DELRE
A Language Learning Game
A first-of-its-kind ESL language game designed to replace the traditional language course workbooks at Dankook University in Cheonan, South Korea. The project involved substantial pre and post-development research to track the user needs, experience, and efficacy of the designs.
Design Case
Role: Lead Designer / Lead Researcher
Goal / Problem
Adult second language learning is one of the most difficult educational challenges for university level students. Both theory and practice agree that language is a skill learned most readily, when it is a useful necessity. To address this challenge, my team introduced the Digital English Language Roleplay Experience (DELRE) to drive experience-based learning and necessitate the functional use of English in a simulated environment.
What it is / Solution Description
To simulate experience and, by extension, necessity, the team designed a digital roleplaying game. The simple game was created using RPG Maker, a commercially available software. The game was distributed to Conversational English classes (a third level language course) and used as a replacement for the traditional workbook. Players / students used the game to simulate realistic interactions in English (e.g. going to the store, meeting friends).
Hurdles / Challenges
From a design standpoint, we had to overcome two primary hurdles. First, as a software designed to replace the workbook, the system needed to be completely self-explanatory and easily interacted with. Any UI/UX issues would put non-gamers at a learning disadvantage, an unacceptable outcome. Second, the system needed to integrate a significant number of theoretical requirements. Those included an integration of the learning material with the story, an integration of the learning material with the game mechanics, an ability to generate grades, complete accessibility (including installation and grade reporting), and being entertaining enough to keep students interested.
Who is it for
The product was designed by an internal team at Dankook University to be used at the university as a language workbook replacement.
Problem Description
The primary problem introduced to the design team was the need to address “necessity-based” learning. As mentioned, learning of language is often understood as something that takes place only when that language is seen as needed for interactions. The game-based learning approach was our primary solution to this need. By integrating the need to use English in a functional, conversational way, we simulated actual conversational English. By placing students in a “virtual world” in which no one spoke their native Korean, we made using the language a true necessity. The added benefit of the game-based approach was our ability to capitalize on the playfulness introduced. To be clear, our team did not pursue ‘gamification’ or simply declare that, because we used a game, it must have been fun. Instead, we labored to create an experience that was actually joyful and playful, one that encouraged players to step away from the seriousness of school and into a place where experimentation and fun was key.
One of the additional needs of the administrative was a system that could reduce instructor time demands by introducing self-grading technologies. Our system addressed this by integrating save and upload features within the game. The player/student would complete a quiz and, after being given the option to repeat the quiz, upload their score to a system that auto-filled the teacher gradebook. This significantly reduced the amount of time instructors spent gradingworkbooks and other homework. This system had the added benefit of providing immediate corrective feedback to students. That is, the system told students what they did wrong and how they could improve and provided them with the chance to self-correct (pointing to pages in the text book or specific learning points) before taking the quiz again.
Results and testing
Importantly, I was only involved in the first round of testing for this project. The game continues to see use and redesign at the university, but my involvement ended after two semesters of testing, as I had other projects to attend to. Results of the product testing period were promising. Not only did the students find the game engaging and easy to use, but the game users achieved comparable grades to previous semester using the same curriculum. Though, we would have liked to have seen a marked improvement in grades, the fact that the alpha test of the product achieved results similar to a system that had bee in place for decades, was pleasantly surprising.
Just as importantly, students engaged well with the game. Overall, the students found it more engaging and perceived it as more effective than more traditional instructional methods. We were pleased to see that the students were taking advantage of the retest functionality. In interviews some reported taking quizzes upwards of five times to achieve the best score, inadvertently learning more as they went.
One place we identified as an area of improvement was guiding users to the next task. While the majority understood their next task, navigating the large gameworld could be a confusing task, when not properly guided. Our existing guidance resulted in 15% of students finding it difficult to locate the next task. This number wasn’t completely discouraging, but, in an educational setting, it was identified as a priority for improvement.
Pushing the envelope
This project was a true first-of-its-kind project, and one that the team I far outperformed my expectations on. Tasked with making learning more fun, the team produced both a product and significant published research on a ground-breaking new way of teaching language.