Last year we used a lives-lost-per-level ratio to determine which teams of players were most efficient at preserving one another’s lives. Teams with more fluent players were sometimes at an advantage (when they could manage their own lives well) and sometime at a disadvantage (when they were impatient to “win” and didn’t shepherd less fluent players). The best evidence of teamwork came during strategy-planning sessions midway through our experiment as students discovered they could converse and work well with one another before certain levels taxed their patience with the game and one another. We did have the game beaten by the end of the year – a collaborative effort of 22 students (and a few adults).

This year we’re going to play local multi-player Mario Kart. We’ll play for 25-minutes each Friday in groups of four as part of our normal class rotation through stations. We’re going to play like a cycling team dedicated to helping rotating captains win each race. We’re going to graph group members’ placement distributions to find out which teams are best at spreading out first place finishes amongst all group members. Students are already thinking about how to block the bots so less skilled players can win. I’m also thinking about what kind of controller would be best for each student. I need to invest in more Wii Wheels.

My hope is that students will learn to put others’ interests before their own – or even to see how putting others’ before themselves is sometimes in their best interest. I’d like us to work through a similar progression of lessons as we did last year:

• Week 1: Introduce the content and let the kids play; graph the results.
• Week 2: Talk about how difficult it was to spread out the wins; ask what worked; let the kids play; graph the results.
• Week 3: Introduce a goal- and strategy-setting organizer; let the kids play; graph the results.
• Week 4 and onward: continue with goal- and strategy-setting, playing, and graphing; start analyzing graphs for trends, success stories, and strategies to share; maybe start an online strategy guide.

Last year, a small group of students hit a wall when they experienced how much work went into platformer level design and how much that work depended on collaboration between students who acted as researchers and artists. This year, however, we’re demonstrating on a daily basis remarkable pro-academic behaviors that we only inconsistently demonstrated last year. I wonder if we’re ready to stick with game design that integrates curriculum.

I have to figure out how to get kids like me – kids eager to spend hours in sandbox editors – to bridge school content into their worlds, or to draw “real-world” lessons from their design work. It’s a challenge. How do you help a kid move school into his or her quality world when you share a mistrust of what school has been, but don’t have a shared vision of what it could be? (And how can I get Little Big Planet 2 into the classroom?)

Super Mario Brothers Candy by sonson

Here’s a quick post on an imperfect start to using video games in the classroom for teaching the soft-skills necessary for collaboration in a manner (hopefully) authentic and relevant to students’ media experience.

• Teams of 3-4 students played New Super Mario Bros. Wii at a classroom station.
• Teams were asked to win the most levels possible with the fewest lives lost in 20 minutes.
• A teacher kept track of lives lost and levels won on a graphic organizer and took notes, as well, about groups’ pro- and anti-social behavior.
• Lives could also be lost on paper for trash-talking.
• Trash-talking was addressed whenever it occurred, and serial trash-talkers were asked to stop playing.
• The group with the lowest lives lost to levels won ratio was awarded 3 lunch periods on the Wii.

Here are our results (lives lost:levels beat, reduced to the lowest equivalent ratio):

• Group 1 – 10:1
• Group 2 – 6:1
• Group 3 – 50:1
• Group 4 – 22: 1
• Group 5 – 15:1
• Group 6 – 10:1

Here are comments from the groups with the lowest and highest ratios, respectively:

• Comments from Group 2: “Backed up to easier levels; good teamwork and talk; [Student A] led them through the levels and made sure all followed.”
• Comments from Group 3: “Students fought each other and never started working together.”

I can see that Group 3 needs some social stories work before playing together again, and that the difference between Groups 2 and 3 wasn’t necessarily the amount of communication, but the type of communication that went on between group members.  Before the next contest, I’ll use the data and observations from this activity to pose questions for students about the value of strategic thinking, positive communication, and leadership to social learning.  To help make the discussion more personally meaningful to students, I might begin by asking students to figure out the ratios and results from the data after I make it anonymous.

What do you think?  Does the competition undercut the collaboration?  Is the reward appropriate? I’ll follow up later so we can see where the activity goes and whether or not it impacts soft-skills and collaboration in the classroom.