Image credit: K20 Center @
University of Oklahoma
The K20
Center for Educational and Community Renewal at the University of Oklahoma is a
statewide education research and development center which promotes innovative
learning through school-university-community collaboration. It is said to be an
“Oklahoma powerhouse of authentic resources for teaching and learning for
Oklahoma’s educators and students in grades K-12.”
K20’s portfolio includes 14 Serious Games, which have been shown empirically to be more effective than traditional learning tools such as lectures and videos.
Through a partnership with OneNet, K20 is now offering these 14 different game-based learning titles at no cost. All Oklahoma schools now have free access to the center's award-winning games. Anyone can request an account to the game portal and the games.
Those titles include Mind Your Own Budget, a hands-on way for students to build financial literacy and meet Oklahoma’s graduation requirements.
MYOB is made up of ten scenarios, which cover all of the Oklahoma financial literacy standards. Scenarios range from moving into a first apartment to starting a business, covering real-life situations like emergency expenditures and bankruptcy. MYOB leverages a phenomenon that James Gee (2005) called Cycles of Expertise, which introduces a concept/skill and provides students repeated cycles where they practice their new skill until they have mastered it.
Image credit: K20 Center @
University of Oklahoma – MYOB game
The scenario Simple Saver
introduces basic budgeting and savings skills. College Coed adds in taxes,
checkbook balancing and savings. In College Grad, students meet loans, debt,
insurance and monthly payments.
Image credit: K20 Center @
University of Oklahoma – MYOB game
Designed for high
school juniors and seniors, Advance U: The Talent Machine, another K20’s title, introduces
the concepts of neuroplasticity — the brain's ability to change throughout life
— and mindset theory.
In the game, a new
program has been enacted at McLaren Academy. A machine has been created that
measures a student’s natural talents and then determines the job that student
is best suited for. Unfortunately, this machine ignores the human capability to
learn and grow beyond the limits of their natural talents. To reclaim their
educational autonomy and stop the machine from being adopted by more schools,
it is up to the students to prove that the TALENT Machine will not work by
learning about neuroplasticity and mindset.
Image credit: K20 Center @
University of Oklahoma – Advance U: The Talent Machine
Object of my prior post MACBETH:
Serious Games To Train Future Intelligence Analysts, MACBETH (Mitigating Analyst Cognitive
Bias by Eliminating Task Heuristics) is a K20’s award-winning strategy
game that puts the player in the position of an intelligence analyst who
manages Intel resources and uses information to foil terrorist threats around
the globe.
Image credit: K20 Center @
University of Oklahoma – MACBETH
The Serious Game
development was commissioned by the Air Force Research Laboratory in support of
the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) to train
intelligence analysts and measure their proficiency in recognizing and
mitigating the cognitive biases that affect intelligence analysis.
In 2013, MACBETH
was awarded The Best Serious Game in both the Business Category and the Special Emphasis Category – Adaptive Force Training by the Serious Games Showcase and
Challenge at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference
(I/ITSEC).
The K20 Center has developed games covering subjects like
evolution, calculus and scientific data collection and interpretation. Please
find all K20’s titles at https://k20center.ou.edu/games
K20’s game-based learning tools range from one-hour
classroom lessons, to an entire curriculum. Best of all, they are available at
no cost for teachers and students in Oklahoma.
K20 Center’s Game Creation & Distribution
Process
The K20 Center
aims to design games that create meaningful learning experiences in a familiar
and engaging way. Their process for developing new games begins with extensive
research and consulting with subject matter experts to develop content that
best meets the educational needs of students while also fostering learning in
students.
After the content is
created, the development process can take several months, as coders and artists
work in tandem to create the game. Once a prototype is created, the game is
then tested within focus groups. Throughout the process, the K20 Center
gathers extensive data and conducts surveys to ensure the content and
appearance of the game is as high quality as possible before releasing to the
public.
Although the K20
Center had successfully designed educational games that were helping to
engage students in important subjects, they still faced difficulties in
distributing the content to schools across the state. Many of the game
development efforts were supported through research grants, and while these
grants helped support the creation of the content, they did not fully cover
costs associated with distribution.
However, with
OneNet’s help, students across Oklahoma can now access all of the K20 Center’s
content, and more teachers can incorporate these tools into their curriculum.
To help the K20
Center ensure students across Oklahoma had access to their materials,
OneNet partnered with the organization to host a virtual server in OneNet’s
data center. The server hosts the gaming software and provides students across
the state with access to the games. By leveraging OneNet’s existing network,
the K20 Center saves substantial time and financial resources. Without
the partnership, the K20 Center would have to dedicate staffing resources to
ensure proper maintenance of the server, while also paying substantially more
to host the games on their personal server.