Why The Most Important Question In Game-based Learning Is "Who Will Fund The Game Genome Project?" (Part 1 of 2)

Way back in 2000, two researchers, Will Glaser and Tim Westergren, began what was then called The Music Genome Project.  It was designed to categorize music by more than 400 different "genes" or characteristics of the music.  The goal was to build a better music recommendation engine.

Today, this project is better known as Pandora.

Glaser and Westergren's fundamental insight was that breaking music down into broad general categories such as Rock or Pop or Country wasn't very useful when it came to making recommendations.  Some people liked music with male vocalists or heavy beats or a fast tempo and no one liked all of country music or everything produced that was labelled "rock".  

In fact most people liked a little bit of everything.  Sure, they had genre preferences, but that didn't keep the Jethro Tull fanatic from liking (and buying) the occasional Mike Oldfield album (ahem...not that I know anyone who would do such a thing...).

Thus the Music Genome Project was born.  By analyzing the genetic makeup of each song, the Project wasn't just able to better dissect individual pieces of music.  It was actually able to make reliable cross genre recommendations.  Oh, you like this driving, 120 beats per minute, sung by a female vocalist with lots of guitar distortion rock anthem?  Then you might also like this hip-hop track with many of the same musical genes!

What Does This Have To Do With Game-based Learning?

This isn't going to sound that earthshaking but it was to me the first time I realized it:  All games teach.  You can design a game that will explicitly (or implicitly) teach something like math or grammar but you don't have to.  With all of the good games, both video and tabletop, that are out there, it is not difficult to find a game that can be used to teach almost any K-12 and many university level subjects.  

How many classrooms routinely use Monopoly, for example, to help teach basic addition and subtraction or units of currency?  Monopoly certainly wasn't designed with this purpose in mind but it serves that purpose nonetheless.  

While I might be bold in my assertion that every subject is covered, I would argue that, if I am wrong, I am not wrong by much.  This is the golden age of gaming.  There are more games being produced (and more good games) than at any other time in human history.  The selection is already immense and growing.  In fact, it might be more accurate for me to say that, while I might be wrong, I won't be for much longer.

So, to put it more formally, you can connect all games to one or more learning objectives (See image to the left).  I am using the term "learning objective" loosely here.  Your learning objectives may come from a formal document, such as the common core, or from a less formal desire "to teach these darn kids something about X".  

Given the prevalence of formal standards in modern education, however, it is pretty easy to imagine (though infinitely less easy to actually do...) professional educators and gamers sitting down together and dissecting every game for the learning objectives that each game addresses (i.e. the things each game teaches).

Eventually - and, of course, you would start with the most popular games and the most important learning objectives - you would have a database that could answer the question, "What game teaches this?"  Almost certainly, multiple games will cover the same learning objectives and some games will cover more relevant learning objectives than others.  It is conceivable that a teacher would be able to query this database and find a single game (See image below) that adequately addressed all of the learning objectives for a particular block of instruction.

Next:  What's Missing From These Pictures?

Intelligence And Vigilantes

(Note: This is the third and final entry in a three part series on some of the things I have learned about intelligence support to entrepreneurs from running a number of crowdfunding campaigns. For Part 1, click here and for Part 2, click here.)

Moros is a comic book series by Josh Lucas.  Loosely based on our hometown, Erie, PA, Moros tells the story of a former soldier turned policeman who becomes a vigilante to rid his town of a drug that he takes himself.

Josh successfully funded his third issue of the comic with a Kickstarter campaign that we helped him run back in April.

Josh was an experienced crowdfunder when I met him.  He had funded his first issue with a successful IndieGoGo campaign and had spent the time since that first issue working on his second issue and learning what he could about the comic book industry.

What he learned and what I have seen first hand with almost all of the entrepreneurs I have worked with (myself included) is that there is a kind of insanity that grips you when you are working on these projects.  It is almost impossible for you to see the world as it is.  Instead, you insist that the world is as you want it to be.  

Most intelligence professionals know this problem better as the Intel-Ops Divide.  The argument goes something like this:  Intel and ops need to be kept separate.  If they aren't, the intel guys run the risk of becoming so enamored with the plans the ops guys come up with that intel starts to see all the evidence not as it is but as ops hopes it will be.  This makes the intel guys useless to the organization.

The problem with entrepreneurs is that they don't typically have enough resources to be able to keep intel and ops separate.  So, what is an entrepreneur to do?  It seems to me that successful entrepreneurs manage this problem by asking dramatically different questions of intelligence professionals than the ones asked by either unsuccessful entrepreneurs or traditional leaders.

There is a growing body of evidence (produced largely by the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia) that successful entrepreneurs and innovators look at problems in fundamentally different ways from the rest of us.  Specifically, they use "effectual reasoning" (as opposed to causal reasoning) and five specific techniques to help them make decisions:  

• Bird in Hand.  "What do I have at hand and what can I do with it right now?" are the kinds of questions that emerge from the Bird in Hand Principle.  The kinds of intelligence questions that arise from this principle focus on expanding the entrepreneur's understanding of what resources are immediately available for use.

• Affordable Loss.  Good entrepreneurs don't focus exclusively on the potential gain.  Instead, they work hard to understand what they can afford to lose at each step.  Helping the entrepreneur understand the full nature of the downside risk is a good task for intel.

• Lemonade.  This principle is about not only taking advantage of surprises (both good and bad) but welcoming them.  It means that intel support to entrepreneurs has to be very flexible and very fast.

• Patchwork Quilt.  Good entrepreneurs rarely try to go it alone.  Instead they are constantly looking for partnerships (both formal and informal) with self-selecting stakeholders.  Identifying and prioritizing these potential stakeholders seems a natural fit for intel.

• Pilot in the Plane.  Good entrepreneurs focus on activities that they can control and don't worry so much about what they can't.  Quoting the Society for Effectual Action, at their core, good entrepreneurs seem to believe that "the future is neither found nor predicted, but rather made."  Intel's role here is to help define what can and can't be controlled in the environment that surrounds the entrepreneur. 

These principles and the associated intel questions that go with them don't ask the intel professional to buy into the underlying goals of the entrepreneur or evaluate the progress towards those goals.  Instead, they set the stage for intel success by asking questions that support the decisionmaking process of the entrepreneur uncomplicated by operational bias.

New Wikipedia Articles Of Interest To Intelligence Professionals

Despite its occasional weaknesses, I really like Wikipedia.  Others (perhaps unnecessarily) worry about an encyclopedia that is editable by anyone.  Whether you like it or not, however, it is undeniably the tertiary source of first resort for most of the planet.  

One of the things that has always bothered me about it, though, is the generally poor coverage of issues related to intelligence.  From intelligence history to intelligence theory, Wikipedia, in my opinion, needs help.

That is why, instead of traditional writing assignments in some of my classes, I like to task students to write Wikipedia articles about intelligence issues that have not already been covered.  

This kind of assignment has a variety of educational benefits.  In addition to adding to the world's body of knowledge, the students have to learn how to use MediaWiki (the same platform that powers Intellipedia and many other wikis in the in the private sector).  

They also have to learn how to write an encyclopedia article complete with Wikipedia's famous "Neutral Point Of View" - a skill that is enormously useful in intel writing as well.  

Finally, they have to expose their work to the varied and critical audience that makes up the ad hoc Wikipedia editorial staff.  This is more important to the learning process than you might think.  Students typically master the skill of gaming their professors pretty quickly.  Writing for an army of discerning, anonymous editors?  Not so much.

So, without further ado, here are a handful of articles recently produced by students in my Collection Operations for Intelligence Analysts class.  The mix is eclectic because I let the students pick their own topics but is, perhaps, more interesting as a result.  

• HUMINT/CI Exploitation Teams
• Michael Soussoudis
• Gang Intelligence Units
• Nimitz Operational Intelligence Center
• Information Board (Estonia)

This handful only represents some of the output from last term.  Some of the articles are still in Wikipedia's increasingly lengthy review process.  I will publish those once they become available.

Three Simple Ways To Make Your Next Analytic Team Work Better

We do a lot of intelligence analysis projects at Mercyhurst using teams.  We do this primarily because this is the way intelligence work generally gets done in the real world and we want to replicate those conditions in the classroom.

There are many good books on how to make teams work of course.  My favorite, Hackman's Collaborative Intelligence, is required reading in several of my classes, for example.  In the hundreds of analytic teams I have managed since I came to Mercyhurst, there are three rules, however, that are simple to execute and always just seem to work.

All other things being equal, have one or more women on your team 

People always talk about diversity in teams being a good thing generally and, frankly, I agree with the sentiment.  If you aren't persuaded by the morality of this argument, though, there is another reason that ought to get your attention:  Having one or more women on a team improves team performance (You can see the hard evidence here and an easier to read version here.  The chart below comes form the latter link).  

Anecdotally, I have seen this work many, many times.  Of course, these are averages and all other things are rarely equal but if you have the chance to put a guy on an all guy team or an equally qualified woman, I would pick the woman every time. 
 

You can see the whole article at https://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women 

Don't brainstorm!  Use Nominal Group Technique instead  

Traditional brainstorming - you know, where someone gets up and writes ideas on a chalkboard as people shout them out - doesn't work.  Lots of studies have shown this (see the screenshot below) but you likely don't need to read them.  You have probably been in too many of these sessions yourself and understand how inefficient brainstorming is at generating new ideas while avoiding groupthink.  

A better technique is available, however:  Nominal Group Technique (NGT).  

This list of research showing brainstorming failures comes from another interesting alternative - Brainswarming.  For more, see:  https://hbr.org/2014/06/brainswarming-because-brainstorming-doesnt-work

The key to NGT is to pose the problem first and then have people write their ideas down independently of one another.  Only after everyone has written down their ideas should people compare notes.  While comparing notes you are looking for two things.  The first are the ideas that everyone (or almost everyone) generated that are essentially the same.  The fact that the same idea occurred independently multiple times probably means that it is important or at least worth investigating further.  The second thing is what I call a "positive surprise".  Positive surprises are those ideas that only one, maybe two, group members come up with but as soon as they read them out loud everyone acknowledges that they are great ideas.   

During your first team meeting require people to focus on relevant skills instead of their job titles when introducing themselves 

Imagine this.  You are at your first team meeting and people are going around the room introducing themselves.  One says "I am Joe Shmo, the Balkans analyst at the CIA", and the next says, "I am Mary Shmedlap, a counterintel analyst at FBI.".  Pretty common, right?  It is also pretty ineffective.  These kinds of introductions have a tendency to reinforce the divisions within a team.  

Far better is to focus on the skills the individuals bring to the team.  This comes directly from Hackman but is one of the most powerful techniques available.  I have my teams write down any and all skills they have that they think might be relevant to the project.  Expertise in the targeted problem area is important but I also ask team members to write down ancillary skills that might be important such as proofreading or graphic design skills.  

I also ask team members to include skills which might not appear to be directly relevant to the task at hand right now such as calligraphy.  Intel analysis rarely comes with a roadmap and it is often unpredictable at the beginning of the project what skills will turn out to be relevant at the end of the project.  

Finally, I also get them to talk about their personal preferences in terms of workflow - are they the kind of people who like to get everything done early or are they last minute kind of people?  Do they work better at night or are they early birds?  You would be surprised how much a conversation like this, early in the life cycle of a group, smooths things out over the long haul of a project.

That's it!  Three proven techniques for improving team performance backed by research.  Let me know how they work for you!

Intelligence And Cookies

(Note: This is entry number 2 in a three part series on some of the things I have learned about intelligence support to entrepreneurs from running a number of crowdfunding campaigns. For Part 1, click here.)

Ah!  Cookies!  Who can resist a good cookie?  Fresh out of the oven, homemade, imprinted with pictures of horses and bunnies and dinosaurs...

What?  

That is the good idea of Lisa Van Riper, the creator of the Tiny Hands On A Roll Kickstarter (closing in a little more than 24 hours). Little kids like to "help" when it comes to baking but kitchen implements are often too large, too unsafe or too uninteresting for little kids to use.  How can you keep them engaged without them getting frustrated?

Lisa hand makes laser engraved, bakery quality rolling pins that are exactly the right size for small children.  They work just like a good rolling pin ought to work but are sized for tiny hands and completed with customizable laser-engraved images that make the rolling fun.

Check out her project page (just click on the image above).  Her images are beautiful, her products demonstrate an over-abundance of quality and care in manufacturing.  Something like this ought to just kill it on Kickstarter, right?

Yep.  Except for one small detail (and my second lesson learned);  Timing.

Every crowdfunding project creator worries about timing.  What is the best day to launch? What is the best time of day to launch?  How long should the campaign be?  When is the best time of month to launch?  When is the best day to end?  What days should I avoid?  

These are all good questions but it is easy to be hyper-focused on these tactical issues and miss the strategic (or, at least, seasonal) trends.

Take a look at the chart below.  It is taken from Google Trends and shows the US search trend for the term "rolling pin" over the last ten years or so.  Talk about strong patterns!  Every peak is in December and every trough is in...ahem...April.  

Hindsight being 20/20, it is obvious why this is so.  Rolling pins are strongly associated with the scratch baking frenzy that begins shortly before the end of October and only ends around the time people are waking up late and cursing the winter sunlight of January 2nd.  In terms of searches for the term "rolling pin" at least, that frenzy is almost three times as strong in the fall as it is in the spring of every year since 2005.

We figured this out before we launched, of course.  Lisa wants to expand her business and she wanted to get this product line out there now and not wait till the fall.  She has already explored other ways to sell the product after the Kickstarter campaign is over and she will almost certainly do well in the fall with these products (when not only baking season but also toy season kicks in).  Our solution was to adjust her expectations - and her goal - accordingly.  

Not every product has this strong of a trend associated with it.  That said, if you have to swim upstream, you at least want to know about it beforehand.

Next:  Intelligence And Vigilantes