MakeScape Lite: A Prototype Learning Environment for Making and Design Brian A. Danielak, Adam Mechtley, Matthew Berland
Leilah Lyons, Rebecca Eydt New York Hall of Science th 47-01 111 St.
University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Curriclum and Instruction 225 N. Mills St. Madison, WI 53706
Corona, NY, 11368
{llyons, reydt}@nysci.org
{danielak, mechtley, mberland}@wisc.edu ABSTRACT
developed to provide a platform for young people to express themselves, and was made freely available in specialized community centers, or Computer Clubhouses [11]. In addition to the successes Scratch has had in scaling to wider audiences, its associated research program has helped to advance theoretical aspects of designing such experiences for youth.
We describe the development and user testing of an iPad prototype for a new museum-based, interactive tabletop computer game called MakeScape Lite. The game lets learners—who have no prior formal experience in circuitry—build virtual circuits in a fantasy challenge scenario to (1) learn some basic circuitry concepts and (2) engage in basic engineering practices, such as problem identification, design, and iteration. In phase 1 of testing, we explored how children socially interacted to develop design goals when the game lacked explicit guidance about what to do. In phase 2, which we discuss here, we iterated the prototype with partially worked examples to offer more explicit guidance to children. We then studied video and game log data of students playtesting the game.
In spite of these inroads, however, there still exist few bridges for young people to pursue physical computing. For example, while it has been suggested that Scratch can serve as an effective stepping stone for more advanced computer programming tools [12], there are few ways for middle-school-aged young people to develop incipient expertise required for the creation of custom electronics and circuits. Although Arduino has substantially lowered the entry barrier for novice electrical engineers [10], newcomers focused on tinkering and exploration can still easily damage its components.
Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.1 [Computers Uses in Education]: Collaborative learning;
One tool that currently bridges this gap for young people is Elenco Electronics’ Snap Circuits, an educational toy that uses real components and formal semiotic markers of circuitry, without requiring users to solder interconnections. Kits contain a number of pre-wired components that can be snapped into a breadboard, much like LEGO bricks, in order to create working circuits. Depending upon the particular components included, each kit also contains instructions for various projects, such as alarms or radios. Although products such as Snap Circuits provide an opportunity for interested young people to learn about the basics of circuitry, they do not, as designed artifacts, embed motivation for activity in themselves.
Keywords MakeScape, constructionism, engineering education, informal learning, design-based research.
1. INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE Many recent educational reform documents in the US have pressed for a focus on enhancing scientific and technological literacy of young people [9]. Among other things, it is frequently argued that in order to participate meaningfully in a society that is rich in technological artifacts, people should develop not only an understanding of the concepts underlying technologies, but also familiarity with the practices and values found in the social groups where these technologies are used and created.
Computer games, on the other hand, are predicated on inspiring motivation in their players. We posit there is room for computergame-based learning environments to serve as a stepping-stone into the world of custom circuitry because they can provide “embodied learning experiences” [5, 6] and environments where the learning content has “situated meaning” [13].
In this regard, a good deal of work in recent decades has focused on enhancing the abilities of young people to participate in computer programming. For example, Scratch was initially
Consequently, we describe a prototype of a museum-based computer game—MakeScape Lite—wherein players must explore basic concepts of circuitry in order to probe the game’s underlying rules, as well as to accomplish in-game tasks. As a virtual space, MakeScape Lite enables the rapid exploration and prototyping of circuit construction. Students get framed practice engaging in basic engineering practices, such as problem identification, design, and iteration. In what follows, we describe results from two iterative user studies on an iPad-based prototype of MakeScape Lite.
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2. DESIGNING MAKESCAPE LITE
participants’ learning processes are enhanced not only when they are responsible for the construction of their own knowledge (in contrast to, e.g., receiving information from an expert), but also when they represent their knowledge in the form of externally accessible artifacts. This facet has the added benefit of facilitating players’ learning from one another. For example, the goal is for the final museum exhibit to be played on a multi-user, interactive tabletop surface using physical manipulatives (i.e. “blocks”) with fiducial markers, each corresponding to a different component featuring a visual representation of its diagrammatic symbol.
In order to motivate the creation and modification of circuits in a way that can be easily understood by a range of potential users, the game employs a playful fantasy world. Specifically, the conceit of the game (largely implicit in this iteration) is that players take on the role of explorers in a newly discovered, aquatic cave ecosystem where their duty is to catalogue the species they encounter. Luminescent creatures in the game are attracted to different color combinations of light, and explorers can build light-emitting diode (LED) circuits as lures. This decision was adopted with the purposes of both motivating activity (i.e. players build circuits because they are the principal means of attracting creatures) and providing structure to guide experimentation (i.e. patterns of association between creatures and lights can help children form and test hypotheses about novel creatures). For example, we proposed that creatures could vary across a number of dimensions (e.g., color, morphology) that correspond to different properties of the lights (e.g., color, number of lights), and, as a result, part of the challenge entails learning how these patterns correspond in order to make predictions and execute plans related to luring specific organisms.
In line with the constructionist design, our goal is ultimately to create an experience, which—in contrast to traditional modes of learning about electricity and circuitry—is focused on creating circuits in order to accomplish specific tasks. In short, rather than introduce abstract concepts which learners then apply in the planning and construction of circuits, we aim to offer players the opportunity to create and test circuits with minimal costs of failure. Rather than learning in order to make circuits, we aim to allow players to make circuits in order to learn about them. In this regard, we hypothesize there to be two primary modes of user interaction with the game, rapid experimentation and deliberative planning, each of which supports learning in different ways. For instance, our decision to represent light nodes with accompanying color selection context menus was intended to allow players to quickly change the colors of lights in order to get immediate feedback, which in turn was hypothesized to contribute to players’ understanding of the lights’ function in the game’s goal structure.
In this regard, a principal challenge for us has been to specify what learning goals are suitable in the game’s use context, given that the creation of circuits potentially entails a range of complex concepts of electricity that have been a source of persistent problems among physical science educators of adolescents and young adults [3, 4, 7, 14]. We plan to deploy the final product— MakeScape—as an exhibit at a museum situated in a diverse urban community, which introduces a few unique challenges. First, the community the museum serves is very multicultural, such that proficiency in English cannot be assumed. Second, although interactive exhibits commonly command a greater duration of visitors’ attention than do traditional exhibits, we likely have a small amount of contact time with which to work. Third, as has been remarked elsewhere [1, 2], the inclusion of several modes of interaction (particularly when they are of equal salience) can obscure the phenomena that designers intend to foreground. Learners might get so engaged in the fantasy world that they miss the engineering focus.
Because we did not yet have final hardware for this stage of work, MakeScape Lite was created for the iPad. Consequently, the nodes were represented virtually in the game, rather than with physical objects. Figure 1 illustrates examples of the virtual nodes used.
Figure 1. Graphical representations of battery nodes (left) amd LED nodes (right).
As such, we have elected to focus only on aspects of simple circuits, of which only a subset was incorporated in this iteration. Specifically, the current phase of prototyping only allowed differences in the number and colors of lights, though later iterations could incorporate timers to control blinking, for example. Moreover, the principal concept explored in this iteration concerned simply the need to create a closed circuit with a power source.1 Consequently, quantitative reasoning aspects of resistance and current have not yet been incorporated, and the only circuit components were batteries and lights. Future iterations will introduce further elements as needed, such as resistors and timers. Additionally, in order to facilitate electrical engineering literacy, we elected to use semiotic markers of the discipline, such as symbols on circuit diagrams.
Because MakeScape Lite features virtual blocks instead of physical ones, we also used mechanics of touching, pinching, and dragging to translate and rotate nodes. Players can draw lines between virtual, on-screen terminals attached to the nodes in order to make connections between positive and negative connectors. These connections are then represented by lines with scrolling arrows to indicate the flow of the current from one node to another. The speed and color of the scrolling animation differs to indicate whether the connection is live (i.e. transmitting power on a complete circuit). (Similarly, the nodes change colors based on these states.) Players can also trace lines with their fingers transverse to existing “wires” in order to break or “cut” a connection.
3. PROTOTYPE USER STUDY
Fundamentally, we have adopted constructionism as a guiding framework for this project [8]. In short, we expect that 1
3.1 Prototype Description The foremost problem identified from the first round of play testing (which consisted of four children in a mixed-sex, mixedage group) was that players needed more scaffolds in order to advance their comprehension of the game’s goal structure (from (1) non-comprehension of goals, through (2) understanding of the
Formally, this iteration allowed the creation of certain circuits that would not be valid in the real world. LEDs, for example, did not need to be paired with resistors, while in most realworld circuits LEDs require a current-limiting resistor.
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year-old male (12M and 13M)—each of whom sat at a large, rectangular table with his own iPad.
need to attract fish, and ultimately to (3) an understanding of the patterned relationships between creatures and light). In short, there was simply not enough of a game in place to properly direct and motivate activity for an extended period of time. This problem was addressed through a couple of related modifications intended to focus players’ attention on planning rather than on figuring out what the goals were.
Participants sat next to one another during the session and were videorecorded while they played. The game started with three lights and one battery, though one light was connected to the battery in a simple circuit. In addition to the video recording data, logs were collected from their devices after the session concluded. After playing, participants were given a brief, open-ended survey followed by a short group discussion. The survey asked about participants’ gaming habits, their goals, what they had to learn in order to achieve these goals, what they found unclear, and whether the game reminded them of anything from real life.
First, creatures were made to emit heart particles while en route to a desired, active light source, and they were removed from the play area (i.e. collected) when they arrived at a destination. This change was intended to decrease cognitive load by reducing ambiguity in feedback. Second, a journal was added to the user interface, accessible via an iconic button in the upper right corner of the screen (see Figure 2). The journal contained clues to help establish a goal structure and facilitate movement toward the third level of comprehension identified in the first study. Specifically, a “sticky note” contained a verbal clue about the relationship between the creatures and the lights, and a progress grid recorded collected creatures and their totals. The grid was arranged in such a way as to organize the mapping between creature color/light color, and creature morphology/light count, which was conjectured to decrease cognitive load in progress monitoring. In short, the purpose of the journal was to provide a compact, noninvasive way to communicate some in-game hints to players. In order to more clearly observe the ways in which players might use the journal to form specific conjectures, we intentionally left some combinations unrepresented.
3.3 Results Participants were quick to start exploring the game. However, there was surprisingly little interaction between the participants, who were very focused on their respective game screens, with 13M glancing to his side only 3 times during the session. Rather than describe the whole session serially here, it is useful to talk about each participant in turn, as they each seemed to use the game in very different ways. Player 12M 20
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Figure 3. Comparison of players’ activity logs. Player 12M’s log is on top, 13M’s is on the bottom. A glance at 12M’s action log shows that he initially focused a great deal on moving nodes around the play area (see Figure 3, top). As a consequence of this experimentation, however, he had disconnected the exemplar in the first 11 seconds, and did not begin to collect any fish until around 1:13, by which time he had created a new complete circuit. Within a few seconds of his first accessing the journal (0:36, 8 second duration), he changed an LED color. At 2:43, however, he opened the journal again (9 seconds duration) and then rapidly began to experiment with changing LED colors (8 changes within a 6-second period). By the end of his play session he had collected 181 individual creatures representing each of the classes present in the prototype.
Figure 2. The toggleable collection journal provides contextual information to players. Here, numbers indicate the number of creatures of that type a player has caught. In iteration 2, we also introduced a logging system to help capture participants’ in-game activity with sufficient granularity. The logging system allowed us to record time-stamped entries for each basic action players took (e.g., connecting two specific nodes, disconnecting two specific nodes, moving a node, changing a light color, and opening/closing the journal). The logger also records game state every 2 seconds, including the state of the player’s circuit graph and all creatures in the play area.
12M’s focus on goals was also apparent in his survey responses. He described both the purpose and the learning requirements in terms of our third-level understanding identified in study one. Specifically, he wrote that the purpose of the game was to “find which fish react with what light or lights,” while also indicating that, in order to achieve this goal, he had to “find which fish went with what light.” Moreover, he noted that “[in] the journal there were only 6 fish [and he] saw 9 slots,” which he found confusing.
3.2 Method As in our first test, participants consisted of a convenience sample of children recruited from a local parents’ group. Specifically, the second round of testing consisted of two friends—a 12- and a 13-
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The video and log data reflect his adoption of the journal as a tool for progress monitoring. To wit, he opened it 14 times (average duration 4.9 seconds) to find out which creatures he was missing, and created proper configurations to attract missing creatures (including trying to create configurations for combinations absent from the prototype). In this regard, there is some evidence that he identified testing as the purpose of the game, and planning and evaluation as the skills needed to facilitate this goal.
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In contrast, 13M appeared to be more focused on repetition of an optimal play strategy than on planning, testing, and evaluating. While he opened the log 7 times (average duration 3.5 seconds), he did not appear to use it to pursue specific creatures as much as to monitor collection counts. For example, when asked during the follow-up what they tried to do after they felt like they had collected all the creatures, 12M indicated attempting novel color combinations, while 13M said, “try and collect as many as I could, or try and collect all on one screen.”
6. REFERENCES
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-0718123, as well as by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. REE 1263814. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
[1] Allen, S. 2004. Designs for learning: Studying science museum exhibits that do more than entertain. Science Education. 88, S1 (2004), S17–S33. [2] Allen, S. and Gutwill, J. 2004. Designing With Multiple Interactives: Five Common Pitfalls. Curator: The Museum Journal. 47, 2 (2004), 199–212. [3] Cohen, R. et al. 1983. Potential difference and current in simple electric circuits: A study of students’ concepts. American Journal of Physics. 51, 5 (May 1983), 407–412. [4] Engelhardt, P.V. and Beichner, R.J. 2003. Students’ understanding of direct current resistive electrical circuits. American Journal of Physics. 72, 1 (Dec. 2003), 98–115. [5] Gee, J.P. 2004. Situated language and learning: a critique of traditional schooling. Routledge. [6] Gee, J.P. 2003. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan. [7] Gentner, D.R. and Gentner, D. 1983. Flowing Waters or Teeming Crowds: Mental Models of Electricity. Mental Models. D. Gentner and A.L. Stevens, eds. Erlbaum. 99– 129. [8] Papert, S. and Harel, I. 1991. Situating Constructionism. Constructionism: Research Reports and Essays, 19851990. I. Harel and S. Papert, eds. Ablex Pub. Corp. 1–11. [9] Pearson, G. et al. 2002. Technically speaking: Why all Americans need to know more about technology. National Academy Press. [10] Recktenwald, G.W. and Hall, D.E. 2011. Using Arduino as a platform for programming, design and measurement in a freshman engineering course. Proceedings of 118th American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition (Vancouver, B.C., Canada, 2011). [11] Resnick, M. et al. 1999. High technology and low-income communities: prospects for the positive use of advanced information technology. D.A. Schön et al., eds. MIT Press. 263–286. [12] Resnick, M. et al. 2009. Scratch: Programming for All. Commun. ACM. 52, 11 (Nov. 2009), 60–67. [13] Shaffer, D.W. et al. 2005. Video Games and the Future of Learning. The Phi Delta Kappan. 87, 2 (Oct. 2005), 104– 111. [14] Stetzer, M.R. et al. 2013. New insights into student understanding of complete circuits and the conservation of current. American Journal of Physics. 81, 2 (Jan. 2013), 134–143.
A glance at 13M’s log reveals how exploitation of a single strategy can emerge from a more tentative play style. His more cautious initial interactions resulted in preservation of the exemplar circuit’s connections for a longer period of time (e.g., he did not disable the example circuit until 0:29). Consequently, he had collected his first creature within 10 seconds of starting the session. In the end, he had collected 164 individual creatures representing each of the classes present. Interestingly, in comparison with 12M, more of 13M’s points were distributed among creatures with higher light counts (and thus requiring more complex circuits). This disparity can be explained, however, by the long periods of time where he did little but change LED colors, which allowed his circuits to remain active (possibly due to fewer accidental disconnections). As Figures 3 shows, he interacted with the connections and nodes much less than did 12M, instead focusing on changing light colors.
4. DISCUSSION & FINDINGS A key finding this study revealed was that some facilities for rapid experimentation detract focus from exploring the desired circuitry concepts when they can enable exploitation of optimal strategies. In particular, the ability to simply change colors of connected LED nodes allowed players to quickly get feedback on fish behaviors, but it also meant they devoted less time to connecting and disconnecting circuits. It is plausible this behavior is a side effect of not only the differing durations of the feedback loops for each mechanic, but also problems with the gesture-based interface. As such, circuit making became, by comparison, a more deliberative process. This pattern can be seen in Figure 3 in particular, which shows cycles predominated by either manipulation of nodes and connections, or by changing light colors and monitoring creature counts. In short, the task became simply to create a functional circuit and then play with it. Future iterations will need to more carefully investigate how or if this phenomenon relates to players’ mastery of engineering practices and concepts. We expect there is a balance to maintain between artificially reinforcing the concepts of circuit creation and allowing players to painlessly pursue the game’s goals.
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