 Welcome back everyone. It's the 8 30 a.m. Session of the 2016 Open Simulator Community Conference I want to remind everybody in world and in our web audience You can view the full conference schedule and bios of all of our speakers at conference open simulator org Also, we want you to tweet your questions or comments at OpenSim CC or and you can use the hashtag hashtag OSCC 16 We are happy to introduce this session called game of five virtual learning and our speaker today is Dr. Larissa Nadalney She is an assistant professor at Iowa State University where she studies immersive technology game-based learning augmented reality and virtual reality and I want to Pass the mic over to dr. Nadalney Hello everyone Thank you all for being here and it's so wonderful to be at this conference again It's such a great community. You have to excuse my voice just a little bit. It is definitely winter So I have a little bit of a cold coming on Let me tell you a little bit about my background and how I got here and with gamification So I have been around Since second life for quite a while working with educators in K to 12 in higher education on how to best use immersive technologies in the classroom When it comes to education In gamification, I've been Gamifying and using game-based learning in my teaching my own teaching in higher education and helping others use it in a variety of different Fields, so I'm in the field of educational technology, but I've worked with other courses as well across campus Whether it be just a small unit that the person wants to add game elements to or an entire curriculum I've done that in a variety of settings. I've done it in face-to-face settings in blended environments in OpenSim as well as in online learning management systems as well. So I'm going to be keeping an eye on the chat I'm pretty good at multitasking. So as I'm talking, please feel free to ask any questions that you have and I'll try to answer them As we come upon them Okay, so first thing I just want to back up a little bit on game-based learning and talk about where we're coming from as as a culture as An innovation You'll notice that there are quite a lot of different terms out there in the field And it just depends on who's using it and where they're coming from whether they're coming from the field of education Or if they're coming from business or industry or in game studies So if you look at these terms, we are going to be blending a little bit into two different ones specifically Gamification and game-based learning I want to share with you my perspective on the difference between the two terms when it comes from Learning sciences You can think of gamification as the inclusion of small little gaming elements Into something that is already existing So for example, if you have a training experience and you decide to add a leaderboard to that that would be gamification And I think that's pretty similar to what we hear in the news as well Now game-based learning depending on where you come from you have different ideas of what this might mean From my perspective and from my background I think of it more similar to what you might hear of as project-based learning or problem-based learning It's a way of designing a curriculum So if you think about this the entire learning experience the entire learning ecosystem is gamified So it's not just adding something small to something that already exists. You're actually redoing the entire experience So when you think about this there's a lot more to that kind of experience In developing that and play testing and making sure that things are working well for the learners Now for today what I just wanted to share with you is a little bit more about gamification I just want to show you some simple things you can do to add into your virtual experience Some are basic some require a little bit of coding and some sources of that code that you can have from some of my worlds What I want to share with you for the game-based learning bit is if you're interested in learning more about that You can go to this website here and I put it in the chat About how you can structure your entire experience of a game Okay, so when it comes to gamifying your experience in a virtual world One thing that's really important to realize is that you need to set the stage for the students So for example Students or learners whether it's industry or higher education or k-12 They come into an experience with certain expectations And if it is something that has Like a grade attached to it they can get very nervous With something that seems to be like a game it conflicts with what they feel inside and what their expectations are So it's really important that if you are going to gamify any kind of learning experience that you tell them upfront What's going on and how they can Navigate those different feelings So what I have here on the screen are two different screenshots That you can see from the rainforest research island that I have presented on in the past And in these screenshots, these are no cards that are Location sensor base so that when they get near the no card the no card pops up And it goes into their inventory So with this they are knowing as soon as they arrive in this experience that they should have fun It says that there's a lot to explore. It says that it's okay to Do a variety of different things and to Feel free to be gainful in their actions So it's really important to set the stage for the learner Okay, a couple examples for you about how to Give some students some choice and some challenge So there are a lot of things that are essential to games things like choice challenge Failure being able to level up those are things that Learners find fun And one way to get this to automatically happen is to use non-playing characters So in this slide here, I have three different images that you can see And there are three different non-playing characters that are on the rainforest research island The first Character is just someone standing in a forest And as you come near her she asks you a question. She says You know, I've lost my glasses. Can you help me find them? So what we're doing is we're combining some orientation skills with A non-playing character and some fun, which they don't have to do they don't have to go find the glasses But if they do find the glasses, which you may see in the little bottom corner of that image Is that you'll see that you get the glasses you put them in your inventory And if you go back to the non-playing character, she gives you tips and tricks And some things you may not have ever known if you didn't get the glasses So by performing this extra action, there's a reward This is also done very early in the simulation And it sets them up for this idea of playful learning An idea of that if you just keep exploring you might find extra things that might be fun to learn And that might give you more information about your task The second non-playing character on the screen is one where we have an interaction with we call her the wise woman She's sitting there and she asks you a question and then you can type in the text chat to respond to her She's not as interactive as I'd like, but what's nice is we can collect data this way So here's a person that um the player can interact with that has some interesting questions and that the data gets sent out to a database Where then I can use that for data analysis and for helping the students along And then the third non-playing character on the screen is a scientist Who you are collecting data and you come to him He reads the data that you have that you have collected and he gives you an individualized response back so Excuse me So having the students have their own information Is quite a benefit to them In that experience you have the student not knowing what they're going to get and they end up talking to each other Which is really nice. So you have lots of different students on the island They meet with this Individual scientist they get their own information and then they realize it's different that not everyone has the same experience So then they start challenging each other and they start saying things like what information did you get? and They learn from that as well So those the non-playing characters were definitely more thought out and more formal part of the simulated experience But what I have on this slide are a couple different Easter eggs So Easter eggs are the idea of that you find something hidden And it leads you to something Fun or playful or it gives you a reward You see three images on this slide the first one is More content related. So you'll notice there's some barrels that look like they were that they are tipped over and spilled in some oil so this has to do with Finding out more information about the island and people that find that Actually have more data to add to their final project than others that didn't find it So just putting a visual in a corner or having things hidden is a nice little surprise for the learner The second one is a bridge that once you walk over it A pop-up box occurs and we thought of this is like a little troll under the bridge So when you pass the troll the troll provides you with some little tidbits of information It's similar to that a scientist with the glasses in the beginning So if you pass this bridge The troll will tell you that there might be a zipline around the corner That will help you get to one side of the island faster than walking And if you pass multiple times you might get multiple different messages And the last one you see here on this image Is one that actually very few students found so we had freebie boxes around and one of the boxes had a Clipboard that you could pick up and put on And with this a lot of students put on the clipboard But it was interesting to note that in this experience and very few students actually read what was on the clipboard So on the clipboard is a location And at this location There was more information and there was actually a really cool maze that one of my students made And it's this underwater experience And that experience isn't part of the island anymore, but it was unique To note that it was very Very few people found it and very few people mentioned it So it was one of those Easter eggs that surprisingly we thought since everyone was holding it they would Notice it more often, but that didn't occur I have a screenshot here of a Of an old image And you can see the the links on there as well About how we've been thinking about gamifying our virtual world experiences for quite a while And this was an old one that Was made to be a game that something that worked with the with the sleutel Package that I saw some people chatting about earlier How I agree. I wish I wish sleutel was Had been updated and kept up because there was so much potential With that But we've been thinking about this for a long time And the thing about thinking about it is How do we purposefully put in gain elements into our work? so that They are an advantage to the player Not just fun for us. It's always fun to do things just for us, but how can we make things? Instrumental part of the learning experience because the research does show That when you use Gamification especially not in isolation, but use multiple things together the students have higher engagement. They have higher persistence And they enjoy their experience better so By being thoughtful about what we're including we can really Take what we're doing leaps and bounds higher For student engagement motivation and learning All right a couple more ideas to share with you If you think about games The best way to find out what's motivating is just to play games and see what about them Especially video games motivates you So the first thing I have here is the status huts So if you think about a lot of shooter games out there, they have status about Your ammo they have status about your life and your health Who's nearby you? Some games have status about Challenges that you've earned or rewards or badges So being able to create huts that provide that instant feedback to the learner is very important And if you can do it in a way that is well designed and it's visually appealing Students will really engage with that content Maps and orientation It's hard one of the challenges I think in a virtual world if you're not familiar with them is knowing where you are in the virtual space so maps are Highly aligned to gamifying learning because especially if it's something where it's competitive Or collaborative you can see where other players are so having the learner put up their Mini map and keeping it up. That's another way to have almost like an instant hud because it's already built into the system And the third one on this slide is about rewards. We all love rewards It's fun to just get free things But the most effective rewards when it comes to learning experiences are ones that are Directly aligned to what you do So if they perform well on a task they get a reward or something that counts for some points They get a reward. Those are the most effective ones instead of just the ones that are loosely related So I said with you. I'd share some information I have on the slide a qr code But I also have the link where you can download The rainforest research island as well as the non-playing characters and all the code that goes with them It's free to use You'll notice that the non-playing characters remain by three different students of mine. So the code is three different ways But it's interesting how they made the code and how the interactions work So you're welcome to have any of the code or any of the objects on rainforest research island Also, you can note that this Presentation in the slides. I put it up on the conference scheduling website. So you can download this presentation as well And just to wrap up Just to let you know that on that presentation slide I do have some resources for you here About people that are doing this in our field that are working with open sim and second life and other virtual worlds To use gamification techniques They're adding badges and leaderboards and working with points and challenges and how we Put those together to be most effective And I'll leave you with the following three items and I'll open up to questions The first one is please make sure you play test being One just one perspective I can tell you that I thought things that I've made in the virtual world were really really fun And then when I had students do it, they didn't think it was really as exciting as I thought So have your target audience play test Make sure you have avenues for collecting data. So, you know, what's working. What's not And as I said before make sure that rewards really have real Consequences for the students so that they find them valuable Okay, any questions that you may have about this I know I really flew through a lot of slides. But like I said, I have them all On the conference website Okay Well, Larissa, thank you very much. I think now we all want to go play some games All right, um that wraps it up for this session Our next session is going to be in a half hour. We're going to take a little break right now And coming up next at 9 30 will be our open simulator e-commerce panel So you definitely want to join us for that during the break. We encourage everybody in world To check out oscc expo 3 region, which is our poster expo that talks about some of the presentations There's also oscc expo 2 Which has a whole bunch of links to hyper grid to our resources So you'll definitely want to check all of those out and also definitely talk to any of our presenters They're going to be around they are here to help you come up with ideas And tell you what they've learned from the things that they've done. So we will see you all back here at 9 30