This document outlines a proposed game-based learning approach to address complex issues like climate change. It involves players joining virtual guilds to research quests on various topics. Guild members would work together on their avatars to harvest and organize information into a structured format. Their collective work would be submitted as a game move, building out a conversation tree over time. The goal is to promote collaboration, knowledge sharing, and improved understanding of multifaceted problems through participatory gameplay.

1. Game-based
Learning Landscape
and Opportunities
Jack Park
For the CO2 Foundation
13 March, 2019
© 2020, TopicQuests Foundation
PhotobyBekirDönmezonUnsplash

2. Outline
• Big Picture and Background
• Solution Introduction
• Solution Elements
• Benefits
• Next Steps

3. Big Picture
• Climate issues are made wicked
by partial perspectives on
complex issues
• Solving climate issues requires
learning how to work with
incomplete information
• Participatory culture, gamified as
quests, can augment learning
experiences Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash
Goal: Learn how to form perspectives on complex situations

4. Problem Space
• Too much information (info glut)
• Missing information
• Proprietary and not available
• Massive amounts of tacit knowledge
• Trust
• Heterogeneity
• Language (vernacular, dialects, etc.)
• Different world views on same topic
• Complexity
• Everything is connected

5. Outline
• Big Picture and Background
• Solution Introduction
• Solution Elements
• Benefits
• Next Steps

6. People: Empowerment and Taking Ownership
“Say a child raises this beautiful
beet. It's going to give her a sense
of ownership, and that changes
everything. You stop taking things
for granted; you become less
wasteful. – David Chang
“It’s not the tools you have faith
in. Tools are just tools — they
work or they don’t work. It’s the
people you have faith in or not .
–Steve Jobs
Photo by Michal Vrba on Unsplash

7. Thinking about solutions
• Conversation as a basis for co-
creation and ownership of
solutions
• How to conduct conversations
on a massive scale?
Source: https://www.goalcast.com/2018/04/09/11-margaret-
mead-quotes/margaret-mead-quote-2/

8. “I would rather hire a
high-level World of
Warcraft player than
an MBA from Harvard”
John Seely Brown
By Joi Ito - originally posted to Flickr as John Seely Brown, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7495540

9. A Working Hypothesis
Participatory culture,
played as quests,
can unify stakeholders
around augmented
cognition processes and
promote ownership
Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash

10. Outline
• Big Picture and Background
• Solution Introduction
• Solution Elements
• Benefits
• Next Steps

11. Role-playing Games
• Games in which People have
Roles to Play
• Quests
• Guilds
• Game Moves
Photo by Kyle Pham on Unsplash

12. Quests
• A Quest is a Well Posed Question
• What are the effects of
CO2 on climate?
• A Quest serves as an attractor
basin
• Attractor basins as theoretical
constructs which define behaviors
• Game moves orbit that attractor
basin
Image of the Lorenz Attractor Basin
representing past climates.
Source: http://eaps4.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/publications.htm

13. Guilds
• Small groups of people’s Avatars
playing roles to craft game
moves
• Roles
• Leadership
• Philosophy
• Game move planning
• Research
• Critic
Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash

14. Avatars
• Psychological Secret Sauce
• A Disguise à Augmented
cognitive processes
• “Studies have demonstrated that
interactions between humans
while they are embodied in
avatars have distinct
psychological implications both
for the user and for others who
may interact with the virtual
representation.”* Photo by Steven Libralon on Unsplash
* Avatar Psychology (2014). https://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2014/avatar-psychology/

15. Outline
• Big Picture and Background
• Solution Introduction
• Solution Elements
• Benefits
• Next Steps

16. Benefits
• Benefits
• Learned behavior in Guilds
• From Ego-centric to Eco-centric behaviors
• Collaboration skills
• Leadership skills
• Personal Knowledge Ownership – just for me
• Game moves as Fresh Information Resources
• Crowd-sourced
• Civil
• Improved Trust
• Structured for easy access and analysis

17. Outline
• Big Picture and Background
• Solution Introduction
• Solution Elements
• Benefits
• Next Steps

18. A Modest Approach
• Small Guilds and Online
Infrastructure
• In response to a quest, guild
members
• harvest climate-related claims from
web resources
• harvest claims in a structured format
• { Subject, Predicate, Object }
• { forests, release, carbon
dioxide }
• Claims in that structure form
concept maps familiar to students
Forests
Carbon
Dioxide
Greenhouse
Gas
isArelease

19. Harvesting Claims From A Webpage
Visit page in note-taker tool
Copy a sentence into
comment field, then harvest a
claim and submit
View new Journal Entry

20. Benefits of That Approach
• With 4 to 5 Guild members, their
claims are collected and
organized in a single server: a
Hub.
• A concept map of their research
is formed and maintained
• Credit is assigned to each
contribution
• That concept map becomes the
guild’s Game Move
Member
Hub
Member
Member
Member

21. Closing With Game Moves
• Guilds submit their game moves
• Game moves respond to the
Quest
• A conversation tree grows
• That conversation tree will be
groomed
• Claims which are duplicates will be
merged
• Credit assignment is made
according to scoring rules
Quest

22. Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
Let’s enable improved learning
opportunities for everyone
Contributors:
Marc-Antoine Parent
Jack Park
Martin Radley
Mark Szpakowski
jackpark@topicquests.org
http://www.topicquests.org/
https://slideshare.net/jackpark/
https://github.com/topicquests