Journal Articles by Dennis Ramirez
International Journal of Game-Based Learning, 2013
This paper describes the process of rapid iterative prototyping used by a research team developin... more This paper describes the process of rapid iterative prototyping used by a research team developing a training video game for the Sirius program funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). Described are three stages of development, including a paper prototype, and builds for alpha and beta testing. Game development is documented, and the process of playtesting is reviewed with a focus on the challenges and lessons-learned. Advances made in the development of the game through the playtesting process are discussed along with implications of the rapid iterative prototyping approach.
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Games For Health Journal, 2014
Having diverse faculty in academic health centers will help diversify the healthcare workforce an... more Having diverse faculty in academic health centers will help diversify the healthcare workforce and reduce health disparities. Implicit race bias is one factor that contributes to the underrepresentation of black faculty. We designed the videogame ‘‘Fair Play’’ in which players assume the role of a black graduate student named Jamal Davis. As Jamal, players experience subtle race bias while completing ‘‘quests’’ to obtain a science degree. We hypothesized that participants randomly assigned to play the game would have greater empathy for Jamal and lower implicit race bias than participants randomized to read narrative text describing Jamal’s experience.
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Book Chapters by Dennis Ramirez
The Gameful World
This chapter examines the application of game design elements in learning systems (which themselv... more This chapter examines the application of game design elements in learning systems (which themselves often include games), describing the work we’re doing to use game design elements in the social systems that encompass games. It begins by describing our general project of socio-cultural learning theory applied to games, in part to contextualize preceding work. We then discuss how so-called gamification techniques are applied “in the wild” with entertainment games to promote learning, and then finally, how they are currently being designed into our learning systems. The chapter closes with reflections on using gamification for social change.
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Papers by Dennis Ramirez
Springer eBooks, 2014
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Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, 2013
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International journal of game-based learning, Oct 1, 2013
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The field of games and learning encompasses research around the design of educational games, the ... more The field of games and learning encompasses research around the design of educational games, the ways in which teachers and players use commercial games for educational purposes, and even ways in which game-like systems are being implemented to make learning more engaging. The first section of this entry outlines several foundational theories for games, learning, and engagement, including flow, the zone of proximal development, and hard fun, as well as principles of learning that are often embedded in good game design. The second section includes a discussion of the ways that games are designed for and used for learning – to teach content and to introduce players to new ways of being, including providing entrance to new knowledge domains and discourses. The final section describes emerging trends in the educational games and the games and learning field, including the gamification of education, badges, and embedded assessment strategies. Keywords: digital media; gamification; interactive multimedia; learning; teaching; video games
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Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 2016
In this paper, we examine the influence of Christianity on the religious narrative of Twitch Play... more In this paper, we examine the influence of Christianity on the religious narrative of Twitch Plays: Pokemon. Twitch Plays: Pokemon was a new take on a well-known game by allowing over 100,000 players to control the same character simultaneously, which resulted in the character’s chaotic movements and gameplay decisions. In order to derive meaning from the chaos, the Twitch Plays: Pokemon community banded together and developed a sophisticated narrative surrounding the game. This narrative was highly religious in nature. We argue that this sophisticated narrative heavily referred to major religious figures, texts, imagery, and structure in Christianity in order to create shared meaning and experiences of the game among Twitch Plays: Pokemon community members. Having this shared meaning and experiences allowed the Twitch Plays: Pokemon religion to proliferate.
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Encyclopedia of Science Education, 2014
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Games+Learning+Society Conference, 2014
In traditional formal learning environments, students typically have two options: succeed or fail... more In traditional formal learning environments, students typically have two options: succeed or fail. Though there may be real world merit to this type high-stakes system, we suggest that there is more to learning than a simple dichotomous outcome. In this paper, we leverage two areas of educational reform, games and making, to demonstrate a need to broaden our definition of failure and reconceptualize it as an integral part of the learning process. Rather than stigmatizing failure as a detrimental endpoint to learning, we discuss how these domains (games and making) expect and design for failure as part of the mastery process. We offer implications for learning and assessment with the hope of sparking a conversation among policymakers, educators, and designers of learning environments
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International Journal of Game-Based Learning, 2013
This paper describes the process of rapid iterative prototyping used by a research team developin... more This paper describes the process of rapid iterative prototyping used by a research team developing a training video game for the Sirius program funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). Described are three stages of development, including a paper prototype, and builds for alpha and beta testing. Game development is documented, and the process of playtesting is reviewed with a focus on the challenges and lessons-learned. Advances made in the development of the game through the playtesting process are discussed along with implications of the rapid iterative prototyping approach.
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The purpose of this demonstration is to present how video games can communicate cutting-edge scie... more The purpose of this demonstration is to present how video games can communicate cutting-edge science research topics to a new generation of players. Researchers in the Games, Learning, and Society Center (GLS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison collaborated with partners at the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery (WIDs) to develop and refine a suite of educational video games to explore topics such as limnology, virology, regenerative medicine, and ecological science rarely studied in the realm of educational spaces. Several games develop collaborative participatory science skills while expanding games based learning into adult informal learning. The presentation will begin with brief history of CyberSTEM implementation, followed with a hands-on demonstration of the iterations in the most current form, and will close with a audience discussion of the direction of CyberSTEM and its social network.
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This chapter contains sections titled: Games as Socially and Culturally Situated Systems, Gamific... more This chapter contains sections titled: Games as Socially and Culturally Situated Systems, Gamification for Learning through Achievement Systems, The Potential and Challenge of Gamification as Alternative Accreditation, Gamification for Learning through Narratives and Quests, Conclusion, References, Gameography
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Games for Health Journal, 2014
Having diverse faculty in academic health centers will help diversify the healthcare workforce an... more Having diverse faculty in academic health centers will help diversify the healthcare workforce and reduce health disparities. Implicit race bias is one factor that contributes to the underrepresentation of Black faculty. We designed the videogame "Fair Play" in which players assume the role of a Black graduate student named Jamal Davis. As Jamal, players experience subtle race bias while completing "quests" to obtain a science degree. We hypothesized that participants randomly assigned to play the game would have greater empathy for Jamal and lower implicit race bias than participants randomized to read narrative text describing Jamal's experience. University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate students were recruited via e-mail and randomly assigned to play "Fair Play" or read narrative text through an online link. Upon completion, participants took an Implicit Association Test to measure implicit bias and answered survey questions assessing empathy toward Jamal and awareness of bias. As hypothesized, gameplayers showed the least implicit bias but only when they also showed high empathy for Jamal (P=0.013). Gameplayers did not show greater empathy than text readers, and women in the text condition reported the greatest empathy for Jamal (P=0.008). However, high empathy only predicted lower levels of implicit bias among those who actively took Jamal's perspective through gameplay (P=0.014). A videogame in which players experience subtle race bias as a Black graduate student has the potential to reduce implicit bias, possibly because of a game's ability to foster empathy through active perspective taking.
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Given enough time, a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters will produce the complete... more Given enough time, a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters will produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Under a similar premise, the phenomena that is Twitch Plays Pokemon has set out to see if order can arise from chaos. Can a thousand gamers at a thousand computers can collectively beat the game Pokemon? In this paper we analyse the phenomena of Twitch Plays Pokemon using Gee’s (2003) framework of big G Games ((G)ames).
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The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, 2015
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Given enough time, a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters will produce the complete... more Given enough time, a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters will produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Under a similar premise, the phenomena that is Twitch Plays Pokemon has set out to see if order can arise from chaos. Can a thousand gamers at a thousand computers collectively bear the game Pokemon? In this paper we analyse the phenomena Twitch Plays Pokemon using Gee's (2003) framework of big G Games ((G)ames).
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In traditional formal learning environments, students typically have two options: succeed or fail... more In traditional formal learning environments, students typically have two options: succeed or fail. Though there may be real world merit to this type high-stakes system, we suggest that there is more to learning than a simple dichotomous outcome. In this paper, we leverage two areas of educational reform, games and making, to demonstrate a need to broaden our definition of failure and reconceptualize it as an integral part of the learning process. Rather than stigmatizing failure as a detrimental endpoint to learning, we discuss how these domains (games and making) expect and design for failure as part of the mastery process. We offer implications for learning and assessment with the hope of sparking a conversation among policymakers, educators, and designers of learning environments.
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AERA, 2014
A central challenge to educational videogame research is capturing salient in-game data on play a... more A central challenge to educational videogame research is capturing salient in-game data on play and learning. ADAGE
(Assessment Data Aggregator for Game Environments) is a click-stream data framework currently being developed by
the Games+Learning+Society research center to facilitate standardized collection of embedded assessment data across games. ADAGE integrates core game design structures into a
click-stream data (telemetry) schema, which is then seeded with context vital to informing learning analyses. These data can be used to identify patterns in play within and across players (using data mining and learning analytic techniques) as well as statistical methods for testing hypotheses that compare play to content models. Three provided analysis examples show this diversity, combining applied statistics with Markov modeling and classification tree visualization. Overall, ADAGE provides a
standardized game telemetry framework with a rich, method-agnostic data yield, efficient enough to have scalability, and flexible enough to use across games.
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Journal Articles by Dennis Ramirez
Book Chapters by Dennis Ramirez
Papers by Dennis Ramirez
(Assessment Data Aggregator for Game Environments) is a click-stream data framework currently being developed by
the Games+Learning+Society research center to facilitate standardized collection of embedded assessment data across games. ADAGE integrates core game design structures into a
click-stream data (telemetry) schema, which is then seeded with context vital to informing learning analyses. These data can be used to identify patterns in play within and across players (using data mining and learning analytic techniques) as well as statistical methods for testing hypotheses that compare play to content models. Three provided analysis examples show this diversity, combining applied statistics with Markov modeling and classification tree visualization. Overall, ADAGE provides a
standardized game telemetry framework with a rich, method-agnostic data yield, efficient enough to have scalability, and flexible enough to use across games.
(Assessment Data Aggregator for Game Environments) is a click-stream data framework currently being developed by
the Games+Learning+Society research center to facilitate standardized collection of embedded assessment data across games. ADAGE integrates core game design structures into a
click-stream data (telemetry) schema, which is then seeded with context vital to informing learning analyses. These data can be used to identify patterns in play within and across players (using data mining and learning analytic techniques) as well as statistical methods for testing hypotheses that compare play to content models. Three provided analysis examples show this diversity, combining applied statistics with Markov modeling and classification tree visualization. Overall, ADAGE provides a
standardized game telemetry framework with a rich, method-agnostic data yield, efficient enough to have scalability, and flexible enough to use across games.