Video games and the future of learning

December 2004

David Williamson Shaffer Kurt R. Squire Richard Halverson James P. Gee
University of Wisconsin-Madison and Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory

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Abstract
Will video games change the way we learn? We argue here for a particular view of gamesand of learningas activities that are most powerful when they are personally meaningful, experiential, social, and epistemological all at the same time. From this perspective, we describe an approach to the design of learning environments that builds on the educational properties of games, but deeply grounds them within a theory of learning appropriate for an age marked by the power of new technologies. We argue that to understand the future of learning, we have to look beyond schools to the emerging arena of video games. We suggest that video games matter because they present players with simulated worlds: worlds which, if well constructed, are not just about facts or isolated skills, but embody particular social practices. Video games thus make it possible for players to participate in valued communities of practice and as a result develop the ways of thinking that organize those practices. Most educational games to date have been produced in the absence of any coherent theory of learning or underlying body of research. We argue here for such a theoryand for research that addresses the important questions about this relatively new medium that such a theory implies.

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Computers are changing our world: how we work how we shop how we entertain ourselves how we communicate how we engage in politics how we care for our health. The list goes on and on. But will computers change the way we learn? We answer: Yes. Computers are already changing the way we learnand if you want to understand how, look at video games. Look at video games, not because games that are currently available are going to replace schools as we know them any time soon, but because they give a glimpse of how we might create new and more powerful ways to learn in schools, communities, and workplacesnew ways to learn for a new information age. Look at video games because, although they are wildly popular with adolescents and young adults, they are more than just toys. Look at video games because they create new social and cultural worlds: worlds that help people learn by integrating thinking, social interaction, and technology, all in service of doing things they care about. We want to be clear from the start that video games are no panacea. Like books and movies, they can be used in anti-social ways. Games are inherently simplifications of reality, and current games often incorporateor are based onviolent and sometimes misogynistic themes. Critics suggest that the lessons people learn from playing video games as they currently exist are not always desirable. But even the harshest critics agree that we learn something from playing video games. The question is: how can we use the power of video games as a constructive force in schools, homes, and at work? In answer to that question, we argue here for a particular view of gamesand of learningas activities that are most powerful when they are personally meaningful, experiential, social, and epistemological all at the same time. From this perspective, we describe

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an approach to the design of learning environments that builds on the educational properties of games, but deeply grounds them within a theory of learning appropriate for an age marked by the power of new technologies.
Video games as virtual worlds for learning
The first step towards understanding how video games can (and we argue, will) transform education is changing the widely shared perspective that games are mere entertainment. More than a multi-billion dollar industry, more than a compelling toy for both children and adults, more than a route to computer literacy, video games are important because they let people participate in new worlds. They let players think, talk, and actthey let players inhabitroles otherwise inaccessible to them. A 16 year old in Korea playing Lineage can become an international financier, trading raw materials, buying and selling goods in different parts of the virtual world, and speculating on currencies. A Deus Ex player can experience life as a government special agent, where the lines between state-sponsored violence and terrorism are called into question. These rich virtual worlds are what make games such powerful contexts for learning. In game worlds, learning no longer means confronting words and symbols separated from the things those words and symbols are about in the first place. The inverse square law of gravity is no longer something understood solely through an equation; students can gain virtual experience walking on worlds with smaller mass than the Earth, or plan manned space flights that require understanding the changing effects of gravitational forces in different parts of the solar system. In virtual worlds, learners experience the concrete realities that words and symbols describe. Through such experiences, across multiple contexts, learners can understand

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complex concepts without losing the connection between abstract ideas and the real problems they can be used to solve. In other words, the virtual worlds of games are powerful because they make it possible to develop situated understanding. Although the stereotype of the gamer is a lone teenager seated in front of a computer, game play is also a thoroughly social phenomenon. The clearest examples are massively multiplayer online games: games where thousands of players are simultaneously online at any given time, participating in virtual worlds with their own economies, political systems, and cultures. But careful study shows that most gamesfrom console action games to PC strategy gameshave robust game playing communities. Whereas schools largely sequester students from one another and from the outside world, games bring players together, competitively and cooperatively, into the virtual world of the game and the social community of game players. In schools, students largely work alone with school-sanctioned materials; avid gamers seek out news sites, read and write faqs, participate in discussion forums, and most importantly, become critical consumers of information. Classroom work rarely has an impact outside of the classroom; its only real audience is the teacher. Game players, in contrast, develop reputations in online communities, cultivate audiences as writers through discussion forums, and occasionally even take up careers as professional gamers, traders of online commodities1, or game modders and designers. The virtual worlds of games are powerful, in other words, because playing games means developing a set of effective social practices. By participating in these social practices, game players have an opportunity to explore new identities. In one well-publicized case, a heated political contest erupted for the president

As Julian Dibbell, a journalist for Wired and Rolling Stone, has shown, it is possible to make a better living trading online currencies than one does as a freelance journalist!

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of Alphaville, one of the towns in The Sims Online. Arthur Baynes, the 21 year old incumbent was running against Laura McKnight, a 14 year old girl. The muckraking, accusations of voter fraud, and political jockeying taught young Laura about the realities of politics; the election also gained national attention on NPR as pundits debated the significance of games where teens could not only argue and debate politics, but run a political system where the virtual lives of thousands of real players were at stake. The substance of Lauras campaign, political alliances, and platforma platform which called for a stronger police force and an overhaul of the judicial systemshows how deep the disconnect has become between the kinds of experiences made available in schools and those available in online worlds. The virtual worlds of games are rich contexts for learning because they make it possible for players to experiment with new and powerful identities. The communities that game players form similarly organize meaningful learning experiences outside of school contexts. In the various web sites devoted to the game Civilization, for example, players organize themselves around shared goal of developing expertise in the game and the skills, habits, and understandings that requires. At Apolyton.net (a site devoted to the game), players post news feeds, participate in discussion forums, and trade screenshots of the game. But they also run a radio station, exchange saved game files in order to collaborate and compete, create custom modifications, and, perhaps, most uniquely, run their own University to teach other players to play the game more deeply. Apolyton University shows us how part of expert gaming is developing a set of valuesvalues that highlight enlightened risk-taking, entrepreneurialship, and expertise, rather than formal accreditation emphasized by institutional education (Beck & Wade, 2004). If we look at the development of

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game communities, we see that part of the power of games for learning is the way they develop shared values. In other words, by creating virtual worlds, games integrate knowing and doing. But not just knowing and doing. Games bring together ways of knowing, ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of caring: the situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, and shared values that make someone an expert. The expertise might be of a modern soldier in Full Spectrum Warrior, a zoo operator in Zoo Tycoon, a world leader in Civilization III. Or it might be expertise in the sophisticated practices of gaming communities, such as those built around Age of Mythology or Civilization III. There is a lot being learned in these games. But for some educators it is hard to see the educational potential in games because these virtual worlds arent about memorizing words, or definitions, or facts. Video games are about a whole lot more.

From the Fact Fetish to Ways of Thinking
A century ago, John Dewey argued that schools are built on a fact fetish, and it is still true today. The fact fetish views any area of learningwhether physics, mathematics, or historyas a body of facts or information. The measure of good teaching and to learning is the extent to which students can answer questions about these facts on tests. But to know is a verb before it is a noun, knowledge. We learn by doingnot just by doing any old thing, but doing something as part of a larger community of people who share common goals and ways of achieving those goals. We learn by becoming part of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and thus developing that communitys ways of knowing,

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acting, being, and caringthe communitys situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, and shared values. Of course, different communities of practice have different ways of thinking and acting. Take, for the sake of example, lawyers. Lawyers act like lawyers. They identify themselves as lawyers. They are interested in legal issues. And they know about the law. These skills, habits, and understandings, are made possible by looking at the world in a particular wayby thinking like a lawyer. The same is true for doctors, but for a different way of thinking. And for architects, plumbers, steelworkers, and waiters as much as for physicists, historians, and mathematicians. The way of thinkingthe epistemologyof a practice determines how someone in the community decides what questions are worth answering, how to go about answering them, and how to decide when an answer is sufficient. The epistemology of a practice thus organizes (and is organized by) the situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, and shared values of the community. In communities of practice, knowledge, skills, identities, and values are shaped by a particular way of thinking into a coherent epistemic frame (Shaffer, 2004a). If a community of practice is a group with a local culture, then the epistemic frame is the grammar of the culture: the ways of thinking and acting that individuals learn when they become part of that culture. Lets look quickly at an example of how this might play out in the virtual world of a video game. Full Spectrum Warrior (Pandemic Studios, for PC and Xbox) is a video game based based on a U.S. Army training simulation2. But Full Spectrum Warrior is not a mere firstThe commercial game retains about 15% of what was in the Armys original simulation. For more on this game as a learning environment, see (Gee, in press).

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person shooter in which the player blows up everything on the screen. To survive and win the game, the player has to learn to think and act like a modern professional soldier. In Full Spectrum Warrior, the player uses the buttons on the controller to give orders to two squads of soldiers, as well as to consult a GPS device, radio for support, and communicate with rear area commanders. The Instruction Manual that comes with the game make it clear from the outset that players must take on the values, identities, and ways of thinking of a professional soldier to play the game successfully: Everything about your squad, the manual explains, is the result of careful planning and years of experience on the battlefield. Respect that experience, soldier, since its what will keep your soldiers alive (p. 2). In the game, that experiencethe skills and knowledge of professional military expertiseis distributed between the virtual soldiers and the real-world player. The soldiers in the players squads have been trained in movement formations; the role of the player is to select the best position for them on the field. The virtual characters (the soldiers) know part of the task (various movement formations) and the player knows another part (when and where to engage in such formations). This kind of distribution holds for every aspect of military knowledge in the game. However, the knowledge that is distributed between virtual soldiers and real-world player in this game is not a set of inert facts; what is distributed are the values, skills, practices, and (yes) facts that constitute authentic military professional practice. This simulation of the social context of knowing allows players to act as if in concert with (artificially intelligent) others, even within the single player context of the game. In so doing, Full Spectrum Warrior shows how games take advantage of situated learning environments. In games as in real life, people must be able to build meanings on the

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spot as they navigate their contexts. In Full Spectrum Warrior, players learn about suppression fire through the concrete experiences they have had while playing. These experiences give a working definition of suppression fire, to be sure. But they also let a player come to understand how the idea applies in different contexts, what it has to do with solving particular kinds of problems, and how it relates to other practices in the domain, such as the injunction against shooting while moving. Video games thus make it possible to learn by doing on a grand scalebut not just by doing any old thing, wandering around in a rich computer environment to learn without any guidance. These forms of learning, associated with progressive pedagogies, are bad theories of learning. Learners are novices. Leaving them to float in rich experiences with no guidance only triggers the very real human penchant for finding creative but spurious patterns and generalizations. The fruitful patterns or generalizations in any domain are the ones that are best recognized by those who already know how to look at the domain and know how complex variables in the domain interrelate with each other. And this is precisely what the learner does not yet know. In Full Spectrum Warrior, in contrast, the player is immersed in activity, values, and ways of seeing. But the player is guided and supported by the knowledge built into the virtual soldiers and the weapons, equipment, and environments in the game. Players are not left free to invent everything for themselves. To succeed in the game, they must live byand ultimately masterthe epistemic frame of military doctrine. Full Spectrum Warrior immerses the player in the activies, values, and ways of seeing the epistemic frameof a modern soldier. In this sense it is an example of what we suggest is the promise of video games and the future of learning: the development of epistemic games

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(Shaffer, in press).
Epistemic games for initiation and transformation
We have argued that video games are powerful contexts for learning because they make it possible to create virtual worlds, and because acting in such worlds makes it possible to develop the situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, shared values, and ways of thinking of important communities of practice. To do that, one has to understand how the epistemic frames of those communities are developed, sustained, and changed. Some parts of practice are more central to the creation and development of an epistemic frame than others; so analyzing the epistemic frame tells you, in effect, what might be safe to leave out in a recreation of the practice. The result is a video game that preserves the linkages between knowing and doing central to an epistemic framethat is, an epistemic game (Shaffer, in press). Such epistemic games let players participate in valued communities of practice: to develop a new epistemic frame or to develop a better and more richly elaborated version of an already mastered epistemic frame.

Initiation

Developing games such as Full Spectrum Warrior that simultaneously build situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, shared values, and ways of thinking is clearly no small task. But the good news is that in many cases existing communities of practice have already done a lot of that work. Doctors know how to create more doctors; lawyers know how to create more lawyers; the same is true for a host of other socially-valued communities of practice. Thus we can imagine a range of epistemic games in which players

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learn biology by working as a surgeon, history by writing as a journalist, mathematics by designing buildings as an architect or engineer, geography by fighting as a soldier, French by opening a restaurant. Or, more precisely, by inhabiting virtual worlds based on the way surgeons, journalists, architects, soldiers, and restaurateurs develop their epistemic frames. To build such games requires understanding how practitioners develop their ways of thinking and acting. Such understanding is uncovered through epistemographies of practice: detailed ethnographic studies of how the epistemic frame of a community of practice is developed by new members. That is more work than is currently invested in most educational video games. But the payoff is that such work can become the basis for an alternative educational model. Video games based on the training of socially-valued practitioners let us begin to build an educational system in which students learn to work (and thus to think) as doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, journalists, and other important members of the communitynot in order to train for these pursuits in the traditional sense of vocational education, but rather because developing those epistemic frames provides students with an opportunity to see the world in a variety of ways that are fundamentally grounded in meaningful activity and well aligned with the core skills, habits, and understandings of a postindustrial society (Shaffer, 2004b). One early example of such a game is Madison 2200, an epistemic game based on the practices of urban planning (Beckett & Shaffer, 2004; Shaffer, in press). In Madison 2200, players learn about urban ecology by working as urban planners to redesign a downtown pedestrian mall popular with local teenagers. Players get a project directive from the mayor, addressed to them as city planners, including a city budget plan and letters from concerned

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citizens about crime, revenue, jobs, waste, traffic, and affordable housing. A video features interviews with local residents, business people, and community leaders about these issues. Players conduct a site assessment of the street and work in teams to develop a land use plan, which they present at the end of the game to a representative from the city planning office. Not surprisingly, along the way players learn something about urban planning and its practices. But something very interesting happens in an epistemic game like Madison 2200. When knowledge is first and foremost a form of activity and experienceof doing something in the world within a community of practicethe facts and information eventually come for free. A large body of facts which resists out-of-context memorization and rote learning comes easily if learners are immersed in activities and experiences which use these facts for plans, goals, and purposes within a coherent knowledge domain. Data shows that in Madison 2200, players formor start to forman epistemic frame of urban planning. But they also develop their understanding of ecology and are able to apply it to urban issues. As one player commented: I really noticed how [urban planners] have to. think about building things. like urban planners also have to think about how the crime rate might go up, or the pollution or waste depending on choices. Another said about walking on the same streets she had traversed before the workshop: You notice things, like, thats why they build a house there, or thats why they build a park there. Perhaps this epistemic game doesnt seem as game-like as SimCity, or Full Spectrum Warrior. The players in Madison 2200 do enjoy their work. But more important is that the experience lets them inhabit an imaginary world in which they are urban planners. The world of Madison 2200 recruits these players to new ways of thinking and acting as part of a new way of

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seeing the world. Urban planners have a particular way of addressing urban issues. By participating in an epistemic game based on urban planning, players begin to take on that way of seeing the world. As a result, it is fun, too.

Transformation

Games like Full Spectrum Warrior and Madison 2200 expose novices to the ways professionals make sense of typical problems. But there are also games that are designed to transform the ways of thinking of a professional community, and such games tend to focus instead on atypical problems: places where ways of knowing break down in the face of a new or challenging situation. Just as games that initiate players into an epistemic frame depend on epistemographic study of the training practices of a community, games designed to transform an epistemic frame depend on detailed examination of how the mature epistemic frame of a practice is organized and maintainedand on when and how the frame becomes problematic. These critical moments of expectation failure (Schank, 1997) are the points of entry for reorganizing experienced practitioners ways of thinking. Building the common assumptions of an existing epistemic frame into a game allows experienced professionals to cut right to the key learning moments. For example, work on military leadership simulations has used goal-based scenarios (Schank, 1992; Schank, Fano, Bell, & Jona, 1994) to build training simulations based on the choices military leaders face when setting up a base of operations (Gordon, 2004). In the business world, systems like RootMap (Root Learning http://www.rootlearning.com) create graphical representations of professional knowledge, offering suggestions for new practice by

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surfacing breakdowns in conventional understanding. Studies of school leaders similarly suggest that the way professionals frame problems has a strong impact on the possible solutions they are willing and able to explore (Halverson, 2003, 2004). This ability to successfully frame problems in complex systems is difficult to cultivate, but Halverson and Rah (2004) have shown that a multimedia representation of successful problem framing strategiessuch as how a principal reorganized her school to serve disadvantaged studentscan help school leaders reexamine the critical junctures where their professional understanding is incomplete or ineffective for dealing with new or problematic situations.
Epistemic games and the future of schooling
Epistemic games give players freedom to act within the norms of a valued community of practicenorms that are embedded in non-player characters like the virtual soldiers in Full Spectrum Warrior or real urban planners and planning board members in Madison 2200. To work successfully within the norms of a community, players necessarily learn to think as members of the community. Think for a moment about the student who, after playing Madison 2200, walked down the same streets she had been on the day before and noticed things she had never seen. This is situated learning at its most profounda transfer of ideas from one context to another that is elusive, rare, and powerful. It happened not because the student learned more information, but because she learned it in the context of a new way of thinking an epistemic framethat let her see the world in a new way. While there are not yet any complete epistemic games in wide circulation, there already exist many games that provide similar opportunities for deeply situated learning. Rise of Nations and Civilization III provide rich, interactive environments to explore counterfactual

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historical claims and help players understand the operation of complex historical modeling. Railroad Tycoon lets players engage in design activities that draw on the same economic and geographic issues faced by the railroad engineers in the 1800s. Madison 2200 shows the pedagogical potential of bringing students the experience of being city planners, and we are in the process of developing projects that similarly let players work as biomechanical engineers (Svarovsky & Shaffer, 2004), journalists (Shaffer, 2004b), professional mediators (Shaffer, 2004c), and graphic designers (Shaffer, 1997). Other epistemic games might involve players experiencing the world as an evolutionary biologist, or tailor in colonial Williamsburg. But even if we had the worlds best educational games produced and ready for the shelves, its not clear that most educators or schools would know what to do with them. While the majority of students play video games, the majority of teachers do not. Games, perhaps for their anti-authoritarian aesthetics and inherently anti-Puritanical values, can be seen as challenging to institutional education. Even if we strip aside the blood and guts that characterize some video games, the reality is that as a form, games encourage exploration, personalized meaning-making, individual expression, and playful experimentation with social boundaries all of which cut against-the-grain of the social mores valued in school. In other words, even if we sanitize games, the theories of learning embedded in them run counter to the current social organization of schooling. The next challenge for game and school designers alike is to understand how to shape learning in terms of games, and how to integrate games and gamebased learning environments into the predominant arena for learning: schools. How might school leaders and teachers bring more extended experiments with epistemic games into the culture of the school? The first step will be for superintendents and public

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spokespersons to move beyond the rhetoric of games as violent-serial-killer-inspiring-timewasters and address the range of learning opportunities that games present. Understanding how games can provide powerful learning environments might go a long way toward shifting the current anti-gaming rhetoric. While epistemic games of the kind we describe here are not yet on the radar of most educators, they are already being used by corporations, the government, the militaryand even by political groupsto express ideas and teach facts, principles, and world views. Schools and school systems must soon follow suit or risk being swept aside.

A new model of learning

The past century has seen an increasing identification of learning with schooling. But new information technologies challenge this union in fundamental ways. Todays technologies make the worlds libraries accessible to anyone with a wireless PDA. A vast social network is literally at the fingertips of anyone with a cell phone. As a result, people have unprecedented freedom to bring resources together to create their own learning trajectories. But classrooms have not adapted. Theories of learning and instruction embodied in school systems designed to teach large numbers of students a standardized curriculum are antiquated in this new world. Good teachers and good school leaders fight for new technologies and new practices. But mavericks grow frustrated at the fundamental mismatch between the social organization of schooling and the realities of life in a post-industrial, global, high-tech society (Sizer, 1984). While the general public and some policy makers may not have recognized this mismatch in the push for standardized instruction, our students have. School is increasingly seen as irrelevant by many students past the primary grades. Thus, we argue that to understand the future of learning, we have to look beyond

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schools to the emerging arena of video games. We suggest that video games matter because they present players with simulated worlds: worlds which, if well constructed, are not just about facts or isolated skills, but embody particular social practices. And we argue that video games thus make it possible for players to participate in valued communities of practice and as a result develop the ways of thinking that organize those practices. Our students will learn from video games. The questions are: who will create these games and will they be based on sound theories of learning and socially conscious educational practices? The American Army, a longtime leader in simulations, is building games like Full Spectrum Warrior and Americas Armygames that introduce civilians to military ideology. Several homeland security games are under development, as are a range of games for health education, from games to help kids with cancer better treat themselves, to simulations to help doctors perform surgery more effectively. Companies are developing games for learning history (Making History), engineering (Time Engineers), and the mathematics of design (Homes of Our Own). This interest in games is encouraging, but most educational games to date have been produced in the absence of any coherent theory of learning or underlying body of research. We need to ask and answer important questions about this relatively new medium. We need to understand how the conventions of good commercial games to create compelling virtual worlds. We need to understand how inhabiting a virtual world develops situated knowledgehow playing a game like Civilization III, for example, mediates players conceptions of world history. We need to understand how spending 1000s of hours participating in the social, political, and economic systems of a virtual world develops powerful identities and shared

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values. We need to understand how game players develop effective social practices and skills in navigating complex systems, and how those skills can support learning in other complex domains. And most of all, we need to leverage these understandings to build games that develop for players the epistemic frames of scientists, engineers, lawyers, and other valued communities of practiceas well as games that can help transform those practices for experienced professionals. Video games have the potential to change the landscape of education as we know it. The answers to fundamental questions such as these will make it possible to use video games to move our system of education beyond the traditional academic disciplines, derived from medieval scholarship and constituted within schools developed in the industrial revolution, and towards a new model of learning through meaningful activity in virtual worlds as preparation for meaningful activity in our post-industrial, technology-rich, real world.

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References
Beckett, K. L., & Shaffer, D. W. (2004). Augmented by reality: The pedagogical praxis of urban planning as a pathway to ecological thinking. Under review by Journal of Educational Computing Research. Gee, J. P. (in press). What will a state of the art video game look like? Innovate. Gordon, A. S. (2004). Authoring Branching Storylines for Training Applications. Paper presented at the 2004 International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Santa Monica, CA. Halverson, R. (2003). Systems of practice: How leaders use artifacts to create professional community in schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 11(37). Halverson, R. (2004). Accessing, documenting and communicating practical wisdom: The phronesis of school leadership practice. American Journal of Education, 111(1), 90-121. Halverson, R., & Rah, Y. (2004). Representing leadership for social justice: The case of Franklin School. Under review by Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schank, R. C. (1992). Goal-Based Scenarios (No. 36). Evanston, IL: The Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University. Schank, R. C. (1997). Virtual learning: A revolutionary approach to building a highly skilled workforce. New York: McGraw Hill. Schank, R. C., Fano, A., Bell, B., & Jona, M. (1994). The design of goal-based scenarios. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3, 305-345. Shaffer, D. W. (1997). Learning mathematics through design: The anatomy of Escher's World. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 16(2), 95-112.

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Shaffer, D. W. (2004a). Epistemic frames and islands of expertise: Learning from infusion experiences. Paper presented at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), Santa Monica, CA. Shaffer, D. W. (2004b). Pedagogical praxis: The professions as models for post-industrial education. Teachers College Record, 106(7). Shaffer, D. W. (2004c). When computer-supported collaboration means computer-supported competition: Professional mediation as a model for collaborative learning. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 15(2). Shaffer, D. W. (in press). Epistemic Games. Innovate. Sizer, T. R. (1984). Horace's compromise: The dilemma of the American high school. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Svarovsky, G., & Shaffer, D. W. (2004). SodaConstructing knowledge through exploratoids. Under review by Journal of Research in Science Teaching.

FULL SPECTRUM WARRIOR: HOW THE INSTITUTE FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES BUILT A COGNITIVE TRAINING TOOL FOR THE XBOX
James H. Korris The Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California Marina del Rey, CA 90292 1. ABSTRACT Microsofts popular game console, the Xbox, combined the possibility of compelling training efficiencies with formidable obstacles to development, both in terms of the business model, the limitation of the Windows 2000 computer inside it and the systems standard humanmachine interface. In its mission to leverage the capabilities of the entertainment industry to develop next-generation simulation tools, the Institute for Creative Technologies turned to this inexpensive, powerful platform for its Squad level cognitive tactical trainer. This paper will describe the pedagogical and technological challenges and unique processes that translated Squad level command doctrine to a commercial game interface and a cost-effective, universally-accessible computational medium 2. INTRODUCTION Founded in August 1999, the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) is a University Affiliated Research Center at the University of Southern California. Its mission focuses on the development of enabling technologies for immersive virtual reality that may be used in creating the next generation of virtual training applications for the US Army. In addition to the intellectual resources of the university, the ICT is intended to leverage the technologies and techniques of the US entertainment industry, particularly filmed entertainment and interactive entertainment software. In 1997, a National Research Council study1 suggested that, in certain respects, the entertainment industry had surpassed military simulation, historically, the innovator in computational simulation. By refining story, character, graphical and sound qualities, entertainment product developers had, for their very survival, honed their ability to attract and hold users attention with compelling content. The ICT was an effort to capture that corpus of expertise and apply it to the development of the US Armys simulation needs. It followed that platforms for the ICTs research and prototype applications would fall broadly into two groups: (a) novel, often large-scale interfaces to display, for example, life-sized entities driven by high-end rendering solutions and (b) readily available, generally inexpensive COTS hardware. It was in this context that Microsoftss Xbox, a popular game console, was considered as the release platform for an application involving the Armys smallest Light Infantry maneuver unit: two Fire Teams constituting a nine Soldier Squad. The application came to be known as Full Spectrum Warrior (FSW), the first military training application published for a commercial game console. 3. COGNITIVE TRAINING CHALLENGE Since the fall of the Soviet Union, US Army missions have changed with an emphasis on critical thinking and decision-making even at the lowest echelons. Operations in urban terrain against asymmetric, insurgent or transnational enemies often put a great burden of responsibilities on the youngest Soldiers. The ICT sought virtual training opportunities that would exercise a critical faculty of judgment in challenging, real-time circumstances. A Southwest Asian urban and ex-urban terrain environment was developed with an asymmetric enemy in the overarching context of a peacekeeping mission. Missions are simple and, due to the limitations of the computational platform, model the behaviors of a single Squad with a roughly equal number of enemy and civilians. The maximum number of autonomous entities present at any given time in the simulation is approximately forty. FSW puts the player in the role of the Squad Leader. However, the primary audience for FSW is the Soldiers in a Squad, not the Squad Leader himself. By taking the bosss job, Soldiers might deepen their appreciation for the correct execution of dismounted battle drills in the urban context. Moreover, the Squad Leaders role has a greater range of decision-making responsibility and authority than Fire Team members and consequently constitutes a greater cognitive challenge than the role of the individual Fire Team member. Working with Subject Matter Experts from the United States Army Infantry Center at Fort Benning, care was

taken to adhere faithfully to schoolhouse TTP and doctrine in the behaviors of the Soldiers under the players command. In cases where there was no single unambiguous approach to accomplishing an objective (e.g. room clearing), efforts were made to provide editable choices to the user. To emphasize the cognitive decision-making aspects of the experience, the player only issues orders to on-screen characters. The player has no weapon: a very unusual choice in a military-themed, entity level simulation. In the interest of developing decision-making skills, mechanical skills, e.g. firing a weapon, dealing with equipment malfunctions, were deemed a distraction. Also, the player cannot be God and freely move about the environment. He moves with his troops; his situational awareness is limited by their movements and perceptions. 4. THE XBOX PLATFORM Microsofts Xbox game console, introduced in November 2001, runs a modified version of Windows 2000 (with DirectX 8.0a) that includes security features that allow Microsoft to rigorously control access to the platform. The Operating System memory footprint in RAM is less than 3MB. It is, like other game consoles, a plug and play component that is intended to have the stability and ease-of-use of an appliance. It weighs 3.86 kg and measures 31 cm X 27 cm X 10 cm. It arrives equipped to display on a standard definition NTSC television (maximum resolution 640 X 480), but with optional cables it can display at High Definition television resolution (1920 X 1080). Audio interconnects range from RF encoded television mono to AC-3 5.1 optical SPDIF. Its current MSRP is $149.99. Xboxs 800 internal components include an Intel custom 733MHz Pentium III with a 133 MHz Front Side Bus and 64 MB of Micron DDR SDRAM. The graphics components manufacturer, nVidia, developed a custom 250 MHz (XGPU) graphics processor for the system. nVidia claims 125 M/second polygons and a maximum anti-aliased pixel fill rate of 4.0 G/second. Xbox comes equipped with an 8GB or 10GB hard drive. There are no user-serviceable parts in the system. While the specifications are not impressive for modern desk-top systems, the price represents a very attractive value. With complete control over the Operating system, drivers and components, the Xbox is optimized for gaming applications. The choice of Xbox for the FSW platform was driven by several considerations. First, with a standard-equipped

hard drive, the system offered persistence with the ability to capture a session and review in AAR (After Action Review). Second, amongst all game consoles, only Xbox is produced by an American company. Third, its graphical and computational performance matched or exceeded the competition. Finally, developing applications for the Xbox system is, from the standpoint of numerous developers, somewhat easier than writing for Sonys Emotion Engine system in PS2. From the user standpoint, leveraging Xbox meant exploiting a skill set that numerous young Soldiers bring with them to service in the US Army. The majority of new recruits are, at a minimum, casual gamers; a significant percentage are serious gamers. Since there is overall intentional consistency between console applications in application management, menu systems and overall system operation, there is a potential efficiency in training for training by developing applications for what is already a familiar simulation environment. 5. BARRIERS TO ENTRY: THE XBOX BUSINESS MODEL The efficiencies arising from Xbox publication do not come without hurdles. Unlike developing applications for personal computers, a developer does not simply write and compile code, make copies and distribute them freely. Access to the Xbox platform, as noted previously, is rigorously controlled by Microsoft. In this respect, Microsoft does not differ from other game console manufacturers. These are proprietary, incompatible systems which are developed at considerable expense, with estimates of up to $125 lost on every Xbox sold2. Profits are made from buyers who purchase discs over time, with each disc paying a platform license to Microsoft of approximately $10. Given this business model, it is not surprising that Microsoft has concerns about consoles used in circumstances that limit the purchase of new content. If a developer created a business productivity suite for Xbox with email, word processing and spread sheet applications utilizing the Datel Xbox QWERTY keyboard, he would pose a serious threat to Microsofts Operating System and productivity software businesses. If he used the Xboxs 100BT Ethernet port to connect to an office subnet, he could overcome the platforms storage limitations with server-based storage. A supervised workplace would limit game play opportunities, so no games would likely be purchased or used. This kind of scenario makes console manufacturers cautious about the kinds of applications they certify.

THE FSW SOLUTION

The ICT approach in FSW went to one of the basic tenets of the Institutes mission: leveraging Southern Californias regional capability in entertainment content creation. Given the abundance of creative talent available on a project-by-project basis in the area, there was no need to duplicate the capability at the ICT. Rather, arrangements were made to contract with a developer (Pandemic Studios) and a special effects house (Sony Imageworks) to execute plans developed at the ICT. In this way, with minimal permanent staffing, the ICT was able to conceive, formulate, direct and manage the process and provide the greatest value-add to the overall process. As a matter of course, Microsoft reserves the right to deny access to its platform to any developer. Put differently, no console manufacturer will pre-approve an application. This serves to preserve a standard of product content including application stability, user interface and constraints on language, nudity and violence. Additionally, it protects the platform producer from the single-disc scenario described above. Early on, the ICT bound its contractors to a milestone requiring commercial publication of a version of FSW, thus avoiding a publication shut-out. The Armys FSW, it was determined, could be hidden on the disc with an unlock code made available to Soldiers. 7. THE INTERFACE Since the ICTs tasking on FSW included the use of the standard Xbox configuration, there were serious design challenges arising from the platforms human-machine interface. A standard Xbox controller has two thumb-controlled joysticks, a directional key, two proportional trigger keys (mounted below) and eight pushbuttons: two left and six right. There is no keyboard and consequently no convenient way to enter text. There is no mouse, so pointing and clicking, while possible, is more awkward than with desktop and laptop systems (see Figure 1):

Figure 1: Xbox Controller S All simulation is, to some extent, an abstraction of the real world. If FSW had been a First Person Shooter simulation, the user interface would have been a simple matter. Pointing, shooting and steering all map readily to console controllers. But in FSW, the player only issues commands to characters visible on-screen and, as noted previously, does not carry a weapon. The solution to the challenge of creating meaningful interaction with the simulations entities came in part from what was dubbed the Action Cursor. Moving the left joystick in FSW instantiates a cursor which anticipates movement orders from a Squad Leader to a Fire Team. These choices include an Object Formation, Corner Formation, Door Formation, Breach Door/Building, etc., and are derived from the physical context of the cursor orientation (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Action Cursor shown on street Orders are given to Fire Teams; switching between Teams is accomplished by pressing the red B button. Once the Action Cursor location is placed in an acceptable location with an implied formation/action, the green A button executes the order. Bounding overwatch using buddy teams is ordered by pressing and
holding the A button during a movement order. The full interface command set is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 5: Nudge interface command set Figure 3: FSW default controls The directional key accesses the nudge system. It was determined that typical Squad Leader interactions include the physical nudging of individual Soldiers positions and orientations. The nudge system begins with the identification of a Fire Team member. Directional key mapping of the four Fire Team members is visible in the lower-left corner of the screen at all times. Grenade launch trajectories are also accessed through the nudge system. Once a Fire Team member has been selected for a nudge, the camera switches to a close-up view (see Figure 4). One interesting challenge arose from the resolution limitations of standard definition television display: optimally, 640 X 480. In the subtended field of view depicted on the main application screen, OPFOR would normally be visible in the mid far range depicted in the simulation. The solution was an iconic widget that floats over the distant OPFOR (see Figure 6) highlighting a character who might not otherwise be seen in this lowerresolution display.

Figure 6: Red icon revealing OPFOR 8. USER PARAMETERS/AAR Figure 4: Nudge view of Team Leader Nudge commands are limited: it was deemed unrealistic to give players the ability to move Soldiers around like chess pieces. A nudge can move a Soldier a few inches, change his individual cover sector or rotate him. The nudge interface command set is shown in Figure 5. FSW is a customizable training tool and has a significant number of user-adjustable parameters for the simulation: density and aggressiveness of OPFOR and civilians, wind speed and direction, training levels of Squad members (untrained soldiers make the application more difficult) and Rules Of Engagement (ROE). All of these are accessible prior to each simulation run. Additionally, Squad equipment is allocable both before and at any time during a simulation session.
For After Action Review (AAR), the entire session is captured on the Xbox hard drive and may be replayed in real or variable time with VCR-like controller functionality (see Figure 7).
Figure 9: XAI threat lines revealed in AAR playback 9. Figure 7: AAR Playback Controls In AAR mode, the camera is freely movable around the simulation terrain map. Finally, FSW includes an implementation of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) developed at the ICT by Dr. Michael Van Lent. This capability reveals entity vision cones (see Figure 8) and threat lines (see Figure 9) during AAR playback. CONCLUSIONS
FSW, the first military training application published for the Microsoft Xbox, demonstrated the feasibility and utility of leveraging inexpensive COTS game consoles to solve a US Army cognitive training challenge. While the challenges of working within the limitations imposed by console manufacturers are formidable, careful planning can ensure a positive outcome. A practical and flexible user interface was developed proving that rich entity interactions were possible with standard console human-machine interfaces. A fullfeatured AAR makes FSW a potentially useful classroom tool. Finally, FSW is a further proof-of-concept for the ICTs mission to leverage the US entertainment industrys wealth of talent, techniques and technology in the development of a new generation of COTS-based cognitive simulation training tools.
Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1997. 2 Will Xbox Drain Microsoft?, David Becker, Joe Wilcox, C|Net News.com, March 6, 2001 Figure 8: Entity vision cones revealed during AAR playback