Gaming as Learning

For about 18 months now, I’ve been wrestling with the concept of virtual exhibits, especially how to make them more of an online interactive experience and less of a web page of information. In austere times, virtual exhibits could be cheaper to maintain and reach more people. If you search the Web, you’ll find a nearly infinite number of topical web pages posted by museums or on http://www.nasa.gov, but no one would ever rank these sites as fun or as engaging as their physical counterpart in a museum or NASA visitor center.

At the Association of Science-Technology Centers annual conference last week, a panel of video game experts during the closing session pointed out that “‘virtual’ is the real world in our heads.” They provided attendees with some insights into how designers lure gamers into a world that suspends disbelief.

  • Some of the strengths of gaming for learning are that “game time” augments traditional learning hours and offers non-threatening, iterative (repetitive) learning.
  • Some of the weaknesses of gaming for learning, according to the panelists, lie in times when the gamer leaves the activity before the objective or when the “learner” explores an unintended avenue and potentially creates a long-standing misconception (negative learning).

For anyone thinking about creating a virtual exhibit, here are four elements of successful video game design that might apply to a successful on-line exhibit.

  • Hard fun: visitors should have to work towards a goal, but it’s important to strike a balance between being challenging and frustrating
  • Easy fun: the subject content should offer novelty and be comfortable to explore
  • People fun: there should be a social aspect to the activity
  • Serious fun: the experience should create meaning for the visitor

The common element, of course, is fun.

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The Legible City

The Legible City is the developing concept of hard and soft infrastructure in a community that marries emerging technologies with the explosion of newly available data. The amount of data humans are generating is growing 50% each year and that opens up an ever-increasing number of possible applications for it.

The idea kinda started with an interactive exhibit designed by Jeffery Shaw, in 1988. Essentially, Shaw created a cycle spinning program that could take you through a conceptual version of Amsterdam, Karisruhe and Manhattan. In the former, a visitor could bicycle through streets lined with buildings represented by huge text blocks. In the Manhattan version, you could choose one of eight or so routes, or story lines. Location data on the handlebars, enhanced with real monologues by Koch, Trump, taxi drivers and other New York icons, helped convey content.

Part of the concept of a Legible City is the inclusion of large-scale (public viewed) projects to convey data using new technologies to reach the masses. Unlike giant billboards, publicity pieces or Cristo-type art, such items function to convey useful data that adds to people’s lives. This has interesting implications for NASA exhibits and begs the question “Could the street become the new trade show floor or museum gallery?”

Some examples that come to mind: sculptures that convey current global ocean or Arctic temperatures; office buildings flashing massive walls of live Earth images from the ISS or the Curiosity rover; or large count-up clocks that report the current distances from Earth of the Voyager (or Orion!) spacecrafts.

Google “Legible City” to find more about Shaw’s exhibit or check out links to “Bristol Legible City” for more about the concept itself.

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Obituary

(reposted from July 1, 2013)

It’s not often you get to write your own obituary but here I am faced with saying goodbye as I transition into working retirement. I won’t actually be gone: just working to advance NASA’s mission another way. And if I’m lucky, I may be able to get an LLC launched so we can help others wade through its bureaucracy.

Starting in June 2013, I will have the privilege of serving as the museum director of the Infinity Science Center in Bay St. Louis, MS, which also serves as Stennis’ official visitor center. It’s an incredible opportunity and about the only one that would lure me away from civil service. I could go on about all the wonderful opportunities given me over the past 20+ years, or how much I’ve learned from all the incredible people I’ve worked with but I’ll leave that for another time. Blogs are supposed to be brief.

In the past year or two, it’s become obvious inside and outside of Marshall that its exhibits function is a mature, thriving, productive organism that has definitely come into its own. It’s world class. Who would’a thunk we’d ever have a team of skilled “veterans?” All in one place at the same time!

Someone asked me last week which projects have been my most memorable and why. Just for the record, they would have to be:

  •  “Space Science; Space Exploration,” where I learned tough lessons about targeting audiences
  • “Building a Better World,” where we first learned about handicap accessibility
  • “New Questions,” and the Curiosity rover models, which unshackled us a bit from literal presentation
  • The Freedom and ISS tandem trailers, where we honed our Community Impact Program (CIP) strategy and tactics
  • “Conquering LEO,” which leveraged artifacts to deliver messages
  • “Exploring the Backyard,” although just a concept, it has great potential to inspire on a large scale
  • And of course, “Great Nations Dare,” a life lesson in stubborn, relentless determination.

The way the contractor team has responded to their new contract; the expansion of ex-Exhibits Team members into responsible communications positions elsewhere in OSAC and around Marshall; the way the center is leading a combined SLS/Orion/ESD strategy; and the incredible depth and maturity of the team’s exhibit production and operations skill mix are all signs that the function will continue to be a relevant, needed part of NASA’s communications strategy.

S’long but not goodbye. As I mentioned in a note earlier to the Exhibits Team, it has been an honor to work for you.

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The Intersection of Art and Science

Strange coming from a guy with an art degree who works in a STEM mecca like a science center, but I’ve discovered that I am not a fan of either science or art. At least not in their most basic forms. I’ve known zealots in both fields (siblings and relatives, actually), and at their extremes neither camp seems to show much tolerance for the other. What does excite me, though, is the impact, consequences, and applications that science and art leave behind – especially when both are used together.

The concept of “STEM” was established as an umbrella effort to entice young minds to take up technical careers. But since the student pool is a finite number, for every person who chooses a STEM job, obviously one less goes into a liberal arts career. On the surface, this seems to throw down the gauntlet for competition.

As I see it, though, there are several ways to combine the arts and sciences so that the two career paths coexist without competing. One can be used to help explain the other; each can complement the other, or the two can be combined so that each is more than the sum of both.

To me, the ideal is not to complement but to find true integration. Once you get past the cultural biases in each field, it shouldn’t be that hard to do. Both art and science explore failure, redesign and then do-over. To advance, both rely on revolutionary and evolutionary thinking. Both require intense gray matter time followed by considerable physical labor and field-testing. And since art and science are processes, you can be a scientist, engineer or artist anytime, anywhere.

That said, it seems to me both science and art could be practiced simultaneously with little or no extra effort but producing interesting synergies.

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