materials are interspersed with video and digital
animations; for example, explaining the 3D relationships of structuring folding of
rocks or the evolution of sedimentary basins and their sediment types and their
distributions in three dimensions over time. Recorded video podcasts of fieldtrips
have also been shown to be very useful for learners for pre-trip familiarization
and visualization, or indeed for those unable to make the trip yet still gaining
appropriate learning outcomes. Digital reconstructions of rock outcrops and/or
real-world environments are also increasingly popular for a range of teaching and
research applications (Figure 1). In other applied science areas, for example, in
applied engineering, students can, for example, virtually work through how to
assemble turbine generator parts before physically undertaking the task, which
has obvious benefits of pre-assembly familiarising with the parts, making virtual
mistakes and solving them and foreseeing problems before they physically occur.
Taking away real-world reality has also been shown to be useful for educational
purposes, for example, immersive virtual learning environments have been
around for some time, the online SecondLife™ multi-player online environments
have been used by both science researchers and teachers, and has even been
used as virtual academic conference venues. However, generally, these have
had mixed success for effective learning for a variety of reasons, including users
having had variable previous experiences and thus some novice users struggle
more than others, a dependence on learners fully engaging with the scenario to
be successful, distractions of the virtual environment itself and navigating the
user’s virtual avatar around, and lastly, difficulty actually finding the named virtual
conference venue within the virtual world, to name but four.
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Figure 1. Example of a virtual 3D digital environment in Northern Spain which
can be used for research and teaching and learning purposes.
Educational egaming
There are currently few geoscience educational egames available, perhaps due
to the relatively advanced computer programming skills necessary that would be
beyond most geoscience teaching and learning practitioners. In other fields, for
example, forensic science, virtual crime scenes are available for learners to
process so the user progress from being an initial ‘rookie’ at the start of the
egame through to being an experienced crime scene investigator after a series of
progressively more difficult virtual scenarios (see end for online link). However,
the reality and difficulty of the science behind these scenarios is questionable
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and indeed how much educational value is being derived for learners is not
known. An effective geoscience educational egame should deliver a realistic and
science-based game that gives learners a consistent, rich and realistic
experience and, ideally, the ability to replay with different pathways and/or
endings and goals to encourage learner engagement.
There is an excellent online educational geoscience egame currently available,
based on ore exploration, created and hosted by Leeds University (see end for
online link). The learner is in charge of a virtual commercial company tasked
with not only finding placer gold in a fictional digital fluvial environment, but also
to generate a profit for the virtual company with significant real-world risks
involved. These risks include, for example, buying secondhand equipment to cut
costs which then break down, choosing the wrong exploration strategy which
leads the company to financial collapse and running out of capital before the gold
gets to market and can be sold to provide a revenue stream (Figure 2). At Leeds
this educational egame has been embedded within the undergraduate course
curriculum, and has apparently proven surprisingly effective at teaching learners
about the many aspects related to ore exploration. These exploration aspects
include a sensible exploration and development strategy, the need for careful
financial budgeting, as well as familiarizing learners with the typical commercial
development problems encountered that need to be solved to make exploration a
commercial success.