Collaborative Online Roleplay for Adult Learners.

Abstract

Game-based learning has gained popularity in schools and has been proposed for adult education, both at Universities and in the corporate training sector. Games are becoming a new form of interactive content and game playing provides an interactive and collaborative platform for learning purposes. Collaborative learning allows participants to produce new ideas as well as to exchange information, simplify problems, and resolve the tasks. Context based collaborative learning method is based on constructivist learning theory and guides the design of the effective learning environments. In this environment the teacher or trainer becomes the active partner, moderator and advisor of the educational process, not just a repository of the information importing his or her own knowledge to a passive learner as in traditional education. Learners bring their prior skills and knowledge to the classroom community. The trainer structures learning situations in which each learner can interact with other learners to develop new knowledge and fashion their own needs and capacities. Knowledge is generated from experience with complex tasks rather than from isolated activities like learning and practicing separately. Skills and knowledge are best acquired within the context. This helps the learners easily to transfer learning from classroom to “real life” and back, or information from one subject to another. Therefore this method requires that the trainer and learners play nontraditional roles such as interaction and collaboration with each other within the educational process. The classroom drops the physical boundaries and becomes a goal-oriented platform dedicated to learning. Online role-play scenario platforms offers an environment where trainers can define their own role-playing scenarios and provide the opportunity for learners to apply factual knowledge and to gain experience through the digital world. Trainers can define new games or adopt and modify sample games without any programming skills. Some platforms provide a variety of communication means within the scenarios; players can communicate with the use of multimedia discussion forums, text and voice chat modules, as well as through multi-user video conferencing. These platforms foster participation in problem-solving, effective communication, teamwork, project management, as well as other soft skills such as responsibility, creativity, micro-entrepreneurship, corporate culture, and cultural awareness. They are designed for use as a supplement to normal in-class teaching and corporate training, but it is also possible to be used independently from a class course. The constructivist design required for successful Game-Based Learning will be discussed and a model is provided to display how Game-Based Learning occurs in a collaborative online environment. This chapter will present example scenarios and highlight resources available to interested teachers and trainers.

Creativity in digital pedagogy and game-based learning techniques; theoretical aspects, techniques and case studies

“…and "Why are the learners learning this? " [24]. The answers to these questions must be reflected during the instructional game design process.…”

Legal basis for the development of the Slovenian health system - from the enlightenment to the second world war

“…During the last decades of the 18th century, hospitals were first established in the centres of the country and later on in other larger towns as for example Maribor. Today this hospitals form the backbone of the health system (9).…”

Assessment in Game-Based Learning

“…An important feature of this concept is the collaborative learning design, which allows participants to exchange information as well as to produce ideas, simplify problems, and resolve the tasks. When using an elearning platform such as this for role-pay scenarios, the teacher is the active partner, moderator and advisor of the educational process (Pivec & Pivec, 2009b). Salen and Zimmerman (2003) define games as systems where a player engages in conflict defined by a set of rules and the result is a defined outcome.…”

“…Using the features developed for the EC funded project UniGame (2004) and expanding on them to create the ideal platform for an online Scenario, Table 8 compares the features that need to be considered for implementing an online collaborative role-play. This comparison has been completed by using published data on each of the products and some features may have changed or been updated since the data of this analysis (Pivec & Pivec, 2009b However, to utilise any of the above platforms, a well-constructed scenario is still needed and is paramount to achieving the learning outcomes. The chosen topic and subsequently created scenario will dictate the challenges for the players, and a well constructed scenario will challenge the player's mental, moral, logical, lateral thinking, reasoning, and knowledge-based capabilities.…”

“…Their worksheet includes the following questions that have been answered with findings from this research and associated studies by the author. As highlighted in the introduction, the research presented in this thesis represents part of an extended exploration into Game-Based Learning over the past of nine years, and includes research into collaborative learning using role-play (Pivec & Pivec 2009b), educational game design (Pivec & Kearney, 2008b), and immersive digital environments .…”