Friday, April 8, 2011

Project Report: Exploratory Approaches to the Design and Development of a Game for a Distance Education Course in Philippine History

by
Roel Cantada

I would like to share my project report for my master's degree in distance education at the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU).

Downloads

Report
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ei3fb2b9haja388/CantadaProjectReportEbook.pdf (4.57 mb)

WIP OARs of the game
http://www.mediafire.com/file/qlew0zm3ws3v2pp/phgame1_2-8-2011.oar (15.22 mb)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/qb2377nriczm66s/phgame2_2-8-2011.oar (5 mb)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/cb7coc47ao29ydc/phgame3_2-8-2011.oar (10.44 mb)



Moodle backup (Updated Dec. 19, 2011)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/zj5155md34ml0ot/backup-19thcent-20111219-1452.zip (955 kb)

You may need to edit the presenter slides url after restoring this moodle backup. Click on the presenter link->edit tab->hand icon->paste new url. (The new url should come from the course files->briefing folder. Right click and copy link to get the url.) Then save.

Abstract

The project explores the design and development of a prototype video game for a distance education course in Philippine history. The project seeks to answer these questions:

  1. What are the affordable learning actions and constraints of educational games in general and games for learning history in particular? 
  2. What production pipeline of design and development of educational games is appropriate for distance education teachers of Philippine history with meagre resources?
The rationale for the project is the following:

  1. There is little study on courses as games in distance education. 
  2. In the context of connectivist learning theory there is no study of games as hubs for a personal learning environment (PLE). 
  3. There is no available off the shelf game for teaching Philippine history. 
Open Simulator, a Multi-user Virtual Environment (MUVE) was used to create a prototype game. Formative research methods were adopted in the design and development of the game.

It has been found that the game affords the adoption of a wide range of learning theories and methods. As a PLE hub it has weak and strong affordances. In learning history it affords the following:

  1. It affords the linking and finding of historical sources.
  2. It affords role playing of historical characters.
  3. It affords reconstruction of history in multimedia.
  4. It affords the linking of game play with history.
It has also been found that teachers may impose a minimal amount of constraint on the learning path through quests and virtual objects that serve as obstacles. Items may be hidden from view (to delay use) or pointed out by Non-Player Characters. These constraints may help learners recognize affordable learning actions in the game. It may also scaffold the experience of novice players who are unfamiliar with the 3D environment.

In conclusion, series of steps and guidelines are suggested for developing educational games. It is recommended that teachers exploit the tools of the game for collaborative design and development as well as the production of reusable virtual world archives.

3 comments:

mathew said...

Hi Roel, I read through your dissertation with interest and I would like to install a local copy of your history game at my university for testing. I am researching e-assessment and developing virtual world examples. We have a Moodle 1.9.15 with sloodle and opensim 0.7.2 working. The two systems can talk to each other successfully. we tested with another slightly older sloodle set found on the sloodle forums, although not all parts work successfully at this time (i.e prim drop is not working for us but i note you had it working).
I have downloaded your OAR files but to get your game working we will need the other half (moodle bits) or info regarding which moodle activities/assignments etc you had created and their specifications. would you be able to post up this information? perhaps if you can make moodle course back-up that includes all these bits and post the file to accompany the OAR files?

matangdilis said...

Hi Mathew,

Thank you for your interests in the virtual world package. In hindsight I should have shared the moodle backup but when I realized that, the machine where I have everything died and is still in the repair shop. I do not have a spare box to transfer the hds.

Anyways the important moodle activity in the quest is the sloodle object assignments (NOT a standard moodle assignment). In moodle it would require a sloodle controller and a "sloodle object assignment". Then the prim drop is configured in world. Each primdrop (which does not need to look like the original primdrop box) has a sloodle object assignment associated with it.

The sloodleset in the oar is my unofficial sloodleset 1.1 found here: http://matangdilis.blogspot.com/search/label/sloodleset

I recommend that you try configuring a tracker along with the primdrop and use a sloodleset 1.2/sloodle 1.2. My unofficial sloodleset 1.2 can be found here: http://matangdilis.blogspot.com/2011/04/unofficial-sloodleset-12-for-beta.html

The other sloodle moodle modules installed are for metagloss (needs a standard glossary module in moodle); quiz chair (needs a standard quiz module); choice (needs a standard choice module);

My prim script that displays an rss feed from a moodle forum is probably not needed with media on a prim available in 0.7.2.

The chatbot Burniol is not part of the oar as that is a radegast-alice bot.

The script for the stargate (repurposed hypergrid) needs osteleport_agent enabled in the ini files of opensim.

Hope this helps.

Roel

matangdilis said...

Moodle backup of demo MUVE game is released above.

 
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