Use Minimal Computing Principles to Facilitate GBL

Although I did not know about minimal computing principles when I first set out to develop open educational resource (OER) card games back in 2016, I became enthusiastic when I discovered this movement in July 2019 because it advocates for approaches that make technology and, by proxy, game design more accessible. It isn’t about using the most expensive hardware (Kim Brillante Knight), undergoing extensive training (Anne McGrail), or having the flashiest website (see what I did there, Stewart Varner?). It’s about getting started with what you have, using what you know, and keeping it simple, stupid (KISS). It’s doing one thing and doing it well (DOTADIW). It’s focusing on user experience (UX). It’s getting things done (GTD). It’s probably other acronyms, too. I used all of this to help me be successful as a game designer without any experience in the field, or even much knowledge of the world of tabletop gaming. And now I want to explain how you can apply minimal computing approaches to game-based learning (GBL).

GBL is distinct from gamification. GBL uses games to teach students, whereas gamification applies game mechanics to the course itself. For example, a book history instructor might use my game, Codex Conquest, to help her students consider the relative financial and social value of books. In this case, the game is a part of a broader lesson plan that serves as a component of an overall course. But if that same instructor created a leaderboard that she rolled into the classroom every day, and that leaderboard tallied students’ respective wins on completing tasks, like correctly identifying book components identified in Sarah Werner’s Studying Early Printed Books 1450-1800 (Wiley 2019) from a selection of items drawn from special collections, that instructor gamified her class. Both GBL and gamification lead to improvements in learning outcomes, but as this piece is dedicated to GBL, I’ll only suggest you review a 2016 meta-analysis of GBL’s efficacy in undergraduate English, Math, and Science classes.

Game design isn’t easy. After all, game design is both a profession and a highly popular amateur pursuit. Those who seek formal credentials can go to programs at universities like Rochester Institute of Technology, Savannah College of Art and Design, and the University of Southern California. These programs teach students how to make and sell games, drawing from fields as diverse as art, business, creative and technical writing, graphic design, marketing, programming, and statistics. Those who pursue game design as a hobby base their design work on their intimate knowledge of games combined with the advice provided in resources like the Board Game Design Lab podcast, Board Game Designers’ Forum, and Board Game Geek.

I suspect few college and university instructors engage in amateur game design for pedagogical purposes because we are trained to obtain subject expertise and to be highly sensitive to our own limitations whether they are in our discipline or, especially, in areas outsize our specialization. We’re often perfectionists: we need solutions that work correctly, immediately. Even if we embrace the value of iteration and teach our students to have grit and develop a growth mindset, our administrators may be less amenable to classroom flops. Or maybe it’s not even that; maybe it’s just the baseline problem that afflicts all of us—we don’t have the time or energy to engage in activities without an immediate, predictable output. Those who take on the task of making educational games are rare. Often they gradually switch their career to make it a significant focus, or even a primary focus in their work, like Dustin Staats of Board Gaming with Education or John Coveyou of Genius Games.

So how do you incorporate GBL into your courses if you are interested in the strategy but don’t know where to start? Minimal computing principles suggest you do minimal design, limit what the game does, and use as little infrastructure as possible. Apply these methods by first attempting NOT to do game design. See what is already out there. Go to OER Commons, hit Discover, and find Games under Material Types. As of October 10, 2019, 434 options are listed. Discover if anything fits your needs. If you do, great; you’re done. If you find something similar that you like, but need to adapt it, you’ll engage in what the tabletop game design world calls “re-theming.” Listen to Evan Derrick, Steven Aramini, and John Brieger to learn more before you begin. The next stage in avoiding game design is to adapt (re-theme) a non-copyrighted game that isn’t originally meant for educational use. Do this by reviewing games in the public domain and make sure to thank the Texas Federal Court for ruling in DaVinci Editrice S.r.l. vs. Ziko Games, LLC that copyright law does not protect game mechanics and combinations. If you must design a game, identify your learning objective, review this list of game mechanics, and start iterating on paper immediately. Focus on creating the minimum viable product (MVP). MVPs are an idea from business that emphasizes providing only the features customers really need to get products to market quickly. Doing so also allows developers to learn more information from customers about what they should offer in future product iterations. Choosing to concentrate on one learning objective versus several goals will help you create an MVP and will allow you to move forward with the project quickly.

This discussion brings us to the final minimal computing principle: use as little infrastructure as possible. All an OER game needs are an abstract and rules on one file and cards on another. An abstract for a game is like one written for an article, only instead of discussing the research question, methodology, and findings, you’ll need to cover the theme, mechanics, play time, player level, and (hopefully) list your CC BY 2.0 license status. After this, write your rules as clearly and concisely as possible. The abstract and rules should be on a Word document or plain text file, not a PDF, so they can be edited by others. Then create the game in a commonly understood environment, such as PowerPoint. While PowerPoint offers less advanced options for design and layout in comparison to, say, Adobe InDesign, more people can tailor PowerPoint, and the software is more affordable. Finally, place your two files in your institutional repository and on OER Commons.

Games pack a pedagogical punch. Learning how to bring this technique to your courses will help you increase student learning while having fun. And minimal computing offers strategies to make introducing games to your classroom simpler.