{"id":1099,"date":"2007-06-08T15:07:18","date_gmt":"2007-06-08T15:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/games-facilitated-online\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T22:04:38","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T03:04:38","slug":"games-facilitated-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/games-facilitated-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Games: Facilitated Online"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nHere is a recap of a <a href=\"http:\/\/69.94.91.6\/Merchant2\/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&amp;Store_Code=TTG&amp;Product_Code=FG7\">Framegame (by Thiagi)<\/a>  that I conducted toward the end of last semester. The book provides great insights into facilitating an educational game &#8230; I amended the core approaches to work within an online setting.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>Audience: <\/strong>The audience for the session included a group of educators who meet<br \/>\nonline Thursday nights to discuss and share ideas about various topics in the<br \/>\nfield of education during an informal peer learning session. On the night of<br \/>\nthe Framegame, 7 participants played in the game and a few others lurked in the<br \/>\nvirtual &quot;corner&quot;. While many of the weekly attendees are k-12 teachers, some<br \/>\nare educational technology specialists in college or corporate settings. Nearly<br \/>\nall of the participants are using Internet based technologies to support<br \/>\nlearning activities. A growing concern is how to foster appropriate participant<br \/>\ninteractions within the online learning environment.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>Topic &#8211; Tactics to promote positive online<br \/>\ninteractions: <\/strong>While most<br \/>\nwould agree that the goal is to create and support positive interactions (free<br \/>\nof &quot;flame wars&quot; or &quot;cyber bullying&quot;), many are unsure how to go about<br \/>\nit. Is it a matter of just setting strict online codes of conduct? Is it about<br \/>\nmodeling good behavior? Is it about discussion moderation and tossing out the<br \/>\nbad apples?\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>Framegame &#8211; Take Five:<\/strong> I selected the Take Five Framegame to<br \/>\ngenerate possible tactics which educators could use to create and support<br \/>\npositive interactions in their online environments.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>Online Communication:<\/strong> This group is made up of technology geeks<br \/>\nwho love new online learning challenges, so I was not too concerned about<br \/>\nrunning this online versus f2f. While I ran into a few glitches, the following<br \/>\nonline communications tools provided and effective and efficient means of facilitating<br \/>\nthe game:\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"unIndentedList\">\n<li>\n\t<em>Instant Message:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/edtechtalk.com\/chat\">http:\/\/edtechtalk.com\/chat<\/a><br \/>\n\tThis chat room was used to facilitate text based chat.<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<em>Skype:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/skype.com\/\">http:\/\/skype.com<\/a> was used to facilitate<br \/>\n\tthe voice discussions.<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<em>Whiteboard:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.skrbl.com\/\">http:\/\/www.skrbl.com\/<\/a><br \/>\n\t&#8211; Skrble is a free VERY user friendly web based whiteboard used to document the<br \/>\n\tbrainstorming topics and to facilitate the &quot;voting&quot; (see below). See actual skrble from the game here <a href=\"http:\/\/www.skrbl.com\/badgerjen01\">http:\/\/www.skrbl.com\/badgerjen01<\/a> <strong><em>Note:<br \/>\n\tif you scribble, you will be amending the document &#8211; so skrble with care <\/em><\/strong><strong>J<\/strong><strong> <\/strong><\/li>\n<li>\n\t<em>Snag It:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techsmith.com\/snagit.asp\">http:\/\/www.techsmith.com\/snagit.asp<\/a><br \/>\n\tTo capture screen shots of the online interactions. <\/li>\n<li>\n\t<em>Audio Recording:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/edtechtalk.com\/\">http:\/\/edtechtalk.com\/<\/a><br \/>\n\tThe audio from the entire session was recorded which will soon be uploaded and stored<br \/>\n\tat the EdTechTalk web site. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n<strong>Game Play:<\/strong> The following outlines the planned script (talking points and actions)<br \/>\nfor the session. The <em>&quot;Notes&quot;<\/em> sections<br \/>\nin italics below highlight deviations from either the basic Framegame or the<br \/>\nscript.\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"unIndentedList\">\n<li>\n\t<strong>Brief players:<\/strong> The topic for this brainstorm is tactics to<br \/>\n\tuse as educators to foster positive interactions within online learning<br \/>\n\tenvironments. In the next half hour, we will explore this topic by coming up<br \/>\n\twith a list of effective tactics to take back to the classroom to both foster<br \/>\n\tappropriate participant interactions and address inappropriate conduct should<br \/>\n\tit arise.<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Individual brainstorm:<\/strong> For the next few minutes, please reflect on<br \/>\n\tthe topic and come up with a short list of effective techniques that you would<br \/>\n\tuse to foster appropriate and positive participant interactions in an online<br \/>\n\tlearning environment. Try to keep your list of solutions short and to the point<br \/>\n\tas we will be discussing them in more detail in the next step.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n<em>[Note: Given 7 attendees joined the session,<br \/>\nI ran this version of Take Five as an individual version (per the suggestion on<br \/>\np. 261 in Framegames). However, if I had been faced with a group of 10 or more,<br \/>\nmy plan was to ask for volunteers to pair up and use the private text chat<br \/>\nfunction to communicate with a partner.]<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"unIndentedList\">\n<li>\n\t<strong>Group Brainstorm on Whiteboard:<\/strong> Let us now move over to the whiteboard and<br \/>\n\tbegin forming a combined list of possible techniques. Using the text tool, take<br \/>\n\tturns typing in your list of suggested techniques in the left hand column. Try<br \/>\n\tto keep an eye on the list to avoid adding an item already offered by another<br \/>\n\tplayer. Duplicate entries will be combined before we move to the next step.<br \/>\n\tLet&#39;s try to get a combined list of 10 to 12 good possible tactics on the whiteboard.<br \/>\n\tAlso, please speak up if you would like clarification about a possible<br \/>\n\tsolution.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n<em>[Note: This process prompted participants to<br \/>\nshare lengthy descriptions about each of the tactics (&quot;Here is what I do with<br \/>\nmy students &#8230;&quot; , which ate into the time previously allocated for the final<br \/>\ndebrief. However, it didn&#39;t seem to make any sense to stifle the brainstorming<br \/>\nconversation (the point of the game) just to stick to the game script.]<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"unIndentedList\">\n<li>\n\t<strong>Voting &#8211; Round 1:<\/strong> We<br \/>\n\twill now begin the process of voting for the most effective approach. Using the<br \/>\n\tpen tool, select the blue color and place a check mark next to the recommendation<br \/>\n\tthat you feel is the most effective tactic.<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Scoring &#8211; Round 1:<\/strong> Now that we have all made our top choices,<br \/>\n\twe will score this round. The most popular response for this round was<br \/>\n\t&quot;**&quot;. Therefore, those who selected this response should score 1<br \/>\n\tpoints. As &quot;**&quot; suggested this tactic, s\/he should score 5 points. As a<br \/>\n\tfriendly reminder, all scoring is on the honor system. Therefore, as I read out<br \/>\n\tthe score for each round, please keep a running tally of your points.<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Voting &#8211; Round 2 &#8211; 5:<\/strong> Consider this list again (minus any item<br \/>\n\tthat is crossed out) and use the pen tool (with the red color) and place a<br \/>\n\tcheck mark next to the recommendation that you feel is the most effective<br \/>\n\ttactic. It can be the same item you selected in a previous round, as long as<br \/>\n\tthat item is not already in our top choices. [Repeat through round 5]<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Scoring &#8211; Round 2 &#8211; 5:<\/strong> Now that we have all made our top choices,<br \/>\n\twe will score this round. The most popular response for this round was &quot;**&quot;.<br \/>\n\tTherefore, those who selected this response should score 1 points and &quot;**&quot; who<br \/>\n\tsuggested the tactic should score 5 points. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n<em>[Note regarding scoring: For ease of facilitation<br \/>\nin this online environment, I made slight adjustments to the scoring scheme from<br \/>\nthe original Framegame model.]<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"unIndentedList\">\n<li>\n\t<strong>Conclusion of the Game:<\/strong> We now have a list of the top 5 techniques.<br \/>\n\tPlease add up your personal score and share it with the group. Congratulations<br \/>\n\tto our winner!<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Debrief:<\/strong> Let&#39;s more fully consider the list and discuss the merits of not only<br \/>\n\tour top 5 choices, but how we arrived at this list. Do you think through this<br \/>\n\tmethod we arrived at a good working list of 5 effective techniques? What<br \/>\n\tsurprises you about the list? Would you like to make a case for or against<br \/>\n\titems that were selected or any that were not selected in the top 5?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n<em>[Note: Given the time we spent discussing<br \/>\nthe recommended tactics during the brainstorm, we did not have time for a full<br \/>\ndebrief. Instead, I offered to compile the list form the session so that the<br \/>\ngroup can pick up their discussion next time.] <\/em>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>Critique \/ Reflection:<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"unIndentedList\">\n<li>\n\t<strong>Time<\/strong>: We spent about 40 minutes playing the game. As noted above, we spent<br \/>\n\tmore time than I had originally allocated for the brainstorm portion, which<br \/>\n\tleft us out of time for a full debrief. If I had more time, I would like to<br \/>\n\thave heard more from the group about what they thought about the process<br \/>\n\t(effectiveness, efficiency, etc). <\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Scoring \/ Voting:<\/strong> The participants were not that interested<br \/>\n\tin the scoring and voting aspects. They were far more interested in discussing<br \/>\n\tthe topic than coming up with the most &quot;popular&quot; vote. Therefore, I&#39;m not sure<br \/>\n\tif the scoring or voting is a crucial element when you have highly motivated<br \/>\n\tparticipants. However, I can see how it could add interest with less motivated<br \/>\n\tparticipants and when you have enough participants to make it a team based<br \/>\n\tgame.<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Quality of Participant Recommendations:<\/strong> The list of participant recommendations, as<br \/>\n\twell as the ensuing discussion was great. I think this was due to the participants&#39;<br \/>\n\tinterest in the topic, as well as the participatory nature of the brainstorm on<br \/>\n\tthe whiteboard. Each recommendation seemed to build on another until it seemed<br \/>\n\tthe group fleshed out the key tactics. <\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Interest \/ Engagement:<\/strong> Participant interest level and engagement<br \/>\n\twas great! However, I purposely chose a topic that I knew the group would find interesting.<br \/>\n\tCoincidently, this group had been criticized in a discussion board comment<br \/>\n\tabout some dialog that a listener found less than positive the week before. We<br \/>\n\twere able to kick off our discussion by using that as an example of how<br \/>\n\tdifficult it can be to keep online interactions positive for all participants.<br \/>\n\tThis clearly helped to gain participant interest. In addition, the process does<br \/>\n\tencourage participation from all players, both in posting recommendations as<br \/>\n\twell as in voting. The participants indicated that they liked the game and felt<br \/>\n\tit helped to bring out a good discussion and a list of tactics to use in the<br \/>\n\tfuture. However, as usual, I INTERJECTED TOO MUCH!<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>Online Facilitation:<\/strong> The communication tools made this an easy<br \/>\n\tgame to facilitate online. See the screen captures from the session below.<br \/>\n\tHowever, that being said, I had a group of self-described &quot;tech geeks&quot; who love<br \/>\n\tto play with new technology. I can see how the whiteboard could become a<br \/>\n\tfree-for-all disaster in the hands of kids (but they would probably have a<br \/>\n\tblast in the process!) However, I also see how this could be facilitated<br \/>\n\tasynchronously using a discussion board and an online polling \/ voting<br \/>\n\tmechanism, such as in a content management system.<\/li>\n<li>\n\t<strong>My Key Take Always: <\/strong>I now appreciate how games can raise<br \/>\n\tinterest level and engage a group. In addition, the planning process and<br \/>\n\tstructure of the game helped me as the facilitator organize and prepare my<br \/>\n\tthoughts. However, I can also guess that some audiences would not be as<br \/>\n\tinterested in the &quot;game play&quot; (competitive scoring) aspect &#8211; especially when<br \/>\n\tdiscussing serious or heavy topics. I think if I would have pushed to stick to<br \/>\n\tthe voting \/ scoring scheme I would have definitely taken away from the flow of<br \/>\n\tthe discussion. In the end, I found Take Five to be a very effective format to<br \/>\n\tget the group brainstorming to come up with recommended tactics. I will definitely attempt this format again<br \/>\n\tin the future!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n<hr width=\"100%\" size=\"2\" \/>\n<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\nThe top responses were:\n<\/p>\n<p>\n1.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Scaffold \/ model\n<\/p>\n<p>\n2.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Welcome \/ be tolerant of differing opinions\n<\/p>\n<p>\n3.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sense of humor\n<\/p>\n<p>\n4.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Respond in civil manner (say sorry) (to<br \/>\navoid flame wars)\n<\/p>\n<p>\n5.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Work to create a &quot;culture&quot;\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAdditional responses were:\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"unIndentedList\">\n<li>\n\tTransparency<\/li>\n<li>\n\tKeep<br \/>\n\tstudents interested<\/li>\n<li>\n\tCross<br \/>\n\tyour fingers \/ hope for the best<\/li>\n<li>\n\tResponsive<br \/>\n\t\/ openness <\/li>\n<li>\n\tPeer<br \/>\n\tpressure \/ policing themselves<\/li>\n<li>\n\tFormal<br \/>\n\tdiscussion moderator<\/li>\n<li>\n\tStick<br \/>\n\twith it \/ continue the conversations even when tough<\/li>\n<li>Explicit code of<br \/>\n\tconduct <em>(no one<br \/>\n\tliked)<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a recap of a Framegame (by Thiagi) that I conducted toward the end of last semester. The book provides great insights into facilitating an educational game &#8230; I amended the core approaches to work within an online setting. Audience: The audience for the session included a group of educators who meet online Thursday&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194,279,256,247,184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-framegame","category-iu-ist-r626","category-online-learning-2","category-papers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3047,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/3047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}