replaying history
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REPLAYING HISTORY: LEARNING WORLD HISTORY THROUGH PLAYING
CIVILIZATION III
Kurt D. Squire
submitted to the faculty of the School of Education
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Instructional Systems Technology DepartmentIndiana University
January 2004
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Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
_______________________________________
Sasha A. Barab, Ph.D.
_______________________________________
Thomas Duffy
_______________________________________
Lee Ehman
_______________________________________
Henry Jenkins
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COPYRIGHT PAGE
c (2004)Kurt D. Squire
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Kurt Squire
Replaying History: Learning World History through playing Civilization III
Digital games is an emerging entertainment medium that an increasing number of educators are examining as tools for engaging learners. Yet, few models exist for how touse contemporary gaming media in formal learning environments. A commercialhistorical computer strategy game such as Civilization III is an intriguing artifact toexamine in classroom contexts because of its wide appeal, design sophistication, andunique affordances as a world history simulation. Civilization III represents world historynot as a story of colonial domination or western expansion, but as an emergent processarising from overlapping, interrelated factors.
The purpose of this study is to explore what happens when Civilization III, a complexcomputer game developed in entertainment contexts enters formal learning environemtns.
This dissertation presents three naturalistic case studies in which Civilization III was usedas the basis for a unit on world history in urban learning environments. I examine howthe game engaged players, the social interactions that occur, how understandings emerge,and what role game play serves in mediating students understandings.
In all three cases, engagement was a complex process of appropriation and resistance,whereby the purposes of game play was negotiated among students identities, classroomgoals, and the affordances of Civilization III. Civilization III engaged each student inunique ways, and this engagement affected the kinds of questions students asked of their games, the kinds of conceptual understandings that arose through game play, and theinterpretations they made about history. History and geography became tools for game
play and successful students developed conceptual understandings across world history,geography, and politics. These cases suggest the potential for using simulation games inworld history education, but also the significant, unsolved challenges in integrating sucha complex game within classroom settings.
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Dedication
Dedicated to James Douglas and Janet Kretschmer, two teachers without whom this
dissertation would never have been possible.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 8
I. Introduction 10
II. Game-Based Learning in World History 25
III. Methodology 99
IV. Case 1: The Media School 147
V. Case 2: Media Summer Camp 220
VI. Case 3: After-School Computer Club 267
VII. Conclusions 328VIII. Implications 393
References 419
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Acknowledgements
Although doing a dissertation can be a long, lonely process, fortunately I t isnt
done alone. And this project, like most could not have been done without the help from
several people.
First of all, I would like to thank Robyn Kaplan and Sarah Bettencourt for inviting
me to their classrooms. This dissertation would not have been possible without their
kindness and willingness to experiment with such an unusual curricular experience.
Second, I would like to thank Alex Chisholm, Henry Jenkins, and the
Comparative Media Studies Department at MIT for bringing me into the Games-to-TeachProject and being flexible with work schedule during the data collection portions of this
study. Carrying out this kind of research while working a full time job was difficult, and
it is only with the support of Henry, Alex and everyone at MIT that I could pull it off. I
owe special thanks to Henry and Alex for encouraging me to keep my writing going
during the hustle and bustle of MIT life and helping ensure that my career continued
forward. Perhaps most importantly, Eric, Philip, Chris, Susan, and everyone in CMS all
also provided close and dear friendship in my days in Cambridge. You are all missed.
I also would like to thank Geraldine Haas (and the Haas family) for all of her
emotional support and guidance throughout this dissertation process. This project could
never have happened without Geraldines commitment and dedication, and I am indebted
for her perseverance during the data collection phase which was grueling for both of us.
Many of the observations and interpretations included herein bear the mark of
Geraldines thinking, and without a doubt, this work benefited from her keen eye and
compassion for those not served by traditional educational means. Geraldine constantly
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pushed me to understand each of these kids, and critically consider the consequences of
this research. I can only hope that this awareness and compassionate disposition can be
found herein.
I would like to thank my committee for their helpful feedback and additions to the
paper, as well as just wading through a fairly long manuscript. Id like to thank Lee
Ehman for helping me develop as a teacher while at Indiana and encouraging me to honor
the hard work of teachers and the blood and sweat of working with kids through this
research. Id like to thank Tom Duffy for his thoughtful critique, pragmatic approach and
pushing me to consider the instructional implications of this research. Finally, Henry, inaddition to being a great friend and mentor over the past two years continuously pushed
me to keep expansive views of learning and cognition, as well as a respect and
understand the worlds of these kids in these studies on their own terms.
Special thanks to Constance Steinkuehler for her clear thinking, and sharp
editorial eye during the final stages of this research. To what extent there is any tight flow
among the theory, methods, questions, and conclusions, Constance can be thanked for
that, having spent endless hours encouraging me to whittle and refine until the paper
found its coherence. Constances emotional support getting me through the grueling last
phases of writing up the paper and those final dark hours of dissertation editing.
I would like to also acknowledge the support of my new colleagues here at UW-
Madison who have gone out of their way to make me feel comfortable and supported
here. Thanks to Jim Gee, Michael Streibel, David Shaffer, Rich Halverson, Carl Grant,
Michael Apple, Katie Clinton, Alice Robison, and Rebecca Black for making Madison
my new home.
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Last, Id like to thank Sasha Barab for not only his feedback on this research, but
his mentoring me through the beginnings of my career. This project could never have
been done without Sashas encouragement and confidence to try something new, as well
as patience with an occasionally precocious graduate student. I have no doubt that I
wouldnt be where I am today without Sashas willingness to bring me into his research
and as well as see me grow into an independent scholar. I must also thank Sasha for
reading through earlier versions of this text and editing it down to something manageable.
Finally, Id like to acknowledge all of the support from my parents in putting
together this study and helping me through my graduate career. Their constant andcontinuous care over the past few years have eased some of the burden of this difficult
process. Your love and kindness are deeply appreciated.
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Chapter I: Introduction
Statement of the Problem
A growing number of researchers and scholars are acknowledging the cultural
impact of digital games (Gee, 2003; King & Borland, 2003; Poole, 2001). Digital gaming
is now an $18 billion global industry that many media scholars see as being a dominant
"lively art" in the upcoming decades (Jenkins, in press). As Jim Gee (2003) argues,
games are not only pushing the creative boundaries of interactive digital media but also
suggesting powerful models of next-generation interactive learning environments. Those
in the edutainment industry, as well as the teachers and students who support it, appear to agree. Year after year, social studies edutainment games such as The Sims , SimCity ,
Age of Empires , Railroad Tycoon and Civilization dominate the PC gaming sales charts
(Squire, 2002). Many social studies teachers seem eager to exploit this new medium, as
simulation games such as SimCity are installed on school computers throughout the
country and thousands of teachers download the SimCity 3000 teachers guide
(Bradshaw, 2002; Teague & Teague, 1995).
Despite the commercial success of and educators' growing interest in games
like Pirates! , SimCity 3000 or Civilization, very little is known about how such games
might be used as tools for learning. Although a growing number of educators, industry
leaders, and political leaders have suggested that SimCity or Civilization could be used in
social studies classrooms (Berson, 1996; Hope, 1996; Kolson, 1996; Lee, 1994; Prensky,
2001; Teague & Teague, 1995), there are to date no empirical research studies examining
their effectiveness in classroom environments. Important questions persist about how
teachers might use such simulations and how learners come to understand them. How
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might we leverage these games for use in formal or informal learning environments?
What happens when you bring a complex world history simulation game such as
Civilization III into the classroom? Does such a complex game one that often positions
players in situations where academic knowledge and understanding can be leveraged
for real use in problem-solving provide opportunities for supporting new kinds of
learning? Or might the simplifications (hence distortions) inherent in any simulation
reinforce, or even cause misconceptions about important historical, cultural, or
geographical phenomena?
That simulation games can potentially distort the phenomena they are meant tomodel has been widely acknowledged. In his critique of SimCity , city planner Kenneth
Kolson (1996) notes that SimCity distorts the powers of a mayor in public planning,
discounts the historical importance of race and ethnicities in the evolution of cities, and
overestimates the appeal of public transportation to most Americans. Similarly, Barkin
(2001) notes that in attempting to capture, quantify and operationalize the dynamics of
culture, Civilization III offers an ostensibly problematic concept of culture drawn from
French and German theories of culture that is foreign to any anthropologist. This problem
of simplification/distortion of reality in games is exacerbated by the fact that
edutainment products are typically developed and marketed as entertainment products
first, and then appropriated for use in classrooms second. Other tensions, such as the
tension between playing the game as a bounded semiotic system versus reflecting on the
game as a model representing some more substantial phenomena in the world beyond it,
may very well be endemic to the medium.
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Civilization III , developed by Firaxis and published by Infogrames in 2001,
provides unique opportunities for thinking about the role of games in world history
(Squire, 2002). World history is an emerging area of scholarship and teaching which
seeks to understand broad patterns in human activity patterns that cut across
traditional anthropological, geographic, historical, and disciplinary boundaries. From this
perspective, the entire world is included, eschewing Eurocentric or colonialist
perspectives that have historically characterized similar research. Contemporary world
historians such as Jared Diamond, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer for Guns, Germs, and
Steel , are excellent examples of such interdisciplinary scholarship. Likewise, inCivilization III , the entire world is again incorporated into the game. In it, the player
leads a civilization from 4000 BC to the present, managing the civilizations natural
resources, finances and trade, scientific research, cultural orientation, political policies
and military. I believe that Civilization III makes a particularly intriguing tool for
studying world history in that it allows students to examine relationships among
geography, politics, economics, and history over thousands of years and from multiple
perspectives.
Contemporary digital gaming models such as that underlying Civilization III are
potentially powerful learning tools that are understudied as a viable educational resource.
Studying learning in digital games might teach instructional technologists valuable
lessons about how to design interactivity, support online collaboration, or engage users.
Understanding how such games are used in formal learning environments might
productively inform the design of educational games (Games-to-Teach Team, 2003). At
the very least, educational technologists could benefit from paying closer attention how
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players are already interacting with such edutainment games and how they are being
used in classrooms (Squire, 2003).
Despite the lack of formal inquiry into the potential for digital games to support
learning, there is a long tradition of using paper-based games and simulations in social
studies classrooms (e.g. Clegg, 1991). Unfortunately, most uses of games have been
atheoretical; rarely, if ever are they tied to contemporary notions of how people learn or
the broader goals of social studies education. Digital games, which bring with them new
affordances, possibilities, and potential problems, have yet to be seriously studied in
classroom contexts.Building on this past research in (largely paper-based) games in social studies
education, I argue that educators need to examine not just the game player system, but
the broader social contexts of game play. Cooperative and competitive social
arrangements frame game play activity. In some cases, the social context of game play
the kinds of reflection activities, discussion, collaboration, and competition that emerge
in game play are as important as the game itself in determining what activity emerges and
what learning occurs. Prior research has assumed a priori what the learning goals and
outcomes of game-based learning environments should be, treating games as content
transmission systems as opposed to tools to think with. I argue that games might be more
conducive to constructivist instructional approaches, whereby learning is an inferential,
interpretive process and learning outcomes are intricately tied to the goals, intentions, and
motivations of the learner (e.g. Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy & Perry, 1996).
Indeed, if the activity outside of the game (discussions, research, knowledge
sharing) are as important as the game itself, then educational game researchers need a
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theoretical model which accounts for both student-game interactions and student-student
interactions. I argue for a cultural-historical approach to understanding learning in game-
based learning environments, as it allows researchers to examine not only the role of the
game in learning, but how social structures mediate activity.
Theoretical Foundation
Underlying these debates about the potential of games to support learning are
theoretical questions central to instructional design, educational technology, identity and
learning, teaching world history, and the learning sciences more generally. Both proponents and critics of digital game-based learning have habitually assumed objectivist
epistemologies and transmission models of learning, whereby the game contains fixed
meanings which are broadcasted to a passive game-playing recipient (e.g. Prensky, 2001;
Provenzo, 1991). How players infer meanings from game play, construct understandings
about game worlds, and then relate these experiences to non-gaming experiences is not
entirely clear; where do players draw lines between fantasy and reality? How do players
know when a game is realistic and when it is not? How do players explore game worlds
as systems and how do they treat these understandings of game systems?
Most educational game research has treated game play as isolated psychological
phenomena, ignoring the broader social contexts of game playing and social relationships
that envelope most gaming experiences (e.g. Grossman, 2000, Malone, 1981). Treating
the learning context as an interaction between an isolated player and a game as an
isolated system is problematic on several levels; games are frequently competitive
endeavors where players test skills against other players, cooperative exercises where
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players work together to solve problems (whether it be in single player or multiplayer
games), or simply excuses for friends and families to socialize. Minimally, game play as
social practice can be characterized by the social purposes it serves, the social
relationships which become folded into game play, and the formal and informal
communities that arise in support of game play.
For educators interested in harnessing the power of games to support learning
(e.g. Games-to-Teach, 2003; Media X, 2003; Prensky, 2001), this challenge of how to
account for both the person-tool interaction and the broader social contexts in which
gaming is situated and game meanings are created is crucial (Squire, 2002). Elsewhere(e.g. Squire, 2002), I have argued for adopting a socio-cultural learning perspective to
understand gaming (In What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and
Literacy , Jim Gee also draws from socio-cultural learning theory in describing how
learning occurs through gaming). Socio-cultural learning theory (defined more precisely
in the theoretical section) offers game-based educators several insights into learning
through game play: (1) Knowledge is described not as facts to be memorized but as tools
which mediate activity (Barab, Hay, Barnett, & Squire, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978); (2)
Socio-cultural learning theory encourages researchers to view game play not as purely a
human-computer interaction phenomena, but as a socio-cultural one mediated by
classroom microcultures and broader social contexts, including classroom culture; (3)
Socio-cultural learning theory provides a framework for understanding students goals
and intentions and how these contribute to trajectories of students identities, and (4) a
language (a theory of signs, or semiotics) for thinking through how knowledge is
represented in games and how this knowledge develops in a learning environment. Of
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particular interest to me is how socio-cultural learning theory might provide a language
for examining classroom practice mediated by game play and situated within classroom
cultures.
Activity theory, a neo-Vygotskian socio-cultural theory emerging from the
Russian School of psychologists offers a particularly interesting lens for educators
interested in examining game-based learning environments. Activity theory takes human
work as its unit of analysis. For activity theorists, work is organized by an object, which
shapes activity and reciprocally is influenced by human actors, as mediated by tools and
social institutions. By taking work as the unit of analysis, activity theorists examine thetools, signs, and language which mediate human interaction with object, as well as the
social structures, including community norms and divisions of labor which frame
activity. As such, activity theory takes the person performing in social contexts, including
the social and political environs in which they are situated as the minimal meaningful unit
of analysis. Importantly, activity theorists regard humans and the objects of their activity
in dialectal relations, shaping and reshaping one another through time.
Activity theory is an intriguing theoretical framework for understanding gaming
because it focuses researchers attentions not only on how a tool such as Civilization III
mediates learning of social studies, but also focuses researchers on how game play is
mediated by social structures, which might include school cultures or informal groupings.
Given that games are profoundly social experiences (King & Borland, 2003), it is critical
that game researchers focus not just on human and computer interactions, but on how
emergent game cultures shape gaming activities and the impact that these activities have
on cognition. By examining the object, or focus of activity, activity theorists are also
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interested in how participants view and understand activity, particularly participants
objects, goals, or motives. Emerging theory in game studies suggests that gamers
approach games in unique ways, and one cannot assume a priori to know a players goals
and intentions while gaming (e.g. Bartle, 2003).
Influenced by Hegel and Marx, activity theorists are very interested in the
material conditions of work, and adopt an historical approach to understanding activity
(Engestrm, 1999). Humans, their tools, signs, and language as well as the community
norms and structures in which they are situated are understood historically by
investigating their use in actual settings, frequently through traditional ethnographic,historic, or qualitative case study techniques (Engestrm, 1999). Activity theorists enter
activity settings, observing and interviewing participants and generating narratives of
what activity emerges (e.g. Engestrm, 1999). Critical to an activity theory approach is
understanding how activity systems are viewed from multiple vantage points and teasing
out contradictions among differing activity systems, particularly the contradictions that
emerge when activity systems overlap.
One might anticipate several contradictions, such as contradictions between using
games for enjoyment vs. using games to master social studies, or collaborative
communities of inquiry vs. competitive gaming structures. Game-based Educational
technologists working in other settings (e.g. Barab, Barnett, Yamagata-Lynch, et al.,
2002) have used contradictions to understand change and innovation in a system, finding
that contradictions can be a useful tool for refining design experiments.
Research Questions
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Specifically, this dissertation examines what classroom practices emerge and how
learning occurs when Civilization III is used as the basis for learning about world history
in two learning environments (1) an Humanities enrichment course in a Media and
Technology Charter School (Media case) and an after-school computer club program.
Using qualitative case study techniques, I examine the following five research questions:
1. What practices and contradictions emerge when games are brought intoformal learning environments, particularly, how do gaming practices (e.g.,competition, learning through failure) intersect with the practices andculture of formal schooling?
2. How does Civilization III engage players in formal learningenvironments?
3. How does learning occur through game play, specifically, how does playing Civilization III remediate students understandings of history?4. What are the pedagogical potentials (affordances) of using games
(specifically Civilization III ) in world history classrooms?5. How should we design learning activities and environments when using
games in formal learning environments?
Dissertation Overview
Consistent with Cobb and colleagues (Cobb, Stephan, McClain, & Gravemeijer
2001), this study is a design experiment designed to examine what happens when
Civilization III is used as the basis for learning world history in three contexts. The first
case is a month-long unit on world history, as a part of a ninth grade humanities class at a
Media and Technology Charter School in inner-city Boston. In the second case, a subset
of these students participated in a week-long, half-day computer camp investigating the
potential of using Civilization III to learn about social studies. The third case is an after-
school computer club sponsored by the YWCA but occurring at a suburban, working
class Boston middle school. All three cases were convenience samples, chosen for their
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willingness to participate in this experimental program and ability to illuminate research
issues, and each case involved approximately 20 hours of instructional time.
I use Stakes (1995) case study techniques to address these research questions.
Stakes case study technique is particularly useful because it is responsive to the
particularities of a case, including the unintended consequences. With no real empirical
research on what happens in game-based learning environments, little is known as to
what will happen when games enter classrooms, let alone what types of learning occurs.
There are other important questions about how classroom cultures will appropriate
gaming media, how non-gamers react to game-based learning units, how games competewith other learning activities for students attention, or how girls take to game-based
learning environments (See Cassell & Jenkins, 1998 for a discussion of gender and
gaming). Stakes methodology emphasizes the importance of not over-prescribing data
collection and research procedures, but of allowing data collection to emerge in response
to emerging themes. I use Stakes case study methodology (1995) for each, using
observations, interviews, and document analysis to build narrative accounts of each
classroom.
In each case I was a direct participant. Although I had planned to participate in
each case as little more than an observer, local needs demanded that I play an active role
in shaping classroom activity. As a result, I hired a research assistant to assist in data
collection and analysis. Consistent with Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, and Schauble,
(2003), I approach this design experiment equally as a teaching experiment, whereby
interacting with participants and the case yields fruitful data about the design of learning
environments. Researchers can modify the learning environment (e.g. introducing new
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learning materials, manipulating social arrangements) in order to illuminate research
themes. In this these cases, I try to make this cycle of manipulating the environment and
examining results as explicit as possible, so that the reader can perhaps vicariously
experience some of the decision making process I experienced. Negotiating this role was
often tricky, and I try to give the reader a sense of these struggles in each case study.
Because the research questions involve examining what practices emerged when
Civilization III was brought into the classroom, as opposed to directly comparing a game-
based learning environment to a traditional environment, this study avoids some of the
more obvious threats to validity, such as tainting the research environment. At the sametime, my participation in the case makes the applicability of these findings to other
contexts somewhat limited, as I am not the typical teacher. These limitations are explored
further in the next section.
Limitations of Study
This study is designed to examine what happens when Civilization III is used as
the basis for a unit in learning world history. Very little is known about what happens
when a game as complex, abstracted, and simulation-based as Civilization III is used to
study world history, and although myself and others have argued for different models for
thinking about how games can be used to support learning, little is known about how
these approaches play out in practice. Importantly, this study examines one game
(Civilization III ) being used for select purposes in three very specific settings. As such,
this study has limited applicability how other games (such as Europa Universalis ,
Patrician , or 1602 AD ) might be used in world history, how games such as Colonization
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might be used in colonial history, or how games such as Hidden Agenda might be used in
modern history. I believe that these cases should provide useful insights for educators
exploring such models, but caution against extrapolating too far from these results.
Contexts of the case studies
One of the biggest limitations of this study is the samples chosen. These samples
were chosen for convenience specifically, for accessibility and willingness to
experiment with an innovative unit. All of these cases involved students from working-
class backgrounds, populations of students who are known to resist learning history
(Loewen, 1995). Many of the Media students were highly resistant to authority, creatingsome tense moments as teachers and researchers tried to require outside learning
activities. Whereas students in traditional, middle-class or upper-class contexts might be
expected to engage willingly in outside research, readings, or discussion activities,
students in the Media case were reluctant to engage in such activities (See Chapter IV).
At the same time, this case is particularly illuminative of the tensions between students
and teachers intentions; as the case study shows, students who were not interested in
playing the game or more interested in playing the game than studying history were
quick to make their opinions known to researchers. Consistent with the case study
approach (Stake, 1995), I attempt to highlight the particularities of this case and support
the reader in generalizing my findings to his or her own learning contexts as deemed
appropriate.
In the after-school case, game players were perhaps more amenable to
augmenting game play with other learning activities, but having students do readings or
other activities would have run contrary to the purposes of the camp. At the same time,
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these participants were unlike participants in many after-school environments. They
attended regularly, had little choice among other activities, and seemed to adopt the
social mores of school, perhaps because the camp occurred on school grounds and in a
computer lab. Designers of after-school settings such as Boys and Girls Clubs may find
that the social mores of this case bear little resemblance to those they face, and that there
is little transferability from this case to their situations.
Role of researcher
In both cases, I played an active role in shaping the learning environment. I
devised activities, offered help on game play, devised just-in-time lectures, and tried toconnect students games to historical events. I have spent thousands of hours playing
Civilization III and nearly that same amount thinking through this dissertation. It is
unreasonable to expect that a typical teacher would have the experience or energy to do
the same. I have attempted to capture what I learned from these experiences in unit plans
and through suggestions for designing curricula with Civilization III (see Appendices A
and B for sample unit plans using Civilization III in other areas of world history);
nevertheless, if the teacher is a critical component of a game-based learning environment,
then my role needs to be accounted for. (This issue is further explicated in design
research in general in Barab & Squire, in press).
Curricular Integration
At the same time, I came into each of these cases as an outsider to the school or
camp cultures and was disadvantaged in terms of integrating the game into school and
classroom cultures and anticipating how game play would meet students needs. One can
imagine that a world history teacher who plays Civilization III may be able to better
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integrate game experiences into the curriculum, anticipate students misconceptions, or
understand how to negotiate moment-to-moment classroom interactions. In truth,
permanent school faculty would have a much deeper knowledge of how to integrate the
game in such ways.
Time limitations
Each of these cases was a fairly substantial unit, lasting 4-6 weeks and including a
minimum of 20 teacher-student contact hours. At the same time, Civilization III is a
complex game to learn and a single game can take dozens of hours to play. These
limitations on contact hours and students inability to take games home to play meant thatstudents had relatively little time to experiment with the game. A dedicated Civilization
III player might spend 20 hours playing Civilization III in a weekend; these students had
relatively little time to learn the game interface, experiment with alternative strategies, or
explore the game more generally. One can imagine how a unit that lasted the duration of
a semester, a learning environment with more flexible time allotments, or educational
programs where students had laptops or access to home computers where they could play
the game, might develop differently.
Particularities of Civilization III
There is a tendency for many researchers to treat games or game-based
learning environments as a meaningful category or variable with little respect to the
specific games or game genres that are being studied. Civilization III is a turn-based
resource management strategy game where players exploit natural resources, build
civilization and city improvements, set tax rates, and negotiate with other civilizations.
Civilization III is an open-ended game meant to be played in a multitude of ways and
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support multiple game strategies. As an emerging medium, games are often treated
monolithically, as if the practice of playing Quake, a first-person action game is the same
as playing Civilization III , a relatively slow-paced strategy game (See also Games-to-
Teach Team, 2003). Much the same way that one would not want to do a case study of
students learning to read with the Bible and then generalize to books in general, one
would not want to take this study and generalize the findings to games in general.
Summary and Overview of the Dissertation
Chapter II provides a background for using Civilization III to support learning inworld history. I examine the practical, intellectual, and theoretical issues behind studying
world history. I cover the history of research of using games and simulations in social
studies education, and present a theoretical argument for the potential benefit of using
games in world history education, using activity theory as a lens for discussing how
learning might occur through game play and how game-based learning environments can
be investigated.
Chapter III presents my methodology. I describe the structure of the design
experiment, discussing the role of the researcher and the affordances of Civilization III as
a tool for studying world history. I also detail my methodology for generating case
studies and the analysis procedures I used for generating assertions and analyzing activity
systems.
Chapters IV, V, and VI present the three case studies. In Chapter VII, I offer my
conclusions, and Chapter IX presents my proposed implications for the design of game-
based learning environments.
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Chapter II: Digital Games in World History Education
Monotheism, monarchy, or metallurgy may not seem like commonly understood
concepts for 12-14 year old kids, but they are for the millions of gamers who play the
Civilization series. In Civilization III , players lead a civilization through 6000 years of
history, exploiting natural resources and managing the civilizations economy, social
structure, technological advancement, and diplomacy. The game contains 233 game
concepts, spanning from the invention of writing to democracy. Most importantly,
Civilization III ties together complex and intersecting intellectual domains within onegame: players have opportunities to explore relationships among geography and politics,
economics and history, or politics and economics interdependencies that can be
difficult to discern through more conventional means.
At the same time that thousands of high school students play Civilization , many
report hating social studies. Social studies is widely considered boring, usually
coming in last when students are asked to rate their favorite academic subject (Loewen,
1995). Not surprisingly, a number of educators have suggested using commercial games,
particularly Civilization III , as an inroad for understanding history (Berson, 1996; Hope,
1996; Kolson, 1996; Lee, 1994; Prensky, 2001; Teague & Teague, 1995). In this chapter,
I pose a speculative framework for how simulation games Civilization III , in particular
might be used in world history classrooms. Most educators have argued for using
games in absence of any real theory of learning or domain expertise. This chapter
provides an argument for the usefulness of simulation games in world history education
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based on the contemporary domain of world history and history pedagogy in middle and
high schools.
Perhaps justifiably, other educators may balk at the idea of bringing computer
games into the classroom. Computers games such as Civilization are very complex
artifacts. Game players develop expertise and mastery of the game system only after
hundreds of hours of game play. Further, even a very popular game such as Civilization
III does not appeal to everyone; questions persist about how non-gamers (or non-strategy-
gamers) might appropriate such a complex system of rules and symbols and how the
game, in return, recruits its players. Game play is a socially-mediated activity, and gamesfrequently engender both cooperative and competitive behaviors. How the social
dynamics of game play intersect with school cultures is unknown. Gamers quickly form
affinity groups and rely on them to achieve mastery over the game (Gee, 2003). Past
research on bringing digital technologies into schools shows how local cultures have the
power to reshape technologies, twisting and reforming them as they are accommodated
into classroom cultures (Squire, MaKinster, Barnett, et al., 2003). How a digital artifact
such as Civilization III , developed in commercial gaming contexts to be enjoyable, is
shaped by and reshapes schooling practices is unknown. This study examines what
practices emerge when Civilization III is brought into two learning environments. It is an
issue of theoretical interest that extends beyond world history educators to educational
technologists in general who are interested in appropriating games, gaming technologies,
or game design attributes to support learning.
I close this chapter by introducing activity theory, a cultural-historical approach to
understanding activity rooted in Vygotskys (1978) theory of social learning. I argue that
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activity theory is a useful lens for understanding game play as it describes the reciprocal
relations among subjects, tools, the objects of their activities, and mediating social
structures. In the case of gaming, activity theory allows us to examine how tools mediate
our conceptions of phenomena while acknowledging how social and community
structures also remediate this process. Bringing commercial entertainment games into
formal learning environments means crossing two very different (if not conflicting)
activity systems that of gaming versus that of formal schooling. The notion of
contradictions within/among activity systems (Engestrm , 1999) gives us a theoretical
model for talking about how the alignments and tensions between these two systems of activity emerge and unfold. Finally, activity theorys notion of outcomes is useful for
describing what learning emerges from activity systems (e.g. Barab et al., 2002).
Research on Games and Simulations in Social Studies Education
Despite the long tradition of games and simulations in social studies education
(e.g. Wentworth & Lewis, 1973), very little is known about the impact of games on
learning (Clegg, 1991). Despite the popularity of games such as Europa Universalis ,
Patrician , or Civilization III which offer opportunities to study world history, little is
known about how game play remediates understandings of history. Research on digital
or computer games has been remarkably consistent with findings from research on paper
games, role-playing games, and board games as predicted by Clark (1983). Specifically,
games can be engaging but frequently learners have difficulty making connections
between the game system and the referent social/material system the game is intended to
represent (Clegg, 1991). While there has been extensive use of models and simulation to
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support science learning, there is little compelling research on the benefits of using
educational games and simulations in social studies education. As Margaret Gredler
(1996) describes in her review of research on educational games and simulations, there
has been little consensus on what a game or simulation is, what their role in instruction
might be, or what educational goals they might be used to support.
Like many researchers, Gredler (1996) distinguishes between games and
simulations as experiential forms of instruction compared to more traditional forms of
instruction that are, presumably, not experiential. Gredler offers neither evidence nor
explanation for how or why games might be considered experiential whereas a lecture bya Nobel Prize winner or a well designed set of exercises is not. Digital games are also
purported to be faster-paced, more interactive, and more engaging than other
instructional forms (e.g. Prensky, 2001) even when it could be argued that a good debate,
discussion, or collaborative project-based learning exercise could be equally, if not more,
interactive or flow-inducing than most digital games (cf. Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). The
goals of this section are to re-examine existing research on the use of games and
simulations for learning and to suggest an alternative theoretical framework for how
games might be reconceptualized as an educational resource. First, I describe the existing
research on games and simulations in social studies education. Next, I develop a rationale
for games and simulations in world history by drawing together matches between issues
within the domain and the affordances of games (keeping in mind their limitations as
well). Finally, I suggest activity theory as a useful framework for the study of games in
social studies education.
Educational Technology Research on Games and Simulations
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The terms games, simulations, and simulation games are frequently used
interchangeably to discuss interactive activities that are mediated by rules or materials
that shape behavior. Heinich and colleagues (1996) offer what has become the classic
distinction between games and simulations from an instructional technologists
perspective:
A game is an activity in which participants follow prescribed rules thatdiffer from those of real life as they strive to attain a challenging goal. Thedistinction between play and reality is what makes games entertainingAsimulation is an abstraction or simplification of some real-life situation or
process. In simulations, participants usually play a role that involves them ininteractions with other people or with elements of the simulated
environment (Heinich, Molenda, Russell & Smoldino, 1996, p. 326-329).Heinich et al. describe simulation games as activities that combine both. Gredler (1996)
fleshes out this distinction further, arguing that games and simulations differ in three
fundamental ways according to their deep structures: (a) games are competitive exercises
with scoring mechanisms to differentiate performance, whereas simulations tasks require
that players take on responsible roles or professional tasks, (b) games are linear
whereas simulations are branching, and (c) games represent consequences of activity
through rules and penalties, whereas the outcomes of simulations are a function of the
dynamic interactions among variables that (i) change over time and (ii) reflect authentic,
casual processes, the consequences of which are represented in the activity. (p. 523).
While Gredlers distinctions are helpful, they quickly break down when one
examines most contemporary digital games, particularly edutainment games. First, many
contemporary games, across genres (i.e. strategy, role playing, massively multiplayer,
action / adventure, adventure, puzzle) have abandoned or devalued scoring mechanisms,
use roles as backstory, metaphor for game play, or as a means of conveying interactive
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storytelling. In games such as Quake , Thief , Deus Ex , or even Monopoly , players progress
through levels playing as a particular role. Most consider games by definition a non-
linear medium as game play is the emergent creation of players activity within boundary
rule sets. Finally, most games are rooted in some metaphor of reality and the
consequences of activities are communicated through that metaphor, as in the standard
role-playing game genre where a player has health, intellectual strength, and endurance.
As Janet Murray argues in Hamlet on the Holodeck (1997), the information is presented
in an emergent and non-linear fashion and individual, interacting characters are defined
through rule sets that govern behavior.A second problem with these definitions of simulations and games is that they
focus on the properties of the simulated system rather than on the interactions between
the simulation and the phenomenon that is being represented. Thiagarajan (1998)
provides a useful framework for thinking about simulations. For Thiagarajan, a
simulation is a representation of the features and behaviors of one system through the
use of another (p. 35). Thiagarajan reminds instructional designers that simulations are
never accurate reflections of reality but, rather, reflect someones model of reality. A
simulation of a management system might look very different depending on who is
building the simulation: A behavioral psychologist might create independent agents
responding to stimulants and reinforcers. A sociologist might emphasize organizational
roles and norms. An artist might emphasize the seemingly endless treadmill of work and
superficial rewards of some corporate work through a game like Doom (Young, 2001).
Thiagarajans framework foregrounds the fact that any simulation is an artifact created by
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a particular someone in response to some particular features of the system at hand. Every
simulation, in other words, has a particular point of view.
While the notion that Doom is a corporate simulation may have some perverse
appeal, it also threatens to render the definition of simulation too meaningless to be of
use: If we accept little to no correspondence between referent and thing referred to in
order to count something as ostensibly a simulation, then everything is a simulation of
everything else and the concept is rendered ineffective. As a solution, Thiagarajan
(1998) argues that simulations can be characterized along a continuum ranging from
high- to low-fidelity. High-fidelity simulations attempt to capture every interaction of asystem in a physical manner that is consistent with their real world analogs. Low-fidelity
simulations, on the other hand, focus on only a few critical elements and use a
simplified model of the interactions among them. The physical artifacts and the
environment do not correspond to what is being simulated in any detail. (Thiagarajan,
1998, p. 37) Distinguishing between high and low-fidelity simulations is useful for
instructional designers as it opens possibilities for thinking about simulations not as direct
physical embodiments of physical systems but rather as interpretations of portions of
reality modeled through a symbolic system.
Further, if one assumes that the unit of analysis is not the game activity narrowly
defined, but rather the interactions among the player, the simulation, and the phenomenon
being simulated, all within a cultural context, then a new array of possibilities opens.
While a designer may create a game or simulation as one particular interpretation of a
given phenomenon, players of the simulation might very well draw their own related but
different, idiosyncratic interpretations from the gaming experience, based on their own
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prior knowledge and experience in the world, that may be completely unintended by the
designer. As the Doom case suggests, a player might find consistencies between a violent
shooter game and his experiences in a corporate environment and thereby gain insight
about his workplace. Consistent with constructivist and pragmatist semiotic
epistemologies, this notion of simulation as activity conceptualizes the game playing
experience in essence, the meaning making process itself not as a simplistic coupling
of the player and the simulation but rather as a dynamic interaction between aspects of
the players prior experience and the simulation itself such that the idea, action, or artifact
resulting from game play is its meaning.To a certain extent, the necessity of considering simulations within their actual
use and in the context of the players experience has long been recognized by
instructional technologists. For many instructional designers, the debriefing activities
surrounding game play have been regarded as possibly more important for engendering
learning than the game-playing itself (Heinich, Molenda, Russell, & Smaldino,1996;
Livingston & Stoll, 1973; Thiagarajan, 1998). Heinich et al. (1996) recommend a four-
step debriefing process following game play involving the following questions: (1) How
did you feel while playing the game? (decompressing feelings); (2) What happened
during the game? (describing facts ); (3) How does this activity compare to other
phenomena? (drawing comparisons enhancing transfer); (4) What might you plan to do
differently in future activity? (deriving lessons application). While Heinich et al.
advocate these activities so that learners can appreciate the meaning or significance of
the activity (p. 336), Thiagarajan suggests that instructional designers be open to
learners exploring the unintended consequences of games. Rather than conceptualize the
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goal of the simulation as to communicate information in the simulation, thus privileging
the associations and intentions of the instructional designer, Thiagarajan suggests that
designers think of gaming activities as experiences through which lessons can be learned.
As a rule-based artifact in which the player plays a role in interacting with a
simulated, dynamic system that is usually represented through actual or metaphorical
representations, most any interactive application can be thought of as a simulation.
However, there is an important distinction to be made between simulations and drill-and-
practice games or frame games where the primary gaming activity is recalling factual
information within a game framework that is independent of the content. Lloyd Reiber (1996) also makes this distinction, differentiating between endogenous games where the
content is inseparable from game play and exogenic games where the game play is a
reusable format that is layered on top of game content, as in crossword puzzles, matching
games, or trial-and-error games (e.g. Hangman). To make this distinction is not to
critique the value of such games in particular contexts or to deny the possibility of a
creative game designer or player using such a game as a simulation. Rather, it is to
highlight one typical genre of games and distinguish between it and games that might be
thought of as simulating aspects of reality.
Contemporary Theorizing of Game/Simulation Technologies
As computer gaming increases in sophistication, it is becoming evident that to
some extent, distinctions between simulations and games may be as much a matter of
socio-cultural construction, social purpose and context of the activity as it is any
underlying deep structure inherent of the artifact (Gredler, 1996). Indeed, a growing
number of researchers and game designers acknowledge that games encompass such a
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broad category of activities that the term videogame may have outlived its usefulness.
For example, familiar activities such as Tic-Tac-Toe , Kick-the-Can , Monopoly , Risk ,
Quake , SimCity , Everquest , Final Fantasy X , Civilization III , The Sims , and Spades are
all activities commonly referred to as games despite the absence of any common
underlying structure. Some of these games have scoring, some do not. Some have real
win conditions (e.g. Monopoly ), some do not (e.g. The Sims 1). Some have real lose
conditions (e.g., Quake ), some do not (e.g., all single-player adventure and role-playing
games where as the player can always resume playing from where he or she left off).
Most players continue until they finish, although, in a game like Baldurs Gate II ,which has over 1000 hours of potential game play, the likelihood of ever finishing the
game (here, the story) is slim at best. Similar examples exist for pen and paper-based
role-playing games. In addition, many game designers have argued that multi-player
games like Everquest are really virtual communities and should be treated as virtual
societies, communities, or worlds, but not as games. Finally, thousands of games such
as The Sims or Railroad Tycoon either ship with no rules, or have rules that players
ignore outright in using the games to build virtual systems. Although all of these
activities are commonly referred to as games, it is obvious that they do not all share
common elements and that there may be drastically different reasons behind what makes
them compelling for players.
Will Wright (2002), designer of The Sims and SimCity argues that digital games
might be fruitfully divided into three overlapping activities: contests, hobbies, and
interactive stories (See Figure 2.1). Contests are interactive experiences where1 In reality, it turns out that there is a win-condition for Pac Man. There is only one known instance of someoneaccomplishing this fear. On July 3, 1999, Billy Mitchell successfully cleared 256 levels without losing a man whilealso gaining each and every power-up along the way. Mitchells game took over 6 hours (For more, see:http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,20607,00.html).
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competition, winning, and losing are key elements of the experience. Wright cites Unreal
Tournament , Madden Football and Quake as typical of such games and compares them to
other competitive activities such as sports. Hobby games involve creating, collecting,
and sharing creations with other hobbyists. The Sims , SimCity , and RailRoad Tycoon are
examples of such games. It is worth noting that, in a hobby game, playing the actual
game is only a minimal part of the experience as building characters or scenarios,
publishing them on the web, and experiencing other players creations are all a critical
part of the experience. Finally, there are what Wright calls interactive story games,
where the game experience is about participating in an interactive story, such as in Final Fantasy X , or Baldurs Gate . Wright also acknowledges that there is overlap among
categories and that different users might play games differently. So, whereas Unreal
Tournament may be a contest activity for most who play the game, a significant number
of players also build skins, characters, levels, or mods. From this perspective, playing
Unreal Tournament might be seen as more of a hobbiest pursuit. Playing Civilization III
falls between a hobbyist pursuit and a competition for most players. Civilization is a very
competitive game; just keeping the game going involves fending off ruthless computer-
controlled civilizations that attempt to control and conquer your civilization. At the same
time, however, Civilization III ships with robust scenario building tools and has a robust
fan community in which players create scenarios and modify the game for their own
expressive ends. A large percentage of Civilization III players debate the historical
accuracy of the game and modify its parameters accordingly. In fact, the map being used
in this study was created by a fan dissatisfied with the accuracy of the standard map and
modified by a second fan to make the map historically more accurate.
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Figure 2.1: Wrights (2002) typology of contemporary games
Wrights framework suggests that advocates of digital game-based learning might
benefit from being more specific about the types of activities that unfold through game
play. Restated, when defining game genres, it may be more profitable to examine game
play activity rather than the game itself. The activity of playing a contest-oriented game
like Number Munchers might be very different than a hobbyist-based game / digital toy
such as The Sims where a compelling part of the gaming experience is creating and
trading artifacts. Even in a more contest-based game such as Civilization III, the gaming
experience is largely a social one, where players compete against one another for high
scores, create and share maps, critique the rules embedded in the simulation, and modify
these rules to create more compelling gaming experiences.
Games as Motivating Contexts for Learning
36
Hobbies
ContestsInteractiveStories
Unreal Tournament
Final Fantasy
The Sims
Civilization
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One of the most intuitive appeals of games is their ability to engage learners.
Historical strategy games such as Civilization III sell millions of copies and game
hobbyists spend thousands of hours playing games, developing strategies, mastering
arcane historical facts, critiquing game play, creating game scenarios, and arguing for the
historical accuracy or inaccuracy of scenarios in gaming communities such as
Apolyton.net. Civilization III is not unique in this regard: similar games that engage their
players in comparable ways include Rise of Nations , Pirates! , Gettysburg , Patrician , Age
of Empires , 1602 AD , and Europa Universalis . How these games engage learners and
how play remediates players understandings of world history, however, is hitherto notunderstood.
Since almost the inception of video games, psychologists have tried to understand
how they engage or motivate learners. In 1981, Tom Malones dissertation (working
with Mark Lepper) examined how Atari games engaged players, finding that fantasy,
control, challenge, and curiosity were the primary features that mattered most. Malone
and Lepper (1987) refined this model to include collaboration and competition as well.
More recently, Cordova and Lepper (1996) have used this model for developing
instructional materials, finding that giving students choice in fantasy effectively letting
them create their own pleasurable context led to increased enjoyment and learning.
Cordova and Leppers study, however, used a relatively simple Apple II mathematics
game originally designed for the Plato system, How the West was Won, that
emphasized the recall of math facts rather than the use of mathematics for complex
problem-solving (e.g. Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1993). Recent
advancements in gaming technologies, particularly the increased simulation capacity of
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games, has dramatically reshaped gaming, leading to the kinds of hobbyist and interactive
story games that Wright (2001) describes rather than the simple drill-and-practice
games of Cordova and Leppers day.
Cordova and Leppers (1996) framework of motivation, while useful in helping
psychologists distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, offers little help for
educators trying to develop endogenous educational games, games where the fantasy
game context and game goals overlap directly with educational practices. Recall Riebers
(1996) distinction between exogenous games, in which the fantasy context is largely
separated from the problem of the game space and is essentially interchangeable, andendogenous games, in which the gaming context is inextricably linked to the game play.
Cordova and Leppers research was conducted on the exogenous game How the West
was Won; Civilization III , on the other hand, is an endogenous game: The academic
content is inextricably linked to game play .2 That the content of the game and the
game play itself is mutually constitutive is important: As I have argued previously (e.g.
Squire, 2002), the biggest potential of games as an educational medium lies in using
games to create a rich context for thinking and activity one where the game induces
contextuality for the learner so that the learner is solving authentic, complex problems in
the game space.
2 The critical reader might note that total conversion modifications of Civilization , such as a Star Wars rendition of
Civilization exist, suggesting that the line between endogenous and exogenous games is more slippery than Rieber would suggest. The blurring of endogenous and exogenous games in the case of Civilization III can be thought of in atleast three ways: 1) The game has malleable rule sets that designers can adapt, suggesting that they are in fact creatingnew games through changing game rules; 2) Even if the game rules are not substantially changed, the core focus of thegame remains the same. In this case, the game is largely about marshalling geographic resources, deciding amongsocial objectives (i.e. science, military), and diplomacy; and 3) Simulations are always flexible entities which can bethought of along a continuum of low to high fidelity. Indeed, one can imagine thinking of this Star Wars game as low-fidelity or satirical historical simulation. The upshot of this discussion is that the flexibility of contemporary game toolssuggests that Riebers distinction may not be as hard and fast as once considered, although I believe that it is still auseful distinction for educators.
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Underlying this notion of endogenous games as a motivating context for solving
complex problems is a socio-cultural model of motivation, one that views motivation not
as a static variable but rather as an emergent property between learner and context. From
this situated view, all learners are motivated; they just may not be motivated in the ways
that educators want them to be. Learners are active, goal-driven constructors of meaning.
This socio-cultural perspective ecologizes the learner. The problem of motivation is not
framed as a matter of high / low, intrinsic / extrinsic, but rather as a social-psychological
problem of engaging learners in activity when there are competing or differing goals and
intentions (e.g. Barab Cherkes-Julkowski, Swenson., et al., 1999). Problems of extrinsicmotivation might be reframed as issues with authority or differing agendas, of developing
differing goals, or of failing to detect paths toward meeting their goals in the
environment. From a cultural view, learning goals may not be compelling to learners or
may be at odds with their identities as learners (e.g. Scollen, 1981). Learners goals and
intentions are socially and culturally situated, and understanding learners goals and
intentions is a complex process that is fruitfully studied by examining relationships
among identities, communities, learning culture and practice (Wenger, 1998).
Within gaming discourse, a number of massively multiplayer designers have
begun adopting Bartles (1996) framework for understanding what motivates people to
game by characterizing game play as a social practice (Figure 2.2). Through qualitative
observation of gamers, Bartle finds that players can be divided along two axes: (a) acting
vs. interacting, on (b) the world vs. other players. Bartle labels these four roles killers
(acting on players), socializers (interacting with players), achievers (acting on the
world) and explorers (interacting with the world). Walking the reader through the
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behavior of each player type, he argues that these four ways of playing are states that
players adopt while in game that are based on their current motivations. For Bartle, it is
the interactions among these differing players that give game worlds their life. Other
game designers seem to agree: Raph Koster, creative designer of Ultima Online and the
newly released Star Wars Galaxies , remarked that Bartles modes of play also hold up in
single-player games with explorers more motivated to play role-playing games and
achievers more motivated to play hyper-competitive games, particularly first-person
shooters (Kim, Koster, & Vogel, 2001). By foregrounding the fact that gaming is
thoroughly a social practice, Bartles framework is insightful for educators because ithelps specify the particular reasons that participants game in the particular ways they do.
Returning to Wrights notion of different game genres, there are often large distinctions
between game types and it may not even be sensible to talk about the practice of playing
Quake , for example, in the same way that we talk about the practice of playing
Civilization III . Educators hoping to use games in education need to understand different
game genres, game practices, and modes of game play in order to effectively leverage the
unique affordances of specific games to situate learners in academically valuable contexts
(Holland, Jenkins, & Squire, 2003; Squire, 2002).
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Figure 2.2 Bartles (1996) taxonomy of motivation in multiplayer gaming.
Games in Social Studies Education in General
Digital games such as Civilization III open new opportunities to support learning
as players manipulate complex systems, test their assumptions about geography by
building virtual empires, and compare the unfolding of their Civilization with the
historical record. While such experiences may seem unprecedented to some (e.g.
Prensky, 2001), there is a long tradition of games and simulations in educational
technology and social studies specifically that provides some guidance for how a game
such as Civilization III might be used to support learning.
In his review of research on games and simulations in social studies, Clegg (1991)
makes the following observation:
Students using computer simulations demonstrated increases in affectiveoutcomes such as interest, motivation, enjoyment, sense of personal control, andwillingness to persevere in completing learning tasks. Cooperative strategies with
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computer games increased both lower and higher order learning and tended to benefit female students more than males (p. 527).
Indeed, there seems to be strong agreement among researchers that game playing can lead
to increased enthusiasm, cooperative learning strategies, and goal-directed behavior
(Becker, 1980; Ehman & Glenn, 1987; Gredler, 1996; Livingston & Stoll, 1973). Most
researchers studying players attitudes toward playing games have found that that, on
average, players prefer game play activities to traditional lectures or homework activities.
For example, Garvey and Seiler (1966, cited in Wentworth & Lewis, 1973) reported that
players preferred playing Inter-Nation Simulaton to traditional lecture and homework
exercises. Wentworth summarize a number of other studies examining other games
resulting in similar findings (Baker, 1966; Cohen, 1970; Cordtz, 1970; Dooley, 1969;
Stadsklev, 1969; Wing, 1966). These studies, all of which fit the pattern of what
instructional designers commonly call smile tests, are somewhat useful for gauging
students interest in using specific games and simulations in specific gaming contexts but
do little to illuminate how game-playing affects players attitudes toward subject matter
or disciplinary abilities.
Instructional games and simulations in social studies may have hit their zenith in
the 1970s when dozens of studies were conducted examining the impact of most pen and
paper educational game playing on learning. In the majority of these studies, games fared
no better nor worse than other learning experiences in terms of their effect on student
achievement (i.e. paper and pencil scores) (Wentworth & Lewis, 1973, p. 435). Six
studies were the exception: Monroe (1968, cited in Wentworth & Lewis, 1973) found that
students playing a history game performed worse on content scores than those in control
groups. Wentworth (1972) found similar results with students playing a game called
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Marketplace , although the game-playing students did perform better than the control in
understanding system dynamics. Duke (1964), Monroe (1968), Baker (1966) and Allen,
Allen, and Miller (1966) found conclusive evidence in support of using games; however,
as Fletcher (1971) and Wentworth and Lewis (1973) argue, the methodological issues
and lack of quality controls in each studies raise serious questions about the validity of
the assertions generated from the data. Within this generation of research, Boocock
(1968) is the only study that generated statistically significant differences between games
and simulations and other instructional exercises.
In a few studies where researchers have examined how game-playing experiencesshape attitudes toward or within a subject area (e.g. attitudes toward economics or
political science), they have again failed to find any changes in attitudes among students
(Clarke, 1970; Lloyd, 1970; Wentworth, 1972). The difficulties and problems with this
line of research might best be illuminated through a brief consideration of a set of studies
Livingston (1970a; 1970b) conducted using the game Ghetto to teach about urban
poverty. Ghetto is a turn-based board game where players role-play as participants in a
ghetto" community. They make decisions about whether or not to attend high school,
pursue employment, or engage in illegal activities. The game is weighted so that it is very
difficult to succeed. Players toil in low-income jobs and are then enticed into high risk,
high reward criminal activities. Other players become the victims of this crime, leading to
chaos. The typical game lasts about two hours. The game designers recommend a
standard briefing process and include reflection questions with the game. The games
potential to offend goes without saying.
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On the surface, Ghetto may seem like a promising educational tool: Players learn
about the difficulties and hopelessness of poverty firsthand as they make choices in the
game. In my own experiences, I have found that players quickly realize that the game is
biased against them and that there is very little chance of succeeding. This experience can
give rise to conflicting emotions that can provide the fuel for fruitful discussion; yet, in
each of Livingstons studies, he failed to find compelling evidence that playing Ghetto
shifted participants attitudes toward the poor, even with solid debriefing exercises. For
example, Livingston and Stoll (1973) found that low-ability students had much more
difficulty making connections between their gaming experiences and urban poverty thanhigh ability students. Livingston and Stoll argued that low-achievers learn to play the
game rather than learn from the game.
This series of studies illuminates the difficulties in using one-shot gaming
experiences to change students attitudes through game playing. To think that a two-hour
gaming session would cause a dramatic shift in players attitudes attitudes built over a
lifetime of experience toward a topic as emotionally and politically charged as poverty
is nave if not impudent. The game world of Ghetto is clearly an artificial, constructed
world designed to elicit emotions. The game is not modeled on any particular community
or setting, so, without any clear grounding in particular historical contexts, players are
asked to make connections between the game and reality on a leap of faith. With topics
as emotionally charged as urban poverty, most instructional designers would devote
considerable time to its consideration, combining several methods of instruction in order
to make overt connections between concepts of poverty and how poverty is experienced
in specific historical situations. Good teachers might also use videos, case studies,
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interviews with urban dwellers, or field trips to flesh out students own experiences with
urban poverty. Most research studies on games, however, isolate game play as a variable
in its own right in order to compare it directly to other instructional approaches rather
than examining intact activity systems involving game play. Despite instructional
designers acknowledgement that the use, context, and activity surrounding gaming is
critical to learning, none of the research on games and simulations investigates how
different activities can be used in concert with gaming exercises to produce a robust
learning environment.
Digital Games in Social Studies Education in Particular Although most of these early studies on game-based learning employed paper-
based or face-to-face role-playing games, a few studies did examine computer-mediated
games (e.g. Hetzner, 1972, cited in Clegg, 1991). As might be predicted by Clark (1983),
thus far there has been no real distinguishable differences between computer-mediated
and non-computer mediated games research. As Clegg (1991) notes, Although the
advent of the microcomputer in the 1980s markedly changed the potential of games and
simulations as classroom tools (Patterson & Smith, 1986), there has been little research
on their use (p. 524). The paucity of research on computer games continues today. As
mentioned earlier, many educators, political pundits, and marketers extol the virtues of a
game like SimCity to help students learn, for example, city planning, but there has yet to
be a single published study examining how learning unfolds through playing edutainment
games such as these. The little research that does exist is inconclusive but cautions
against over-enthusiasm for the potentials of gaming to transform social studies
education.
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In one of the first studies of games and simulations in social studies classrooms,
Hetzner (1972), cited in Downey & Levstick, (1991), found that secondary school
students who played a political computer simulation had statistically significant higher
mean scores on tests of interest, goal-directed behavior, and application of principles
related to career development than students in a conventional class in career information.
More recently, Vincent (1986) used the computer-based simulation Foreign Policy: the
Burdens of World Power with sixth grade classes in Massachusetts. Vincent reported
greater increase in motivation and intellectual curiosity when using game-based
instruction than when using other instructional models. However, the study was published in a practitioner journal without data, evidence for validity of the assertions, or
peer review. More recently, Sawyer and colleagues have begun using the game Virtual
University with college administrators (Prensky, 2001); they have yet to publish any
research on this work, however.
The most compelling research to date on learning through digital gaming has
focused on the social interactions that occur in the context of game play. Johnson,
Johnson, and Stanne (1985), (cited in Ehman and Glenn, 1987) argue for the importance
of cooperative learning strategies over competitive and individual ones in using computer
simulations, locating much of the learning experience in social interactions and in off-line
learning activities. Consistent with standard instructional practice, Johnson et al. argue
that collaborative and cooperative exercises allow learners opportunities to reflect on
their understandings, articulate their ideas, and refine them through discussion exercises.
Despite the usefulness of studies such as Johnson et al. (1985), taken altogether as
a coherent body of work, the current research on digital games and simulations, like
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earlier research on paper-and-pencil games and simulations, is sporadic, questionably
designed, and inconclusive. Reflecting on the lack of research in this area, Ehman and
Glenn (1991) write There are so few studies that bear on the question of the impact of
interactive technologies on the social studies teachers role that it would be presumptuous
to conclude that we understand this area. More naturalistic studies utilizing in-depth
classroom observations, open-ended interviews with teachers and students, and survey
and test data are needed (p. 515).
Implications for Future Research
I find three themes from past research on game-based learning social studieseducation that can guide future research:
The interdependence of gaming and other instructional strategies . At the
educational game design session of the 2002 Game Developers Conference (Squire,
2002), Marc Prensky and others argued for the systematic study of learning environments
comprised exclusively of gaming activities; in other words, situations where players sit in
front a computer, play a game, learn from the game, and then walk away. Jon Goodwin
responded that, from such an approach, a game would not only be required to provide a
robust, compelling context for learning activities but also would need to be able to adjust
to individual players abilities and preferences, provide just-in-time explanations and
background material, present divergent problems, include opportunities for reflection,
and track user behavior in order to assess learning and then adjust learning experiences
accordingly. The claim that any game can (or should) accomplish all this is dubious at
best. In fact, the body of research on non-computer-mediated games suggests that,
although players enjoy gaming experiences, game-play alone may actually lead to
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decreased academic performance. Designing learning environments comprised
exclusively of gaming activities and nothing else appears to be rather short sighted.
Of course, the importance of the activity structure in which a given tool for
learning is embedded has long been recognized in the field of instructional technology.
For example, for decades, instructional designers have recognized the crucial role of
debriefing exercises following game play; perhaps educational researchers would be well
advised to forgo attempts to isolate the effects of gaming and instead focus on
researching the outcomes of intact pedagogies for learning through game play.
Educational designers need not start from scratch; goal-based scenarios (Schank, 1994), problem-based learning (Savery & Duffy, 1995), cognitive apprenticeships (Brown,
Collins & Newman, 1991), and modeling (Barab, Barnett, & Hay, 2001) all provide
pedagogical models in which student-directed activity is the focus of the activity system
and instructional supports are folded into the context of student-directed activity.
The limited value of traditional experimental research. Thus far, research on
games in social studies has mostly been conducted using classic positivist experimental
methodologies where a game-based experimental condition is created and then compared
to a control group. In most cases, only students perceptions of the experience and
attitudes toward social studies are the measured outcome variables. Such approaches
deny researchers the opportunity to examine how specific instructional strategies alone
or in combination support learning in specific ways. For example, instructional
strategies such as just-in-time lectures having been found to enhance learning when
combined with student-directed activities (CTGV, 1993; Barab, Squire & Barnett, 1999);
the research reviewed above, however, offers nothing that might bear on similar
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pedagogical designs, designs that, in truth, are far more similar to actual instruction in
real classrooms. Moreover, these prior studies offer little explanation as to why various
approaches succeed or fail or how they might be improved.
Along these lines, Ehman and Glenn (1991) argue for more in-depth naturalistic
cases of how interactive technologies can be used to support learning in social studies.
Design experiments (Brown, 1992) and teaching experiments (e.g. Cobb et al., 2001) are
two models for how educators might create pedagogical models for game-based learning
that are grounded in theory, practice, and empirical research. In both methodologies,
researchers collaborate with practitioners to create instructional contexts and then studyhow learning unfolds within them. Using a variety of techniques including ongoing,
dynamic assessments, researchers are then able to gain a better understandings of how
students are learning in the environment and therefore can suggest specific changes to the
environment in order to improve its impact on learning. Such experiments frequently lead
to what Robert Stake calls petite generalizations (1995). Petite generalizations do not
hold true for all people in all contexts but can be taken up by others and applied to their
own contexts as they deem appropriate. Certainly controlled comparison studies would
have some value in highlighting the different affordances of various learning
environments; however, until social studies educators have a compelling ratio