Games for Learning sessions at Serious Play will be designed to help school administrators and instructors as well as companies offering at home learning product determine how to best choose or contract for serious games that deliver learning objectives and measureable results. Professors of game development programs will get the tools to help students begin a serious game career.
Tuesday, August 21, 2011
Welcome
Claude Comair, President, DigiPen Institute of Technology
Clark Aldrich, Conference Director and CEO, Clark Aldrich Designs
Plenary Session: The Serious Games Market: Segment Size and Where Opportunity Lies
The distinguished panel will discuss the opportunities for serious games and educational simulations by reviewing current research on the market needs and growth in the next five years.
Panelists:
Alan Gershenfeld, Founder and President, E-Line Media
Tom Grant, Forrester Research
Tyson Greer, CEO, Ambient Insight
Kevin Oakes, CEO, i4cp
Speaker Sessions:
Panel: From Slate and Chalk to Tablets and Apps
In this session, speakers include national education and gaming experts who are using games for learning with real kids in real schools. They will focus on how we can transition traditional, boring classrooms to classrooms where students are engaged and learning is fun. Experts will describe scenarios where gaming has successfully been used as learning and assessment tools and describe skills that might be assessable via gaming that are not from multiple-choice test questions. Speakers will debate questions we will face in transitioning our classrooms such as:
How will we know what we are measuring and whether it is important?
What evidence is needed to convince the skeptic, such as the tax-paying parent who thinks gaming corrupts kids’ minds that gaming is not just for fun.
How can traditional teachers learn to use nontraditional learning games effectively?
Are we actually doing a disservice to learners to train them to think that learning and school are fun?
Attendees will learn strategies for successfully transitioning traditional, slate and chalk classrooms to exciting classrooms with mobile devices and apps.
Panelists:
Michael Golden, CEO at Educurious Partners and President at The Golden Company
Scott Osterweil, Creative Director of the Education Arcade and research director in the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program
Kathy Hurley, Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, for Pearson Education and the Pearson Foundation
Moderator:
Kimberly O’Malley, Ph.D., Vice President of Research Services, Pearson
Strategicplay® with LEGO® Serious Play®
Jacqueline Lloyd Smith, MA, MBA, Strategic Play
Don’t just watch and listen – in this session you will use 3D thinking to engage your whole brain while building with LEGO bricks. Play, learn and experience the innovative, hands-on methodology, presented by the Strategic Play Group, which has designed tools to improve individual, team, organization, and community performance.
After Lunch Plenary Session: 3D Learning
Ran Hinrichs, CEO, 2b3d
Leveling Up From Player To Designer: Engaging, Educating and Empowering Youth in STEM Through Video Game Design
Alan Gershenfeld, E-Line Media
In this session Gershenfeld, Founder and President of E-Line Media (and former SVP of Activision/Chairman, Games for Change) will explore methodologies for using youth game design as a highly engaging approach to fostering systems thinking, 21st century skills and building a passion for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). The talk will include an in-depth overview of Gamestar Mechanic, a youth game design platform and curriculum E-Line Media recently released in partnership with the Institute of Play and MacArthur Foundation, which is currently being used in over 1000 schools, after-school programs and community-based organizations which serves as a gateway to a youth game creation pathway featuring an ecosystem of game creation tools as well as peer and expert mentors.
Using Entertainment Video Games as Serious Games in a Standards-based Curriculum
Ted Henning, Associate Faculty, National University
This presentation will provide a detailed methodology to effectively incorporate off the shelf, entertainment games into a standards-based curriculum.
B-HIVE: A Human Behavioral Definition Simulation Environment
Claude Comair, Digipen
On April 6, 2009, Boeing announced its 2008 Suppliers of the Year chosen from among 10,800 active suppliers worldwide in nine different categories. DigiPen won the award in the Technology category for its development of the B-Hive environment. This presentation presents the concepts and structure and potential usages of the B-Hive Development environment. B-Hive is Claude Comair’s proposed solution to create a simulation environment, which will be used to predict how an individual and/or groups of people might react to a series of actions and/or events. Several “what if” scenarios will be simulated, which could help decision making on a final set of actions to be taken against the subject group. (Please note that the word “against” is used here in the “mathematical” sense, as opposed to its military meaning.)
Wednesday, August 22, 2011
Plenary Session: Platforms: Options and Decisions
Distinguished panelists will explore the potential platforms for serious games and educational simulations while effectively utilizing each platform.
Panelists:
Sam Adkins, Ambient Insight
Laure Casalini, Dean, Supinfogame
Nick Berry, President, DataGenetics
David Metcalf, University of Central Florida
Speaker Sessions:
Serious Games for Serious P-20 Education Innovation
Joan Mazur, Ph.D., Professor, University of Kentucky
The DGBL P-20 Innovation Lab at the University of Kentucky has engaged several hundred public school teachers, students and their parents in digital game-based learning curriculum integration and support for Next Generation Learning through a multiple site case study of DGBL/serious gaming applications that have been implemented in rural schools.
Play is Education
Jeremy Friedburg, Ph.D., Founder, Spongelab Interactive
The purpose of this session is to explore challenges, barriers, and strategies for implementing game based learning in the classroom. Discussions will include key issues around adoption and execution, from administrator, educator, and student perspectives, allowing attendees to leave with ideas, tools, and approaches for integrating educational games successfully at their institution.
Lab: Play is Science: Experiencing Science by Having Fun with Games
Jeremy Friedberg, Spongelab Interactive
This presentation will explore the assessment and management of educational games and provide practical strategies to engage students while meeting curriculum objectives.
Developing Online Business Sims at Harvard Business School Publishing
Michael Bean, Forio
Lessons learned from five years of developing online simulations used at HBS and schools worldwide. Discussion of movement from traditional case study method in “interactive case studies” using online sims.
What works and what doesn’t work for higher ed and corporate trainers.
How to leverage online capabilities in the classroom.
Conversational Agents that Help Students Learn
Art Graesser, University of Memphis
The Lost (But Critical) Art of Storytelling in Serious Gaming
David Versaw, WILL Interactive
Having the unique ability to engage the learner in the content, not just wowing them with the most accurate 3D resolution or functionality is crucial. Actively participate in simulation examples and experience how some of the most influential organizations in the world are using serious gaming technology with a focus on compelling content which draws in, engages and positively changes the attitudes and behaviors of their target audiences.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Plenary Session: How to Assess the Value of Serious Games
The distinguished panel will explore various methods for determining the value of games, game dynamics and game design. They will look at this from several angles, and then take questions:
- What does the formal K12 assessment industry think about the use of games?
- Where have games developed for research shown promise regarding games as an assessment tool?
- What do game designers think about the concept of assessment in games?
- What can game structures tell us about formative assessment, or assessment for learning?
Panelists:
Alex Games, Ph.D., Education Design Director, Microsoft
Zoran Popovic, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Washington
James Portnow, CEO, Rainmaker Games, and writer of Extra Credits, the game design column at The Escapist
Jon S. Twing, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Measurement Officer, Assessment & Information Division, Pearson
Moderator for the session is David Samuelson, Executive Vice President, Games and Augmented Reality, Pearson.
Speaker Sessions:
Engage, Educate and Empower Students with 21st Century Skills
Susan Meek, Education Strategist, Breakaway, Ltd.
This session will address the use of serious games and simulations as some of the most effective tools available to educators to deliver sustainable learning and to authentically assess that learning, particularly in the area of 21st Century skills (such as collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity).
Turn Novices into World-Class Experts
Zoran Popovic, University of Washington
Chinese Bingo: Using Games for Cross-Cultural Education
Meg Stivism, Next Island MMO
The challenge of motivating students, for whom public embarrassment was such a big concern, to speak in a foreign language, was a huge issue for foreign teachers. My Chinese students, trained in groupthink and danwei, were unwilling
– almost unable — to call out Bingo unless their seatmate also had a complete row.
In-class games enabled me to engage students’ attention without becoming the lao wei clown.
Gameification has become a buzzword, but by offering clear objectives, with incremental power-ups and rewards to students, I was able to engage students of different abilities. Clear objectives were the first hurdle, because parents, Chinese teachers, college exams and foreign teachers all brought students different ideas about what “learning English” means and what defines improvement. Our desires to compete and cooperate, and to receive in-game success are cross-cultural learning tools.
3D Immersive, Self-paced Learning Environments/Mob Learning Modules for Students
Thomas Vaidhyan, CEO, Aten Intelligent Educational Systems, Inc.
Discussion of the use of these environments for education and professional development, and demonstration of A10Ed’s 3D immersive, online/mobile, experiential learning modules.