The social learner: privileging field-dependent learning styles via meta-narratives

13Feb09

The previous discussion of field-dependent learning styles grew out of its shell in attempting to discuss field-dependent learning styles, game design and motivation for media consumption. A lot of the points raised in the previous attempt were interesting, particularly the discussion of what actually constitutes “social orientation”. Is social orientation real-life social situations, or portrayals of situations where the audience’s subject position attempts to resolve social (that is, interpersonal) conflicts through social mechanics.

What follows is an attempt to concretize and relate motivational styles and learning styles directly to game design patterns. Of course, since no-one appears to have related FDI to game design before, the learning styles are collected from studies into education.

The following table suggests ways of motivating field-dependent students:

• Through verbal praise
• Through helping the teacher
• Through external rewards (stars, stickers, prizes)
• Through showing the task’s value to other people
• Through providing outlines and structure

Garger and Guild (1987)

While games generally reward users for good performance through higher scores and even special effects like particle fireworks, they generally don’t tell the player what they did well and how. I assume that verbal praise refers to a more complex form of feedback than a grade or numerical score, involving specific feedback that is contextualized by the expectations of the party providing the feedback as well as the level of skill apparent in the praised outcome.

While a field-independent learner may be motivated by numeric feedback because they are likely to have their own conceptual model of how hard it is to attain a given score, this does not appear to be particularly valuable to a field-dependent. This is the reason for assuming that verbal praise (as in spoken praise, or as in verbose, that is articulated and directed praise?) is more than just a pat on the back, and communicates praise of certain qualities in a user’s work/outcome.

However, the point regarding external rewards can also be mapped onto high scores and visual rewards — or trophies and achievements? How can traditional game rewards be appropriated for field-dependents? It appears gamers who care about achievements are more interested in the gamerscore they accrue than the actual achievements. The gamerscore is also featured prominently on gamercards, whereas individual achievements can only be seen by accessing and digging into the profile the gamercard is an aggregate of.

The gamerscore is seen as a measure of a gamer’s ability and enthusiasm — regardless of what achievements the score is made up of. Since my assumption is that a majority of current hardcore gamers are field-independent, this could be quite relevant. The following table suggests ways to motivate field-independent students:

• Through grades
  
• Through competition
  
• Through choice of activities, personal goal chart
  
• Through showing how the task is valuable to them
  
• Through freedom to design their own structure

Garger and Guild (1987)

Gamerscore as well as traditional high score tables could be seen as a way of grading users (this is interpreted as relating to grading since grading is usually in the form of a number, or a letter symbolizing a numeric range), as opposed to verbal feedback.

The game Katamari Damacy provides numeric feedback upon completion of every level, but in very general fashion: The diameter of your katamari (Japanese for “clump”) is given, as well as its size relative to everyday objects like footballs, buckets, trees, houses, clouds, islands and skyscrapers. The player is also informed of what constitutes the largest proportion of the katamari, be it candy, people, houses or plants.

What makes Katamari Damacy stand out is that the primary form of feedback is the condescending appraisal of the katamari by the avatar’s (or in the context of the game, the player’s) selfish, unappreciative father, The King of All Cosmos. The objective of the game is to clean up the mess he made while drunkenly shambling around the universe, breaking stars. Upon entering each level, the avatar, the King’s miniscule son, the Prince, is told about all the nice things his father is going to do while he cleans up the mess and restores order.

While the method of informing the user about the restrictions and goals of each level is delivered in a condescending manner, these interludes reveal a lot about the King of All Cosmos, and also about his dysfunctional relationship to his son. The game’s sequel, Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy (We Love Katamari in the west) shares the same structure, but this time the hapless Prince is forced to reply to all the fan mail sent to the King by fans of the first game. Parallell to this story, the Prince learns about his father’s traumatic youth and learns how he came to become such a selfish oaf.

In terms of the game, the King of All Cosmos is nothing but an anthropomorphized status screen that doles out objectives and rewards, but they are given additional meaning by attaching an emotional investment in the tragic relationship between the Prince and the King. Coincidentally, this game was curiously successful among non-traditional gamers, particularly women. This is very uncommon for what’s essentially a quirky, Japanese cult title. Tellingly, its creator, Keita Takahashi, is not very fond of videogames and would most of all prefer to make toys.

Katamari Damacy’s approach to structure of discreetly mixing gameplay objectives, player skill evaluation and storytelling maps well with the suggested ways of motivating field-dependents without excluding field-independents. Even games like Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, a highly abstract shoot’em-up, provides both social interaction and competition through the user’s score being compared to the closest high score from the user’s friend list. While this approach is nowhere near as radical as Katamari Damacy’s feedback mechanisms, it is an elegant way to put the user’s efforts in a more social context.

In order to discuss this further, we’ll take a look at another list suggesting field-dependent ways of learning and methods for teaching field-dependents

• Learn the concepts first
• Then concentrate on details
• Like to be introduced to information with humor and color
• Can work with distracters
• Take frequent breaks
• Works on several tasks simultaneously
• Needs lessons that are interesting to them
• Need written and tactual involvement
• Respond well to pictures
• Discover through group learning

Whitefield (1995)

At this point, it is relevant to revisit the point in Forests, not trees concerning social environments. The question is whether the social orientation mentioned in the list of learning characteristics exclusively refers to a learning in a social context (working with others in a group, or open discussion in a classroom setting), receiving feedback in a social manner (conversation or personalized written feedback, as opposed to a grade or mark) or learning information that can be employed in a social context (useful trivia, good conversation subject matter, knowledge or skills that can be applied in a manner that will garner attention in a social situation).

Other possibilities is that social orientation refers to learning about events sparked by social or cultural relationships, learning concepts that can deepen understanding of social dynamics or learning concepts that can deepen understanding of social or cultural differences.

The big question is whether the knowledge or the feedback needs to relate to or originate from a real-life social setting, or if a simulated social setting will do. The privileged position of drama in western culture (and many others) as a setting for discussing and conceptualizing the human condition suggests that convincing or interesting social simulations are appealing to many, if not most, people.

However, the explosion of social network applications and new channels for communication on the internet implies that participating in or observing social interactions between real people (though it can certainly be contested how “real” the representations people construct of themselves on social networks really are) is very attractive, and perhaps something many computer users feel is an integral part of the computer entertainment experience.

However, the efficacy of social networks to motivate in an educational context seems to be an under-explored territory. The fact that many seem to find social networks attractive doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a natural place in the current discussion. More to the point: Can the method and form of dramatized social feedback exemplified by Katamari Damacy be considered as a form of social orientation?

If so, a group of engaging, recurring characters providing the user with objectives, context and feedback should be motivating to field-dependents in a way high scores and competition is not. Otherwise, the opportunity to share accomplishments, invite feedback from friends or acquaintances, perform work that progresses an entire group of people and collaborate in order to complete objectives should be motivating.

Filed under: Cognitive theory, Field-dependence/independence, Game design   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Cognitive theory, Game design