Call for Participation Workshop on History & Games The Glasgow School of Art (Digital Design Studio) The Hub, Pacific Quay, Govan Road, Glasgow G51 1EA Phone: 0141 566 1450 Thursday 29th September, 2016 http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~hwloidl/Projects/JominiEngine/workshop16.html The main goal of this workshop is to give a state-of-the-art picture of Serious Games in Education, in particular in the learning domain of history, and to identify further opportunities of using digital or analogue games as a teaching tool in this domain, but also more widely. This workshop aims to reach out to various stakeholders and experts in education, game design, game development, and systems development. The format of the workshop will be: short, overview-style presentations and game demos to start with, followed by activity and discussion sessions in game design and serious mod. This workshop is part of a longer-term effort in the development of a game engine, the JominiEngine as a practical teaching tool in the domain of history education. We hope to build a community of interested partners out of this workshop and solicit input for the further development of the engine and for the setting of priorities. For further information, check out the poster, the slides and the papers on the publications section of the main web page for the JominiEngine. Registration (by Fri Sep 23rd) for the event is free and managed through eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/workshop-on-history-games-tickets-27473800878 Provisional programme for the Workshop: 9:30-9:55 Registration 9:55-10:00 H-W. Loidl “Introduction” 10:00-12:00 Session on State-of-the-Art in Games for Education (chair: R. Sloan) 10:00-10:30 Hamish MacLeod “Approaches to Games and Learning” The relationship between play and learning seems very clear to us; both in humans and other animals. One common understanding of the evolutionary basis and purpose of play is that it provides young organisms the impetus to develop and rehearse life-relevant skills. The relationship between games and formal education has perhaps seemed less clear however, although enlightened educators from ancient times have pursued and preserved the link. The “Socratic Methods” of teaching through questioning, for example, can be understood as playful engagement with speculation, while intellectual devices such as “For the sake of argument let us suppose …” are essentially playful approaches to the stimulation of reflection. The face validity of “Let’s pretend …” scenarios in language learning is high, as are various forms of role play in professional domains of education such as law, business and medicine. The word “simulation” as opposed to “game” may often be used however, to render the activity more acceptable to teachers and students alike. In order to make best use of games in educational practice it is important for us to think clearly about just what it is that games do. This is often seen simply in terms of the application of extrinsic motivation to promote learner engagement with the subject content, and from there learning is assumed to proceed by mechanisms of assimilation and accommodation that we believe we understand. In fact games become much more powerful as environments for learning when we see them as rich opportunities for socially motivated and experiential identity formation. Games emphasise for us that learning is a process of “becoming”. 10:30-11:00 Iain Donald “Loos: The Fallen Fourth” This talk will discuss how games and game technology can be used to impact the study of History. The talk will focus on the creation of “Loos: The Fallen Fourth” as both an Interactive Documentary and a Board Game and how they help visualise and analyse the impact that World War One on the City of Dundee. The Interactive Documentary examines that impact through the lens of the 4th Black Watch at the Battle of Loos whereas the Board Game takes a more holistic approach to the wider impact of the war on Dundee. 11:00-11:30 Andrew Reid TBC 11:30-12:00 Robin Sloan “Game Design for Education” This talk will focus on a recent co-design research project that directly involved scientific experts in the development of four educational games. These games encompassed a diverse range of topics: British shark species, the impacts of microplastics on the aquatic environment, the factors that impact upon cell mutation, and principles of quantum mechanics. The talk will be followed by demos of games and gameplay videos during the lunch break. 12:00-13:00 Lunch 13:00-15:00 Activity Session on Game Play and Serious Modding (chair: S. Louchart) 13:00-13:15 S. Louchart “Serious Modding and board games” 13.15-15.00 B. MacDonald, S. Louchart “Experimenting with board games” This session will start with an initial game play segment, to get familiar with the game mechanics of a range of existing games. The main part will then be a serious mod (and game design) session to explore the educational potential of these games in a pedagogical context. 15:00-15:30 Break 15:30-17:00 Discussion Session on Serious Games in History Education (chair: H-W. Loidl) 15:30-15:45 H-W. Loidl “An Overview of the JominiEngine” The aim of this discussion session is to identify opportunities for using games (in all variations) as a teaching tool in a range of areas, with a focus on history. We also plan to identify the main steps needed to achieve impact in this area, the key challenges in delivering the envisioned programme, as well as the key stakeholders that need to be involved in the process. This event is funded by a SICSA Challenge grant under the project “JominiEngine: A Serious Game Engine Across Learning Domains” with the partners, Hans-Wolfgang Loidl (Heriot-Watt University), Sandy Louchart (Glasgow School of Art), Robin Sloan (Abertay University).