Using Play to Enhance Learning about Objects:
OOPSLA '02 Workshop

William C. Wake
William.Wake@acm.org
Nov. 12, 2002

 

Links to the "Play" Community

The mailing list for this group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/play-to-learn-oo/ 

Attendees

Games People are Using

Alistair Cockburn: OO design exercise: get into a small group, and design a coffee machine. Then simulate it and see where it works or doesn’t.  

Jane Chandler. “Patterns Happy Families.” (See below.)

 John Towell – MOOs as demonstrating object concepts, and as objects of study.

 ? – Lego robots as an interviewing technique – lets you watch teamwork and problem-solving. (Steve Freeman and Tim McKinnon have a Lego game too.)

Sample Games

We spent about a third of the time trying out games that people had created.

• Pattern Cocktail (Joshua Kerievsky) – Get a pattern card without looking at it. Hold it up to your forehead so you can’t see it. Then go around talking to people as if at a cocktail party. They’ll give you clues, so you can eventually guess your pattern.
• Patterns Happy Families (Jane Chandler) - a “Go Fish”-like card game where you try to find matching parts of Alexandrian building patterns.
• Dungeons & Patterns (Steve Metsker & Bill Wake) – Played one room. The puzzle showed an elf talking to another elf in the back room, and the players had to guess the pattern.
• Coffee Machine (Alistair Cockburn) – Did a quick design session and critique. Our machine could be convinced to give out free cups.

Game “Frames”

From Thiagi (in the simulation & games community): a game structure where you can plug in your own content.

• Poker, Rummy – combining things (melds)
• War – comparing
• Clue – finding clues, building hypotheses
• Charades, Drawing
• Jigsaw puzzle

Game Uses

• Experiential
• Identification
• Do something and reflect
• Role playing (e.g., dancer and choreographer)
• Competition and peer pressure as motivators
• Have a motivating experience and extract lessons from it. Key debrief question: “What was it like for you?”
• Mr. Potato Head – put things wrong and laugh – but you’re building a model of what “bad” looks like. Same for software diagrams etc. (Alistair’s idea?)
• Given an object interaction diagram, could you create the objects for it (fitting them to the problem). (Joe Bergin's idea?)
• Given several control patterns: star, connected graph, cycles, chains, cake, etc. could you tell.
• Two-sided cards for objects – one for their own interface, one they show the world (e.g., parent type). (Daniel Steinberg)
• Shower curtain rings and weedwhacker cord – to demonstrate CORBA interactions. (Dropped ring is like a dropped message.) (Joshua)
• Suggestion for patterns: Use noun names for patterns (“Compressed Time” rather than “Compress Time”)
• Is it a pattern language or a catalog?

Dimensions

We spent some time talking about the dimensions of games and their features.

Steve Metsker proposed a curve: (different types of games may be good at teaching different things)

   Data                             Mixed                          Concepts
   Card games                  Board games               Role play

The group identified:

Game Features

• Goal directedness
• Probabilistic moves
•  (Im)perfect information
• Open/closed world
• Express own information or ideas

 Goals

• Create
• Identify
• Accomplish
• Explore

 Tools: Card, board, roleplay etc.

We broke into two groups and tried to create two new games. (Generally unsuccessfully.)

The pattern language has a start of a catalog; it will be a challenge, but could be extended. It also should be related to the pedagogical patterns work.

Resources

Books

• Teaching with your mouth shut, Finkel
• Books by Thiagi (www.thiagi.com)

Commercial Games

• The Incredible Machine
• Apples to Apples

Links

• www.qube.com
• BlueJ – an education Java IDE
• www.thepalace.com
• “First class” – MOO
• www.thiagi.com
• Pedagogical patterns
• NASAGA – www.nasaga.com - North American Simulation And Games Association