Replaying history Learning world history through playing Civilization III

REPLAYING HISTORY: LEARNING WORLD HISTORY THROUGH PLAYING CIVILIZATION IIIKurt D. Squiresubmitted to the faculty of the School of Educationin partial fulfillment of the requirementsfor the degreeDoctor of Philosophyin the Instructional Systems Technology DepartmentIndiana UniversityJanuary 2004Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.         _Sasha A. Barab, Ph.D.        _Thomas Duffy_Lee Ehman_Henry Jenkins              COPYRIGHT PAGE                c (2004)Kurt D. SquireALL RIGHTS RESERVED                        Kurt SquireReplaying History: Learning World History through playing Civilization III  Digital games is an emerging entertainment medium that an increasing number of educators are examining as tools for engaging learners. Yet, few models exist for how to use contemporary gaming media in formal learning environments. A commercial historical computer strategy game such as Civilization III is an intriguing artifact to examine in classroom contexts because of its wide appeal, design sophistication, and unique affordances as a world history simulation. Civilization III represents world history not as a story of colonial domination or western expansion, but as an emergent process arising from overlapping, interrelated factors. The purpose of this study is to explore what happens when Civilization III, a complex computer game developed in entertainment contexts enters formal learning environemtns. This dissertation presents three naturalistic case studies in which Civilization III was used as the basis for a unit on world history in urban learning environments. I examine how the game engaged players, the social interactions that occur, how understandings emerge, and what role game play serves in mediating students understandings. In all three cases, engagement was a complex process of appropriation and resistance, whereby the purposes of game play was negotiated among students identities, classroom goals, and the affordances of Civilization III. Civilization III engaged each student in unique ways, and this engagement affected the kinds of questions students asked of their games, the kinds of conceptual understandings that arose through game play, and the interpretations they made about history. History and geography became tools for game play and successful students developed conceptual understandings across world history, geography, and politics. These cases suggest the potential for using simulation games in world history education, but also the significant, unsolved challenges in integrating such a complex game within classroom settings.  _  _  _  _  DedicationDedicated to James Douglas and Janet Kretschmer, two people who taught *Table of ContentsI. Introduction7II. Game-Based Learning in World History22III. MethodologyIV. Case 1: The Media SchoolV. Case 2: Media Summer CampVI. Case 3: After-School Computer ClubVII. ConclusionsVIII. ImplicationsChapter I: IntroductionStatement of the ProblemA growing number of researchers and scholars are acknowledging the cultural impact of digital games (Gee, 2003; King & Borland, 2003; Poole, 2001). Digital gaming is now an $18 billion global industry that many media scholars see as being a dominant "lively art" in the upcoming decades (Jenkins, in press). As Jim Gee (2003) argues, games are not only pushing the creative boundaries of interactive digital media but also suggesting powerful models of next-generation interactive learning environments. Those in the “edutainment industry, as well as the teachers and students who support it, appear to agree. Year after year, social studies edutainment games such as The Sims, SimCity, Age of Empires, Railroad Tycoon and Civilization dominate the PC gaming sales charts (Squire, 2002). Many social studies teachers seem eager to exploit this new medium, as simulation games such as SimCity are installed on school computers throughout the country and thousands of teachers download the SimCity 3000 teachers guide (Bradshaw, 2002; Teague & Teague, 1995). Despite the commercial success of and educators' growing interest in games like Pirates!, SimCity 3000 or Civilization, very little is known about how such games might be used as tools for learning. Although a growing number of educators, industry leaders, and political leaders have suggested that SimCity or Civilization could be used in social studies classrooms (Berson, 1996; Hope, 1996; Kolson, 1996; Lee, 1994; Prensky, 2001; Teague & Teague, 1995), there are to date no empirical research studies examining their effectiveness in classroom environments. Important questions persist about how teachers might use such simulations and how learners come to understand them. How might we leverage these games for use in formal or informal learning environments? What happens when you bring a complex world history simulation game such as Civilization III into the classroom? Does such a complex game one that often positions players in situations where “academic knowledge and understanding can be leveraged for real use in problem-solving provide opportunities for supporting new kinds of learning? Or might the simplifications (hence distortions) inherent in any simulation reinforce, or even cause misconceptions about important historical, cultural, or geographical phenomena? That simulation games can potentially distort the phenomena they are meant to model has been widely acknowledged. In his critique of SimCity, city planner Kenneth Kolson (1996) notes that SimCity distorts the powers of a mayor in public planning, discounts the historical importance of race and ethnicities in the evolution of cities, and overestimates the appeal of public transportation to most Americans. Similarly, Barkin (2001) notes that in attempting to capture, quantify and operationalize the dynamics of culture, Civilization III offers an ostensibly problematic concept of culture drawn from French and German theories of culture that is foreign to any anthropologist. This problem of simplification/distortion of “reality in games is exacerbated by the fact that edutainment products are typically developed and marketed as entertainment products first, and then appropriated for use in classrooms second. Other tensions, such as the tension between playing the game as a bounded semiotic system versus reflecting on the game as a model representing some more substantial phenomena in the world beyond it, may very well be endemic to the medium. Civilization III, developed by Firaxis and published by Infogrames in 2001, provides unique opportunities for thinking about the role of games in world history (Squire, 2002). World history is an emerging area of scholarship and teaching which seeks to understand broad patterns in human activity patterns that cut across traditional anthropological, geographic, historical, and disciplinary boundaries. From this perspective, the entire world is included, eschewing Eurocentric or colonialist perspectives that have historically characterized similar research. Contemporary world historians such as Jared Diamond, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer for Guns, Germs, and Steel, are excellent examples of such interdisciplinary scholarship. Likewise, in Civilization III, the entire world is again incorporated into the game. In it, the player leads a civilization from 4000 BC to the present, managing the civilizations natural resources, finances and trade, scientific research, cultural orientation, political policies and military. I believe that Civilization III makes a particularly intriguing tool for studying world history in that it allows students to examine relationships among geography, politics, economics, and history over thousands of years and from multiple perspectives. Contemporary digital gaming models such as that underlying Civilization III are potentially powerful learning tools that are understudied as a viable educational resource. Studying learning in digital games might teach instructional technologists valuable lessons about how to design interactivity, support online collaboration, or engage users. Understanding how such games are used in formal learning environments might productively inform the design of educational games (Games-to-Teach Team, 2003). At the very least, educational technologists could benefit from paying closer attention how players are already interacting with such “edutainment games and how they are being used in classrooms (Squire, 2003).Despite the lack of formal inquiry into the potential for digital games to support learning, there is a long tradition of using paper-based games and simulations in social studies classrooms (e.g. Clegg, 1991). Unfortunately, most uses of games have been atheoretical; rarely, if ever are they tied to contemporary notions of how people learn or the broader goals of social studies education. Digital games, which bring with them new affordances, possibilities, and potential problems, have yet to be seriously studied in classroom contexts.Building on this past research in (largely paper-based) games in social studies education, I argue that educators need to examine not just the game player system, but the broader social contexts of game play. Cooperative and competitive social arrangements frame game play activity. In some cases, the social context of game play the kinds of reflection activities, discussion, collaboration, and competition that emerge in game play are as important as the game itself in determining what activity emerges and what learning occurs. Prior research has assumed a priori what the learning goals and outcomes of game-based learning environments should be, treating games as content transmission systems as opposed to tools to think with. I argue that games might be more conducive to constructivist instructional approaches, whereby learning is an inferential, interpretive process and learning outcomes are intricately tied to the goals, intentions, and motivations of the learner (e.g. Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy & Perry, 1996).Indeed, if the activity outside of the game (discussions, research, knowledge sharing) are as important as the game itself, then educational game researchers need a theoretical model which accounts for both student-game interactions and student-student interactions. I argue for a cultural-historical approach to understanding learning in game-based learning environments, as it allows researchers to examine not only the role of the game in learning, but how social structures mediate activity. Theoretical FoundationUnderlying these debates about the potential of games to support learning are theoretical questions central to instructional design, educational technology, identity and learning, teaching world history, and the learning sciences more generally. Both proponents and critics of digital game-based learning have habitually assumed objectivist epistemologies and transmission models of learning, whereby the game contains fixed meanings which are broadcasted to a passive game-playing recipient (e.g. Prensky, 2001; Provenzo, 1991). How players infer meanings from game play, construct understandings about game worlds, and then relate these experiences to non-gaming experiences is not entirely clear; where do players draw lines between fantasy and reality? How do players know when a game is realistic and when it is not? How do players explore game worlds as systems and how do they treat these understandings of game systems?Most educational game research has treated game play as isolated psychological phenomena, ignoring the broader social contexts of game playing and social relationships that envelope most gaming experiences (e.g. Grossman, 2000, Malone, 1981). Treating the learning context as an interaction between an isolated player and a game as an isolated system is problematic on several levels; games are frequently competitive endeavors where players test skills against other players, cooperative exercises where players work together to solve problems (whether it be in single player or multiplayer games), or simply excuses for friends and families to socialize. Minimally, game play as social practice can be characterized by the social purposes it serves, the social relationships which become folded into game play, and the formal and informal communities that arise in support of game play. For educators interested in harnessing the power of games to support learning (e.g. Games-to-Teach, 2003; Media X, 2003; Prensky, 2001), this challenge of how to account for both the person-tool interaction and the broader social contexts in which gaming is situated and game meanings are created is crucial (Squire, 2002). Elsewhere (e.g. Squire, 2002), I have argued for adopting a socio-cultural learning perspective to understand gaming (In What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Jim Gee also draws from socio-cultural learning theory in describing how learning occurs through gaming). Socio-cultural learning theory (defined more precisely in the theoretical section) offers game-based educators several insights into learning through game play: (1) Knowledge is described not as facts to be memorized but as tools which mediate activity (Barab, Hay, Barnett, & Squire, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978); (2) Socio-cultural learning theory encourages researchers to view game play not as purely a human-computer interaction phenomena, but as a socio-cultural one mediated by classroom microcultures and broader social contexts, including classroom culture; (3) Socio-cultural learning theory provides a framework for understanding students goals and intentions and how these contribute to trajectories of students identities, and (4) a language (a theory of signs, or semiotics) for thinking through how knowledge is represented in games and how this knowledge develops in a learning environment. Of particular interest to me is how socio-cultural learning theory might provide a language for examining classroom practice mediated by game play and situated within classroom cultures. Activity theory, a neo-Vygotskian socio-cultural theory emerging from the Russian School of psychologists offers a particularly interesting lens for educators interested in examining game-based learning environments. Activity theory takes human work as its unit of analysis. For activity theorists, work is organized by an object, which shapes activity and reciprocally is influenced by human actors, as mediated by tools and social institutions. By taking work as the unit of analysis, activity theorists examine the tools, signs, and language which mediate human interaction with object, as well as the social structures, including community norms and divisions of labor which frame activity. As such, activity theory takes the person performing in social contexts, including the social and political environs in which they are situated as the minimal meaningful unit of analysis. Importantly, activity theorists regard humans and the objects of their activity in dialectal relations, shaping and reshaping one another through time. Activity theory is an intriguing theoretical framework for understanding gaming because it focuses researchers attentions not only on how a tool such as Civilization III mediates learning of social studies, but also focuses researchers on how game play is mediated by social structures, which might include school cultures or informal groupings. Given that games are profoundly social experiences (King & Borland, 2003), it is critical that game researchers focus not just on human and computer interactions, but on how emergent game cultures shape gaming activities and the impact that these activities have on cognition. By examining the object, or focus of activity, activity theorists are also interested in how participants view and understand activity, particularly participants objects, goals, or motives. Emerging theory in game studies suggests that gamers approach games in unique ways, and one cannot assume a priori to know a players goals and intentions while gaming (e.g. Bartle, 2003). Influenced by Hegel and Marx, activity theorists are very interested in the material conditions of work, and adopt an historical approach to understanding activity (Engeström, 1999). Humans, their tools, signs, and language as well as the community norms and structures in which they are situated are understood historically by investigating their use in actual settings, frequently through traditional ethnographic, historic, or qualitative case study techniques (Engeström, 1999). Activity theorists enter activity settings, observing and interviewing participants and generating narratives of what activity emerges (e.g. Engeström, 1999). Critical to an activity theory approach is understanding how activity systems are viewed from multiple vantage points and teasing out contradictions among differing activity systems, particularly the contradictions that emerge when activity systems overlap. One might anticipate several contradictions, such as contradictions between using games for enjoyment vs. using games to master social studies, or collaborative communities of inquiry vs. competitive gaming structures. Game-based Educational technologists working in other settings (e.g. Barab, Barnett, Yamagata-Lynch, et al., 2002) have used contradictions to understand change and innovation in a system, finding that contradictions can be a useful tool for refining design experiments. Research QuestionsSpecifically, this dissertation examines what classroom practices emerge and how learning occurs when Civilization III is used as the basis for learning about world history in two learning environments (1) an Humanities enrichment course in a Media and Technology Charter School (Media case) and an after-school computer club program. Using qualitative case study techniques, I examine the following five research questions:1. What practices and contradictions emerge when games are brought into formal learning environments, particularly, how do gaming practices (e.g., competition, learning through failure) intersect with the practices and culture of formal schooling? 2. How does Civilization III engage players in formal learning environments?3. How does learning occur through game play, specifically, how does playing Civilization III remediate students understandings of history?4. What are the pedagogical potentials (affordances) of using games (specifically Civilization III) in world history classrooms?5. How should we design learning activities and environments when using games in formal learning environments?Dissertation OverviewConsistent with Cobb and colleagues (Cobb, Stephan, McClain, & Gravemeijer 2001), this study is a design experiment designed to examine what happens when Civilization III is used as the basis for learning world history in three contexts. The first case is a month-long unit on world history, as a part of a ninth grade humanities class at a Media and Technology Charter School in inner-city Boston. In the second case, a subset of these students participated in a week-long, half-day computer camp investigating the potential of using Civilization III t