WikiWorld

As John Dewey so famously stated in Democracy and Education "When [an idea] is told, it is, to the one to whom it is told, another given fact, not an idea."¹ If you simply tell people what the correct answer to a question is, they may not grasp the Ideas and structure within. This is unfortunate considering that it is the ideas, not the fact, that we wish to convey. Dewey goes on to say that "Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem at first hand, seeking and finding his own way out, does he think." With WikiWorld we do not want users to simply be told what's important about a site. We want users to ask questions about what they're interested in and answer them with their own knowledge.

With WikiWorld, we do not want to lead students to a single correct solution. We want students to make their best guesses while answering questions. We also understand that sometimes these answers are wrong, but by discovering the correct answers, it is our hope that this knowledge will linger with the student. This is the idea behind constructivism and discovery learning. Students construct their knowlege and understanding of the world rather than learning facts from another predetermined source. As Jerome Bruner states “Practice in discovering for oneself teaches one to acquire information in a way that makes that information more readily viable in problem solving"². This is precisely what we want students to walk away with when they play WikiWorld.

¹John Dewey. Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education
²Jerome Bruner. The act of discovery. Harvard Educational Review, 31(1), 1961

Creating a unique learning experience that actively encourages additional research has been studied by many. The following are works that I see as beneficial to this project.

  Many studies have praised the value of discovery learning where students are in control of their environment. Findings from a recent study seem to indicate that discovery learning can also result in mastery of the concept, which is equivalent, if not better than, traditional direct instruction over a period of time³. The previously mentioned immersion also has the added benefit of presenting the materials in several different ways. This approach engages audio, visual, and haptic channels resulting in a more effective delivery⁴. If the user is immersed in the problem and is given the freedom to explore the possible outcomes themselves, then learning can occur more efficiently.

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  In “How Computer Games Help Children Learn”⁵ Shaffer uses video games to help children learn a variety of subjects ranging from Urban Planing to art. In these games, students assume the roles of professionals and are presented with a real life problem to solve. For example, in the game Urban Science, students must assume the role of a city planner to renovate a neighborhood. Through the experience, students learn about the problem at hand and develop the skills necessary to accomplish the goal. I believe that by adopting a similar model and giving students the chance to assume the role of a researcher, WikiWorld will generate the same effect. By allowing the students to be researchers, we can both engage the student and actively encourage them to seek new information or evaluate existing information about a given site.

In WikiWorld we will use a similar approach to meet our learning goals. Since we want users to generate questions about the site, while at the same time attempting to answer these questions, we must choose a role for the users to assume that requires these skills to be successful. For WikiWorld we will allow users to assume the role of a researcher. As a researcher, they must inquire about things that interest them and seek answers to those questions. As students continue to play the game, they will continuously develop these skills. For the initial iteration of WikiWorld, we will not implement the roleplaying aspect. However, we would like to include this aspect in the future.

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  Although I liked the idea of using video games to make historical sites more engaging, I began to wonder if there are differences in the way males and females play video games. I didn't believe there to be any major differences, but I chose to consult research on the subject before jumping to this conclusion. In the article “We Have Never-Forgetful Flowers In Our Garden: Girls' Response To Electronic Games,”⁶ the researchers studied a group of females to see what aspects of video games are attractive to them. By the end of the article they concluded that females do like video games just as much as males, but that they are also very concerned with the social aspects of video games. This definition of “social aspects” includes actions that took place inside the video game as well as how others judged their playing ability. While the findings aligned with my initial suspicion, it did remind me to place more of an emphasis on the story line. If the players are expected to be researchers, there should be a story that places them in that context.

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  With the appealing idea of using a video game to attack this learning problem, it is also necessary to consider what age groups would be able to interact with this technology easily. The article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” by Marc Prensky focuses on the differences between people who have had technology all their lives and those that have had to adapt to it⁷. Among other things, Prensky determined that children who grew up with computers and other forms of new media, may interpret information differently than those who did not. Prensky then comes to the conclusion that what one generation sees as effective may be seen as ineffective by another. In part two of his paper, Prensky even proposes that the brain of person who grew up with new media may even be wired differently than those who didn't simply because of the exposure to technology. To back up his claims, he cites laboratory cases where humans and various animals were forced to interpret their world in unconventional ways. This article helps to affirm my suspicion that younger students, and students who have grown up with technology, would be responsive to WikiWorld's execution. Older students, however, may find this solution to be too foreign.

³ David Dean Jr and Deanna Kuhn. Direct instruction vs. discovery: The long view. Science Education, 91(3):384–397, 2007
⁴Richard E. Mayer. Multimedia Learning. Cambridge University Press, 2001
⁵David Williamson Shaffer. How Computer Games Help Children Learn. Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY, USA, 2006
⁶Cecilia M. Gorriz and Claudia Medina. We Have Never-Forgetful Flowers In Our Garden: Girls' Response To Electronic Games.
⁷Marc Prensky. Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 2001

The basic idea for my solution was to overlay video game elements in real life. Thus I tried to see if there was any work done to employ this augmented reality approach. I found that there was indeed a project that was very similar to what I had envisioned. In “Gaming Tourism: Lessons from Evaluating REXplorer, a Pervasive Game for Tourists” researchers write about the impact that an augmented reality game had on teaching the history of a small German city⁹. REXplorer allowed people to learn about the history of the German city by interacting with computer generated spirits. Tourists can awaken and communicate with these spirits by waving a modified Nokia phone. The results were favorable and made me eager to implement WikiWorld.

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  As with REXplorer there are other augmented reality games on the market. Unfortunately, the majority of these games do not emphasize learning. I did, however, find a learning tool that used mobile technologies in a way that enabled inquiry learning. OOKL allows students to upload pictures and written responses wherever they are. Through the use of a mobile device, OOKL can instantly publish student's work to their blogs. While this is similar to the final product I wish to create, there are a few things that I would like to improve upon. OOKL requires teachers to be involved in the activity. This may incur a cost to have a staff member over look the activities. Furthermore, this tool does not require the student to be anywhere in particular. Because one of my goals is to get the student excited and engaged at any site, this approach does not work. I aim to keep the general idea of OOKL but add GPS capabilities and self guided aspects.

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Additionally, self guided tours could also be considered a similar product. Self guided tours provide relevant information to the user about a site without the need of an exhibit. Unfortunately, the current implementations are lacking in a few areas. These self guided tours usually rely on the user to access the correct passage. Thus, if a user gets confused as to which entry they should be listening to, they could hear or read incorrect information. These tours are also static and repeat the same information. If something happens to the site, new information is not easily incorporated into the tour. Thus, these tours run the risk of become outdated quickly. Finally, most self guided tours cannot be heard on the user's own device. One product that has tried to overcome these obstacles is HearPlanet.

HearPlanet does a good job of using a user's location to provide relevant and interesting information. In many ways it has elements of the location-based awareness that I would like to incorporate into WikiWorld. Unfortunately, HearPlanet does not encourage its users to add or generate relative and interesting information about a site.

⁹Rafael Ballagas, Andr Kuntze, and Steffen P. Walz. Gaming tourism: Lessons from evaluating rexplorer, a pervasive game for tourists. Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning