Category: FROG Talk 2022

Chris Binder is an artist and trainer for media literacy and game-based learning. He consults and speaks on the topics of media literacy, games, and art. Since 2020, he has working together closely with the Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg on the project „BLOCKALOT: The Creative Minetest Server for Future-Oriented Learning“

Future-oriented learning with the sandbox game Minetest and BLOCKALOT, a web dashboard for learning partners

FROG 2022 – Talk

Game-based Learning has been put forth as a promising new strand of education that could lead to better learner interaction and motivation, new ways of visualizing and developing competencies and to collaborative and creative problem-solving. But how can one strike the balance between the right amount of rules and mechanics on the one hand and player freedom on the other?

Since 2020, the Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg (LMZ) has been closely working together with educators, future-oriented learning experts and technicians to build a platform for game-based learning that uses the free and open-source sandbox game Minetest. Together with the web dashboard BLOCKALOT, learning partners (formerly known as teachers) can not only create their own learning environments, they can also access templates to customize and materials to get inspired. This talk will give an overview of some of the results and experiences that have emerged over the 2 years since the start of the project. One of these is the Oasis, a learning environment that enables learners to explore, simulate, collaborate, plan and code.

Then there is an in-game suggestion for the compulsory Basiskurs Medienbildung for the schools of Baden-Württemberg in Germany in which learners take on challenges, translate findings into the physical world and collaborate to achieve a sustainable world.
In the future, we want the community to grow and provide even more focused support tor the learning partners involved. The project’s declared goal is to build an international network, a community of practice that will establish game-based learning with Minetest as a clear alternative for traditional teaching.

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Sonja Gabriel works as a professor for media literacy at University Teacher College Vienna/Krems (Austria). Her primary focus of research is on digital game-based learning and using serious games and gamification for teaching different subjects at school and university as well as evaluation of various projects for learning with games and game-design approaches. Another focus of interest is the use of digital games for teaching values to players.

The potential of serious games in training people to become better citizens

FROG 2022 – Talk

Games – especially serious games – have become a vital part of teaching and learning within the last decades. Not only are they used to teach history, geography or maths but more and more to teach values and ethics. In Poland, for example the game This War of Mine was added to the official reading list for schools and should be used in ethics or social studies lessons. The questions that often arise are if ethics and morale can be taught at all and more specially when talking about digital game-based learning in how far are games better qualified to teach young people about freedom and oppression compared to other media. One reason quite often cited that games are a better choice of teaching material is motivation. The Self-Determination Theory by Ryan & Deci mentions three requirements for motivation: competence, autonomy and relatedness. Digital games, however, sometimes also use different means of motivation which are more of a gamified sort (like points, leaderboards) and which might work to keep players inside the game but not very likely to change their point of view or attitudes towards a certain topic. By having a closer look at some serious games dealing with freedom, oppression and anti war themes and contrasting the motivational structures used by game designers with Self-Determination Theory, the contribution wants to show if digital games have the potential to teach (Western society) values and guide players towards a better understanding of the concepts (re)presented in the game.

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Stephanie Wössner is innovation team leader at the Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg. She is also a freelance consultant and speaker for future-oriented learning. Her areas of expertise are Extended Reality (XR), Game-based Learning (GBL) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as design and futures thinking and the Metaverse.

Let‘s play! Future-oriented learning with games

FROG 2022 – Talk

Digital devices have become increasingly popular in classrooms and come with a great potential of transforming learning. Nevertheless, teachers continue to prepare “lessons” and implement them instead of letting Gen Z and Gen Alpha become agents of their own learning and taking on the role of learning partners. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that neither the use of devices per se nor good lesson planning and implementation are a guarantee for “learning success” and learner motivation – or a good future. But how can this be explained?
In a nutshell: future-oriented learning requires us to reconsider everything we take for granted. Therefore, it is time to leave the familiar paths and come up with ideas on how we can support learners in learning the things they will need for their future as responsible (German, European, world) citizens in the digital age and provide them with the skills that will enable them to shape their (and our) future.

Game-based learning is of particular interest in this context because learning opportunities can easily be designed using games. It is of utmost importance that learners actively create and share content in cooperation with their peers.

After a brief look at the world we live in, we will consider a few future-oriented pedagogical approaches anyone can use to design learning experiences and adventures. We will then focus on three concrete examples:

• Designing a sustainable future with Minetest
• Making sure democracy will prevail by approaching This War of Mine from different angles (e.g. analysis, game design, creative gaming)
• Experiencing gender and diversity through the Sims 4

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