ProActive Project

ProActive (Fostering Teachers' Creativity through Game-Based Learning) is a two years project in the EU LLL program (Project Number: 505469-LLP-1-2009-1-ES-KA3-KA3MP) which started on January 2010. The project tackles creativity in the context of lifelong learning by stimulating creative teaching practices through the use of different learning metaphors in various educational levels. Through a constructivist approach, the project is creating learning contexts where teachers and trainers can apply creativity in designing their own game-based learning (GBL) scenarios by using digital tools. ProActive offers to teachers and trainers the possibility to use GBL as an innovative and imaginative approach in their teaching practices, in order to enable them to create learning environments interesting and engaging for their students.

In 2009, the European Year of Creativity and Innovation aimed to raise awareness of the importance of creativity and innovation for personal, social and economic development. The initiative addressed a wide spectrum of related themes such as fostering artistic and other forms of creativity through pre-school, primary and secondary education including vocational streams, as well as non-formal and informal education, ICT as media for creative self-expression, and promoting innovation as the route to sustainable development.

More specifically, the main objectives of ProActive are:

1. To stimulate the creativity of teachers / trainers working in LLP sub-programmes, developing a conceptual framework for integrating different learning metaphors;

2. To introduce innovative ICT-based experiences in teaching / training practice, adapting and enhancing the game editors, integrating five learning metaphors;

3. To implement co-design creativity sessions and pilot sites for addressing school, university and vocational education scenarios;

4. To validate the proposed approach as a means of learning and evaluate its impact on teachers’ creativity and students’ outcomes.

As final results, ProActive will produce guidelines on creativity enhanced by Game-Based Learning and disseminate a database of Game-Based Learning scenarios and related active learning culture within EU education.

The project is carried out by a consortium of six partners from four countries in Europe (as shown in Table 6.1 ), covering various education and training systems and learning cultures.

According to many authors, the educational system in many countries does not promotecreative teaching / learning processes (Robinson, 2006; Ferrari et al., 2009). Indeed, formal education does not facilitate creative behaviours and skills from students. Learners most often act as recipient of methods, pedagogies and knowledge (Ferrari, et al. 2009). Teachers tended to give importance to relevance, competence and the need to avoid mistakes (Ferrari, et al, 2009). Indeed, formal education has created a culture that often "accepts only what is relevant" (Beghetto, 2007). According to Runco (1999), teachers prefer “conforming” and “considerate” students. Moreover, Ng and Smith (2004) state that teachers often dislike personality traits associated with creativity, as such persons are often dogmatic and will stand for their own ideas against everything and everyone, are self-confident, ambitious, passionate about their work and have a tough skin.

However, during the last part of the 20th century and early part of the 21st, creativity has been seen to be increasingly significant in education, within cultural policy discussions, starting with the landmark advice of the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE, 1999). Many authors (e.g. Craft, 2005; Sawyer, 2006) suggest that creativity should be an important educational objective: “in today’s knowledge societies, one of the key missions of the schools is to educate for creativity” (Sawyer, 2006). Current pedagogical discourses attempt to view learners as the centre of teaching and learning processes, with an active role in the production of knowledge and meaning, democratically bringing their expertise, experiences and ideas into the classroom (Williamson & Payton, 2009) and thus stimulating also creativity. Nevertheless, creativity still does not seem to play a central role in the curriculum or learning objectives that teachers are asked to follow in every country (Cachia et al., 2009).

On the basis of Runco (1999), Sharp (2004) and Boghetto (2007), Ferrari et al. (2009) present a model opposing implicit and explicit theories of creativity.

“Implicit theories refer to the tacit and shared knowledge of ordinary people regarding creativity, while explicit theories refer to scientific research findings. This model reflects the change of scope regarding creativity that moves towards a personal approach in which there is a creative potential in all individuals and in different knowledge domains.”

ProActive aims at fostering teachers' / trainers’ creativity. Thus, the project adopts an approach of personal creativity, in which the creative potential is in all individuals, and can be applied to all domains.

ProActive’s psycho-pedagogical framework links the concepts of creativity, Game-Based Learning, game design and the five learning metaphors in an integral whole. Although the term Game-Based Learning (GBL) has not been given a precise definition, it has been around for almost two decades. Several authors, such as Prensky, Aldrich, Jenkins or Gee, have been discussing Game-Based Learning definition is and potential in well-known articles and books (Gee, 2003; Prensky, 2001), thus laying the basis of Game-Based Learning concepts. Therefore, we can define Game-Based Learning as the use of computer or other digital games of any kind as tools that support learning in a meaningful way. Thus, Game-Based Learning is a trend which analyses the good characteristics of digital games together with their relation with learning, and proposes strategies and paradigms to take advantage of them for education.

For the reasons mentioned above, an increasing number of teachers and trainers recognize the value of digital games in education. However, they are not sure how to bring Game Based Learning approaches into the field. Indeed, some barriers to the implementation of Game-Based Learning in formal learning settings have been identified within a study conducted by BECTA on COTS (BECTA, 2008).

In order to overcome the above mentioned challenges, ProActive proposes a framework in which teachers / trainers would design their own learning games. Indeed, available market games generally do not match curricular objectives. The big companies tend to ignore the educational market because of the difficulties posed by a wide and varied curriculum, a lack of interest on behalf of educational policy makers, the inability of schools to find the sort of money that commercial games tend to command and also the security issues associated with large institutions with small IT budgets. Thus teachers / trainers may benefit from ProActive, by developing games for themselves that have direct relevance to their teaching objectives.

A constructivist approach to Game-Based Learning is adopted, where teachers and trainers will develop innovative learning artefacts that are interesting and engaging for their students. The game design process will foster educator’s creativity. The metaphors of learning will work as guidelines for the project participants in the creation of educational games as they raise awareness and promote reflection on different learning models and guide the game construction. Furthermore, as a result of the situated design process, a creative product will be obtained – a learning artifact (i.e. an educational game), tailored to the learning needs, institutional and curricular constraints and which can be shared with students. Such creative product is pedagogically innovative, useful and adapted to a specific teaching / learning context.

The psycho-pedagogical framework has been be central in several tasks in ProActive. First of all, it provides basis for the organisation of the training and implementation that is taking place in eighteen pilot sites in four European countries (Italy, Romania, Spain and UK). Moreover, training materials for the teachers and trainers are being developed to correspond to the proposed approach. Finally, the ProActive evaluation framework and appropriate evaluation tools are designed as consequence of the elicited methodology.

Traditionally, teachers and trainers used in their practice a dominant learning paradigm: the instructional, thus limiting their creative potential and inhibiting learning. Recent studies instead show that in normal situations learners combine different metaphors to a lesser or greater degree simultaneously: Imitation, Participation, Acquisition, Exercising, and Discovery(Simons, 2003, 2004, 2008). In ProActive we consider that we don’t learn in just one way, but in different ways that depend on personal aptitudes, on the situation where learning takes place and on the content to be learnt. The five metaphors learning model (Simons, 2003, 2004, 2008) is a description of different ways of learning in different people, embedded with learning theories. It can be treated as a comprehensive model that comes out by combining some learning models with the theories of change by De Caluwé and Vermaak (1999). The result is a classification of the ways of learning into five groups (one per metaphor), each one representing a preference for learning that is not exclusive. In fact, every person is able to use all metaphors, but each one in a different situation. The core idea is that we don’t learn in a sole way, but in different ways that depend on personal aptitudes, on the situation where the learning takes place and on the content to be learnt (Simons & Ruijters, 2004).

Simons (2003) recognizes that we need a language to talk about learning in less educational ways, incorporating implicit, social, collective and dynamic learning and describing different ways of learning besides the traditional perspective on training. The aim of the metaphors is to find an escape from automatic educational thinking when designing workplace learning trajectories.

In fact, although in formal contexts of learning teachers use a sole dominant paradigm, relevant studies show that it is quite different in the ways of learning in everyday contexts. If in formal learning contexts we learn essentially in individual situations from abstract concepts that are separated from the contexts where these concepts will be applied, in everyday life we learn from direct experience using the concept directly in the real situation where they have to be applied in interaction with others.

Simons’ work on learning metaphors has been chosen as core psycho-pedagogical model for ProActive since it offers a comprehensive explanation of possible situated learning experiences. The strenghtness of this model in respect of others (Marzano, 2000; Costa & Kallick, 2009) is, in fact, the focus on contextualized educational theories rather then on cognitive instructional paradigms.

Despite this model is a core reference for the ProActive project, it has anyway to be contextualized and adapted to our methodology and purposes. In fact, the metaphor model is quite unrefined and uses the existing literature on learning in not ever clear and compatible ways. Simons’ core contribution is that learning can be experienced in different ways, but the metaphors in Simons’ work are analyzed basing on organization and professional learning literature, so we have adapted them, as follows, in order to cover also formal educational contexts (schools and universities) and psycho-pedagogical literature.

Our thinking is that everyone can learn in different ways, which depend on the context of learning, the actors involved in the learning process and the artifacts used for learning, etc. Starting from this socio-cultural approach on learning we also claim that artifacts are not neutral: they reflect the psycho-pedagogical model adopted by the artifact designer.

The five metaphors are: acquisition, imitation, experimentation, participation and discovery, and are briefly described below:

Taking into account the metaphors in the design phase of the activity can help teachers to increase the pedagogical value of the resulting GBL experience. Besides, thinking about which metaphors they want to use is a way for teachers to escape from the traditional learning model and include innovative and creative teaching practices in their daily strategies.

In order to design meaningful GBL activities, it is important to consider many aspects. Indeed, the game should be perceived as embedded in a learning scenario that takes into account the different parameters of the teaching/learning context. While planning their GBL scenarios, teachers/trainers should take into account the specific characteristics of the learning audience, the specific learning objectives, the evaluation approach, the time-space resources or the technical requirements of the games. Moreover, the step by step organization of the learning activities (i.e. structure of the activities before, during and after the game) should be planned.

Success factors for the construction of a good educational game have been identified. Three different dimensions have been pointed out, namely gaming aspects, learning aspects and technical aspects.

Within gaming aspects, it is important to take into account that the game should include final objectives, but might also have intermediate / short‐term goals in order to facilitate the player in reaching the final ones. The game should be based on clear and consistent rules. Players should strive for continuous improvement. This can be achieved by increasing level of difficulty. However, the level of challenge should not surpass the level of possibilities, in order not to discourage the player. Players should be able to perceive the impact and consequences that their actions have in the game world, in order to be informed about how they are performing, check their progress continuously, and enable them to eventually adjust their actions. Positive feedbacks are often associated with rewards, which help the player in the achievement of the objectives and acts as a mechanism to increase engagement and immersion. The game should be engaging, exciting and interesting for the wider possible number within the target group of students. This is achieved by using game elements like an interesting plot / story, an appealing environment / virtual world, contextualization, challenging goals, etc. The player should feel willing to play the game more than once. It's important to verify that the game includes jokes, humor, or any other elements required to make it more fun. But be aware these elements will not suit every game! (Inaccuracies in content can be dramatic in educational settings).

For what concerns the learning aspects, teachers should consider how well the game fit with their educational objectives. They should also check that the contents, puzzles and language used are adequate for their students, taking into account aspects like age, skills, knowledge level, socio-cultural context, etc. It is highly recommended that teachers provide additional content to students to reinforce learning. It could be provided as additional links, books, reading notes, etc., but also as content that is embedded in the game. These aspects should be considered from the beginning when the learning scenario is being designed. The game should be included in a wider learning scenario which might include other learning activities, such as further discussion / reflection sessions in the classroom, group activities, reports, presentations, homework, etc. The level of challenge of the learning experience should be high enough to keep students engaged but without surpassing their abilities so they do not become frustrated. The game should provide a context in which the level of autonomy of the learner is adequate. Moreover when the GBL scenario is put into practice, it's important to verify if students are really more motivated.

Finally, and considering the technical aspects, the game should be user-friendly and easy to use, so as to allow the player to concentrate on the objectives and not on dealing with a bad interface. The graphics should be appropriate for the target group. For example, cartoon styles are appropriate for kids, while photo-realistic environments are better for teenagers or university students. It is desirable that the game could be reused in different contexts without the need of complex and costly modifications. Besides teachers could be interested in adapting the games produced by other teachers.

Thus, the main goal reached during the ProActive project process, still in progress, has been to involve teachers coming from three different educational setting (school, university and professional organization) and from four different Contries (Spain, Italy, UK and Romania) in the creation of educational scenarios employing digital tools provided by the partnership (Picture : Teachers developing their GBL scenarios). One of the game editor is EUTOPIA.