The TOUCH (Technology to Orangutans for Understanding and Communicating cross-species for greater Harmony) project, based at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design, is working on the design of digital systems to enable humans and orangutans to play games together – and, in particular, games where orangutans will almost certainly beat their human competitors.  Orangutans perform particularly well on games similar to pelmanism that rely on visual memory, and will almost invariably out-perform any human challenger.

The Hong Kong orangutans aren’t the first to engage with computer games: Samatran orangutans at Zoo Atlanta have been using them for several years as researchers attempt to understand their cognitive processes in order to help plan interventions to increase the survivability of the species in the wild.  Where the TOUCH project differs is in looking at games primarily as entertainment for non-humans, and as a focal point for enhancing cross-species communication and interaction.

In both projects, as in others, tangible rewards such as food or ‘social praise’ from their human playmates are provided to help train the animals to play within the rules or framework of the game, but many are content to continue playing even without such rewards: game play itself is ‘inherently rewarding‘ for them.  Playing within the rules, or consciously transgressing them, is fundamental to a ludological view of games: construction of the fourth wall, acceptance of the ability to only go up ladders and down snakes and the impossibility of going up snakes or down ladders, is what gives play structure and meaning.  YouTube is full of wonderful clips of all kinds of animals interacting with digital games, but not playing in the sense of following rules; the actual pleasure they get from them is also debatable.

Engaging cats in digital games, either solo or with a human partner, is the focus of Cat Cat Revolution, which is exploring the development of games on the iPad to enable this.  The project’s video, below, shows some varying results, but it’s clear that the game captures the attention and curiosity of the cats, in particular the youngest kitten in the study.  Similarly, iPad Game for Cats, a free game with paid-for additional levels available, clearly provides great entertainment for cats of all sizes.  Unlike TOUCH, which found that many of the orangutans were very happy to play purely for praise and interaction, the extent of the engagement between feline and human participants isn’t clear: while it’s obvious that the humans are getting a great deal of pleasure from playing with and watching their pets, the cats seem interested purely in the game with the human interaction being incidental (but then, they are cats ).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ytTQZ5-Kc[/youtube]

These studies are fascinating.  Positioning animals as digital gamers, and knowing participants within multiplayer, multi-species games can enable us to learn so much more about them, ourselves, and the nature and universals of play.  Most of all, improving the welfare of captive animals and potentially increasing their ability to survive in the wild through skills learned through digital play would be the greatest outcomes of all.

Of course, like kids everywhere, sometimes it’s not the game but the box it came in that provides the most entertainment

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The information here was gathered through fairly informal conversations with the projects, building on the information initially provided in their funding applications.  Information from these calls is added to our project database (PROD) – you can see some of the amazing uses this information can be put to in the series of blog posts Martin Hawksey has produced as part of his work on visualisations of the OER programme, as well as some of the work by my colleagues David, Sheila and Wilbert.

This blog post is rather less ambitious than their work (!), and is intended to provide a quick snapshot of technologies that projects in this specific programme strand are finding valuable for their work.  For more information on the projects in general you can find all my posts on this programme linked from here.

Underlying technologies

Although the underlying technologies – that is, the technologies used by the innovations they’re evaluating – aren’t the direct focus of these projects, I’ve included them as they’re obviously of interest.  They also show the very broad range of approaches and methods being evaluated by this project.

Several of the projects expressed a strong desire to reuse existing tools and resources  such as MS Office and other commercial software solutions, rather than reinvent the wheel by developing new software; there were also very compelling issues around staff training for new systems, staff familiarity and comfort with existing systems and strong pressure from staff, students and management to work within institutional VLEs.

Evidence gathering

As these projects are about collecting and evaluating evidence, the approaches taken to this are of obvious interest.

There was a strong emphasis on interviewing as the main approach, with audio and video interviews being recorded for subsequent analysis and dissemination where appropriate approval has been given.  Jing was the main recording system cited for this.  Surveys (which can be considered a kind of asynchronous interview) were also mentioned, with Survey Monkey being the tool of choice for this.

Less structured impressions were also sought, with Jing again being cited as a valuable tool for capturing staff and student feedback.  Twitter was also mentioned for this purpose.

Evidence analysis

The emphasis of this strand is on qualitative rather than quantitative outcomes, with users’ experiences, case studies and the development of guidance documents and staff development resources being the main focus.

Nvivo was cited as the tool of choice for the transcription and coding of audio and written feedback for subsequent analysis.  Collaborative writing, analysis and version control are the main concern for this part of the projects, and are being addressed through the use of Google Docs and SharePoint.

Standards referenced

The standards used by projects in this programme are fairly generic.  None of these projects are using standards such as those produced by IMS as they were felt to be not really relevant to this level of work.  One project was looking at the use of IMS Learning Tools Interoperability as providing an approach to integrating their software development with a number of different VLEs being used by institutions within their consortium.  Beyond this, the standards referenced were unremarkable: primarily MP3 and HTML.

Dissemination

All the projects have thorough dissemination plans in place to ensure that their findings are shared as widely as possible.  It was great to see that all the projects referenced the JISC Design Studio, a fantastic resource that is well worth digging around in.  Overall there is a wide range of technologies being used to ensure that the findings from these projects reach as broad an audience as possible.  Again, there is a clear mix between established, proprietary software and free services, reflecting the range of technologies in use within institutions and the different institutional contexts of these projects.

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Hertfordshire has invested substantially in assessment and feedback in recent years, with an extensive programme of innovations including the purchase of nearly four thousand EVS handsets for use in teaching in eight schools.  The initial response to their introduction, from both staff and students, has been very positive, with the system seen as improving both classroom interaction and staff and student workloads.

The EEVS project will produce a thorough longitudinal study of the impact of EVS, including audio and video interviews, reflective writing and interviews over the course of the academic year.  This long term view will enable the project team to examine key periods in the academic year such as students’ initial encounters with the system, the perceived value and impact on exam performance of interactive revision lectures, technological issues around introduction in new classroom environments, and so on.

The project will produce a number of outputs, including valuable evidence to the sector on the impact of such large scale implementation, detailed guidance on the installation and deployment of EVS and subject-specific case studies, as well as a series vox pop snapshots from teaching staff, students and support staff on their experiences of EVS.  You can follow their progress on their project blog.

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Students who are aware that their work will be checked by plagiarism-detection software are just as likely to cheat as those who are not.

Conventional wisdom – and intuition – suggests that the threat of discovery, and subsequent punishment, is an effective deterrent against plagiarism – indeed, one of the comments on the article points to another study that suggested that students’ awareness of the use of Turnitin on a course significantly reduced plagiarism.

It’s not always clear whether plagiarism is an intentional and cynical attempt to deceive, the result of bad time management and poor writing or referencing skills, or due to genuine lack of understanding of the concept of plagiarism or differing cultural norms around it.  The first category of student is the category most likely to resort to essay mills as a safer alternative where it’s made clear that plagiarism detection is in use, which suggests that the majority of students ‘caught’ by Turnitin and other text matching techniques when their use is advertised as a supposed deterrent are those whose main problem is not a desire to cheat but academic or personal factors.

Findings like this seem to strengthen the arguments in favour of using Turnitin formatively, as part of a student’s academic development and the essay writing process, rather than as a way of detecting problems once it’s too late to do anything about them and the student has entered the disciplinary process.  The use of plagiarism detection only after submission seems to be based on the assumption that plagiarism only occurs through a deliberate desire to cheat, and as I’ve argued before, positions all students as potential cheats rather than as developing academics who may be in need of guidance and support to achieve their potential.

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The course is unusual in that progress is heavily learner-driven: as students are working professionals they are able to enrol and submit assignments at any time they chose rather than according to a predetermined course timetable, and while this significantly increases the flexibility and accessibility of the course, this lack of external structure can impact, together with the higher attrition rates noted in online distance learning in general, on student progress and retention.

Assessment feedback has traditionally been offered at the end of each module of study, when assignments are submitted, which clearly limits the potential for reflection and learning from feedback.  The InterACT project will transform this model through the integration of technology to support a more dynamic, ongoing feed-forward process that actively encourages learners to reflect and act on feedback and builds dialogue between learners and tutors.

The project team have now released their first draft of their proposed new model of feedback, and are actively seeking comment from the wider community.  Dialogue between tutor and learner is focused around cover sheets appended to submitted work which encourage self-evaluation and reflection on assessment performance as well as making explicit the intention that past feedback should impact on future work.  The use of private blogs or wikis as a personal reflective space is intended to encourage this focus on the ongoing interplay of past and future performance.

Do get involved with the discussion, either via the blog post or through contacting the project team.

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