Learning on Gaming with Computer Class Role Playing Game: GeoQuest Project

GeoQuest is a PhD research project in Geoscience education with a focus on Teaching and Learning Processes. It aims to answer both students’ and teachers’ needs in a fast-changing world, where, in particular, todays’s students need learning tools that use communication codes closer to them, as they are less accustomed to abstraction. On the other hand, there is an increasing need to make the students more aware of the environment: in particular the geological hazards, in a fragile territory like the Italian one, too often put at risk population, property, infrastructure and the natural setting. The widespread lack of geoscience knowledge contributes negatively to keep correct behaviours towards the environment, increasing the danger caused by natural phenomena. Moreover, the decreasing interest in school for the Earth sciences (both from teachers and students) calls for a drastic change in the geoscience teaching, which could engage the students to acquire a passion or at least a stronger interest for the geosciences and in general for the environment. Moreover, an increasingly interconnected and technological world requires students to have specific skills: knowledge of the disciplines founding cores in an interdisciplinary key is required, along with technical and technological skills, mastery of foreign languages, flexibility, attitude to teamwork, creativity and entrepreneurship. Scientific subjects, such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM subjects) need to be strengthened and studied through a laboratory approach. On the other hand, teachers pressed to keep up with modern teaching methods and topics, need user-friendly teaching tools, which can allow promote teamwork, laboratory teaching and CLIL (Content and Language Integrated learning) approach. The aim of this work is therefore to prove that it is possible to treat geoscience topics in a modern and attractive way, at the same moment trying to reconcile the needs of teachers to have user-friendly teaching materials that do not require major adaptation, to the needs of students to have an effective training. The best way to increase chances to obtain acceptance by the teachers to use different didactic approaches is the identification of the specific teachers’ needs. The needs have been identified as following: • to have well-structured, user-friendly teaching materials available. Innovative teaching materials must also allow an interdisciplinary and multilingual approach (CLIL approach), and must develop a learning environment allowing an effective skill assessment; • to have teaching materials that use ICT, to enhance the digital competence of the students ensuring an effective student engagement and in the same way encouraging the teachers with user-friendly tools. The project started with an investigation of the existing literature about effective learning. Vygotsky (1978) believed that learning occurred within a learner’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). From the activities, a learner can independently master those challenges, which can be accomplished with the help of additional supports. Offering activities inside the players’ ZPD will create a more appropriate challenge to their skill level than keeping them maximally engaged and in learning (Hamari et al., 2016). Problems that require the exercise of content and skills covered at school, presented as a game may be stimulants and not frustrating due to the controlled difficulties, and it may promote cognitive functions about targeted content: a key element for the enhancement of learning (Greenfield and Carbone, 1985). The difference between the narratives found in digital games and those found in other media, such as books and movies, changes the level of engagement. In books and videos, the person is engaged in the narrative although as a passive consumer and has no impact on the outcome of the narrative. On the other hand, an illusion is created whereby the players of a game perceive themselves as constructing the narrative of that game (Cohen, 2016) enhancing the engage level and effectiveness. These studies suggested to try to approach learning geosciences by gaming, using a new Computer Classroom Role Playing Game (CCRPG), GeoQuest, which has been developed in this PhD project. GeoQuest is a digital game focused on Earth Sciences, that allows the class to interact with the game itself in cooperative learning: it creates an immersive learning environment, in which an interdisciplinary adventure path develops, but containing related topics taken from the disciplines close to the students' age range. The immersive environment and interdisciplinary connections create an engagement that allows to deal ,even with complex topics, in a simple and effective way. As an example of an Adventure Path, the GeoQuest Phlaegraean Fields path, is reported in the following. The path is a mix of geoscience topics intertwined with mythology and literature. The adventure begins underground, in a dark and quiet cave. There are no clues to understand where you are. The player/student is screened in a mystery story where he/she has to decide how to proceed. Players cross narrow tunnels and huge caverns, risk falling into the icy water, or being involved in earthquakes. They hear the unearthly dripping water and the gentle whisperings of lost souls. This adventure is located in the volcanic area of the Phlaegrean Fields. The environment that gradually reveals itself is full of significant elements that can be traced back to a volcanic site, inserted in a complex geodynamic situation. It is located in the Mediterranean area, specifically in Campania, where compressive and divergent geological events produced differentiated magmas and explosive volcanism. During the game, players can also discover where they are from the history of the characters they meet along their path. They meet Charon, the conductor of souls to the kingdom of deads, the Cumaean Sibyl, recounting her love affair with the god Apollo, and Flegra, whose legend was born in Thessaly and is implanted in Campania, naming the zone to Phlaegrean Fields. Lete, god of Sleep embodied in the river that flows near Lake of Avernus, relives through the verses of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There is also Pirithous, who dared to challenge Ade attempting to kidnap Persephone. The minerals, such as sanidine, biotite, pyroxene and magnetite, allow players to go back to an intrusive weakly acidic rock like syenite. Its presence in the crustal conduit, along with earthquakes, allows players to trace petrological environments typical of the Campania volcanism. An intrusive body such as the syenite provides a geodynamic origin by tectonic convergence. The volcanic area of Phlaegrean Fields is unique in the world and is beautifully described in the “Gigantomachy”, which tells the story of the terrible Giants who were defeated and buried under volcanoes; their attempts to free themselves would trigger the volcanic convulsions of the Earth and explain the origin of earthquakes. Going back to the surface, players can recognise the tuffs, which attest the interaction between groundwaters and magma, typical of the eruptions at Phlaegrean Fields. Finally, the players walk across some sulphur vapours which suggest that they are approaching the area under the Solfatara. They will have to connect the colour of sulphur crystals to their temperature in order to find the right exit towards the surface. GeoQuest deals therefore with topics of geology, volcanology, mineralogy, geodynamics, which are normally difficult to be understood for students and often for science teachers themselves. The interdisciplinary key in the game, connecting history, mythology, latin literature and so on, is used as a leverage to help going through Geosciences and other scientific disciplines, making use of the appeal that humanistic knowledge has among the students and teachers. A multi-phase experimentation has been adopted to verify the effectiveness of CCRPG, which has been carried out for two years. The first step of the experimentation served to calibrate the experimentation itself, to define the experimental protocol and to make the modifications to the gaming activity, that became necessary following the practical verification in the classes. The total research sample consisted of 40 classes, from primary schools to university, for a total of 914 students. Within this sample, 32 classes (731 students) have experimented with the CCRPG and 8 classes (183 students) had a lesson with traditional methodology: frontal lesson, supported by interactive multimedia whiteboard, photos and videos. The experimentation allowed to evaluate and prove that the GeoQuest Project can contribute positively to science education, guaranteeing an effective acquisition of the key competences and the disciplinary ones requested by the modern Science and Technology. This has been demonstrated by the results obtained by the tests which show an improvement in learning levels obtained with the CCRPG of 269%, while the control sample using the traditional lesson shows only an improvement of 133% after the lesson. The GeoQuest Project has been also evaluated by the teachers as a good educational tool, since it is able to stimulate students' interest and keep their attention high during the entire duration of the teaching activity favouring their engagement in the learning process. The final outcome suggests that GeoQuest Project can effectively match the needs identified by students and teachers, attracting the interest of the students on geoscience topics, treating them in a interdisciplinary way. Carrying out the experimentation in several phases allowed us to calibrate and improve the approach , and allowed us to obtain rigorous and reliable results. The teaching tool perfectly complies with the demands of modern society. Above all, the results obtained allowed to answer positively to the research questions identified in teaching and learning processes in Science Education: to create an educational tool that ensures students to build knowledge of the disciplines founding cores in an interdisciplinary key, which allows them to acquire, at the same time, technical and technological skills, mastery of foreign languages, flexibility, creativity and entrepreneurship. Among the few weaknesses identified in the experimentation, it was evidenced by the teachers that the syntax used in the oral and written expression is very rich and sometimes complex for using with digital tools and with the short time characteristics of gaming and storytelling. For example, some phrases that appeared as screenshots were too long to read or contained too complex terms. As a consequence, a collaboration started on linguistic simplification in storytelling and gaming, collaborating with Prof. Johanna Monti, from the University L'Orientale of Naples, Italy. A PhD student is carrying out a Research Project on Linguistic Simplification in the Storytelling applied to Gaming, specifically for GeoQuest Project (PhD thesis title: “Development and effects that the use of Digital Storytelling, understood as a new art of narration, brings in the teaching of foreign languages and cultures”). As a first result, the GeoQuest Hawaii adventure pathway was created according to the canons of linguistic simplification, which will approach the problem identified. Since the beginning of the first experimentation and also as a result of the disclosure of this research work, the requests to try the game in many schools have multiplied. The five already existing pathways will soon be joined by others already requested. Some schools, in different Italian regions, have placed GeoQuest at the base of school projects to support learning or development of scientific and digital skills (Projects with Ministry of Education funds). Also, GeoQuest was chosen as a Joint Project between European countries by the executive board of Science on Stage Europe (https://www.science-on-stage.eu), which deals with the spread and sharing of innovative methodologies to teach Science. Science on Stage funded the exchange between Italy and Iceland for the diffusion of the CCRPG methodology. The final presentation of the results obtained during this European exchange will be carried out in Portugal. The positive experience with the GeoQuest Project attracted the attention of educators at the national, EU and extra-EU levels, suggesting to continue to create a series of related projects, like new educational Apps to explain the correct behaviour to keep during emergencies, or the application of the CCRPG to tourism and to safety education, indicating that gaming can be used effectively also as a outreach and dissemination tool. Chapter summary Chapter I is an introduction, in which the initial idea and the analysis of the needs identified, a presentation of the learning on Gaming, the purpose of the research and the work plan are exposed. The analysis of the needs is done both on the students' learning needs and on the supports to be given to the teachers, in order to contribute to effectively innovate the teaching of Earth Sciences in school. Chapter II: the educational background of the project is presented. The starting point of the research is to use the digital storytelling with an innovative methodological approach, based on inquiry. Modern pedagogy rediscovered storytelling and demonstrated that, even thought not using technologically innovative teaching tools, storytelling enhances the effectiveness of information transmission. Moreover, the digital application of storytelling has been demonstrated to have a positive impact especially on students’ achievement. Chapter III: the CCRPG methodology is described, based on an original Engine, made specifically for this project. The description of the Game is presented, from a technical and didactic point of view. The illustration of the GeoQuest project, is presented through the analysis of one of the adventure trails created. The adventure pathway is described and, through the presentation of papers published in international Journals or on Conference Proceedings, the salient aspects are highlighted: the innovative character of the methodology, the applicability of GeoQuest project to the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics), the use of IBSE (Inquiry Based Science Education) and CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approaches. Other papers reported highlight the learning environment created by GeoQuest ideal for the assessment of skills, as it guarantees real-life tasks, provided by accessible design, creating an inclusive Educational Environment. Chapter IV collects the results obtained during the teaching experimentation of the Computer Classroom Role Playing Game GeoQuest, where attention was focused on Earth Sciences topics, mediated by an interdisciplinary approach. Knowledge and skills in geology, volcanology and mineralogy were at the basis of the adventures paths produced. The results demonstrated positive responses showing that GeoQuest is able to guarantee an effective acquisition of the key competences and the disciplinary ones of Geoscience as well as, more generally, Science and Technology. Chapter V contains the discussion of the innovative elements of the GeoQuest project. This research shows that the application of CCRPG does not require digital knowledge, it is user friendly, requires little preparation time by the teachers. Above all, the CCRPG can also be used without an internet connection and requires only a laptop, therefore easy to use in the classroom. On the other hand, the results obtained during the experimentation with students show that there are no difference in students’ outcomes between primary, secondary and high school i From pupils to older students, the engage and the interest for the disciplinary topics is high and the results obtained are always very positive and the difference with traditional teaching is tangible. Chapter VI illustrates the conclusions, which highlight the innovative elements and the solutions made using CCRPG, as well as illustrating the weaknesses emerged during the research path and possible solutions. The future developments of the project and the applicability of GeoQuest to different educational fields are also described. Chapter VII reports the References. Appendix. The appendices contain: projects related to GeoQuest, brochures, students tests, teachers tests, the cards with the description of the individual adventure pathways.