The Intersection of National Educational Standards and Game Development, with Lauren Summerford

AVID Open Access
31 min

Keywords
roblox, avid, standards, game, learning, students, fun, durable, teachers, education, design, classroom, league, learner, collaboration, call, bridge, work, idea, future

Transcript

Lauren Summerford 0:00
You see the empowered learner. They take the lessons, they have to apply them on the spot. You see the global collaborator. When you’re on these teams and everybody’s taking on a different role to get to the end result. And then, of course, it’s a building game with bridges, towers. And so you see the engineering and the design. I need to collect the right resources. Do I have enough of this resource? Can I trade with somebody else?

Rena Clark 0:27
The topic of today’s podcast is The Intersection of National Educational Standards and Game Development, with Lauren Summerford. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 1:00
I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 1:01
and I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators,

Paul Beckermann 1:04
and we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Student 1:09
Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark 1:13
Our quote for today is from Nico King in his article Pedagogy in Games. He writes, “In the context of game-based learning, pedagogy involves integrating the principles of effective teaching and learning with the unique features of games, such as interactive storytelling, problem-solving challenges, and immersive environments, to create engaging and compelling learning experiences. Lot of big words there, y’all, but what do we think?

Winston Benjamin 1:46
So, from what I was picking up, it sounds like some of the things that I normally think about when I’m planning a lesson, for example, like, what are students doing? Where are students doing it? How are students doing this activity? What will distract students while doing this activity? So this idea about pedagogy doesn’t really seem so far outside of my normal thinking about planning a classroom. So I’m feeling like at this point, it’s just about like integrating these terminologies of vocabulary into my already existing foci. So I just think it’s a makes sense to me in ways.

Paul Beckermann 2:23
Yeah, for sure, Winston, I totally agree. I’m gonna call out three vocabulary things then actually. Things that were mentioned in the quote that I think really can take learning to the next level. Interactive storytelling was kind of pulled out. Stories are compelling. Kids love stories and because they’re interactive, that sets it apart even more. Kids can have a role in that. The second one was the problem-solving challenges. We all know kids need to learn how to solve problems. They learn at the highest level when they’re challenged to solve problems, and gaming is a great place for that to happen. And then the third one was that immersive environments, when something’s immersive, we’re all in. It’s like we’re just in that place. They’re no longer in a classroom, they’re just in a place that seems authentic, where they’re learning and experiencing something. So I think all those things are really exciting and motivating and kind of excited to learn more.

Rena Clark 3:19
And I feel like when you’re engaged in any of those are different, personalities differently. But when I’m doing those things, I am not aware of the time, the class. I’m not worried about the I’m like, in, I’m in it.

Paul Beckermann 3:31
What do they call that? The flow state. The flow state.

Rena Clark 3:34
And then all of a sudden, yeah, I’ll be in my oh, six hours have gone by. I should eat something. But I’m really excited about our guest today, Lauren Summerford, the Director of Brand Strategy at Super League. So welcome, Lauren.

Lauren Summerford 3:52
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Rena Clark 3:55
We’re so glad you’re here. We’re hoping you can just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, your background and your current role?

Lauren Summerford 4:02
Yes, absolutely. So I come to Super League by way of the music industry. Oddly enough, I spent about 10 years at Warner Music Group before pivoting in to the tech space. I worked in the NFT industry for a hot minute there, and then ended up at Super League, which I am so thankful that I get to be a part of these games. Bring these experiences into Roblox. I came on the brand strategy team, and I’m excited to just continue my journey here. So it’s been a little bit of a roundabout way to get here, but it’s been a good it’s been a good road.

Rena Clark 4:39
what did they say now, our future students have at least five different careers they’re going to have in their lives. So you’re just, you’re modeling that for our future students here.

Lauren Summerford 4:48
Yes, it’s so true and it’s so funny. You say that because, I mean, 30 years ago, not a single job I’ve had had existed. So it’s like really wild to think about. That. I mean, maybe a director of brand strategy, but certainly not in the metaverse. And I did digital marketing before I was in Super League, and that certainly did not exist that terribly long ago. So it’s crazy to think about. I remember when I started at Warner Music, MySpace was the only social media platform there was. And then we had text messaging, but we didn’t have email lists, we barely had websites. And then Facebook came along, and then Twitter, and now it’s X, and then Instagram came and nobody knew what to do. So it’s really wild to think about.

Winston Benjamin 5:39
I really appreciate how you’re setting this down, the foundation for the way, like things are going so fast and so far in the future, like I remember those things coming out being like, what is going on? But as as part of the thing that we’re doing here is really to talk about the the connection that AVID and Super League have teamed up to create this game called AVID Creator Planet. So part of the goal and the ways that you developed was identifying national standards to align with this gaming experience. And like as educators, we sometimes think through standards. So what were the national standards that you identified that would be valuable for the game? And how did you go by identifying those standards in general?

Lauren Summerford 6:23
Yeah, absolutely. So we identified four standards for this game in particular. We have two ISTE standards. One is focused on the empowered learner. The other is about global collaboration. The other two are from the Next Generation Science Standards, and both of those are focused on engineering and design. And what I love about this game is it brings all of those elements and but in a very fun way. But backing up to answer your question, we initially started off with a list of, I think it was 10 standards, and that is a lot of learning to try to fit into one game and to do it well and to make it fun. So we set, we being Super League. We sat down with AVID with our list of standards, and you kind of have to start with the end in mind, what is it we’re trying to accomplish? What is the end goal and what was the most important thing for AVID? What you know, what do they want to get out of this game? And we ultimately were able to narrow it down to those four. And because we came in with the idea it was going to be a building game, and so we really believe these four standards would align best. I mean, you see it all throughout. I don’t know if we’ll dive into that in a minute, but you see the empowered learner. They take the lessons they have to apply them on the spot. You see the global collaborator. When you’re on these teams and everybody’s taking on a different role to get to the end result. And then, of course, it’s a building game with bridges towers. And so you see the engineering and the design. I need to collect the right resources. Do I have enough of this resource? Can I trade with somebody else? So it’s been really fun just to find ways to bring education to Roblox, but make it so fun along the way.

Paul Beckermann 8:07
Let’s talk a little bit more about that. How you kind of weaved it into the game, so you had the standards identified. Now you need to design a game that would actually teach those standards. What was that process like? And do you feel like it was a typical process, or was there something unique about this one with AVID?

Lauren Summerford 8:25
Yeah, this one was really unique. Because a lot of times when we’re putting together a game design, we call it a game design document, and that outlines everything that we’re putting into the game, all the mechanics, how we’re going to go about the design. If you can think of it in terms of the game, that’s what goes into that document. So typically, when we’re doing that for a client, it’s not usually an educational scenario. So you have brands coming to us wanting to build awareness, affinity, drive purchases of some sort, but we had to, for AVID, throw all that out the window. So kind of how I mentioned a second ago, of you have to start with the end in mind. So we knew, okay, we need empowered learners. What does that look like? How can we implement that into a game, the global collaborator, and then engineering and design? So we came into this. We knew we wanted to do a building game of sorts, but we had a fun challenge that, we had this like core team who worked on the game design, and it was, okay, well, we know we can do this, but how is this going to be fun? So it was a lot of internal meetings with our team at Super League and AVID. We’ve actually throughout the process of building this game, we’ve done a lot of play tests with students, and that has been one of the most valuable things, because you can’t start the process and say, okay, we’re doing this, and no matter what feedback we get, no matter what roadblocks, we’re not going to change anything, because you would set yourself up to fail. So I mean, by month three or four, we had a first playable of the entire experience. So we invited a bunch of students and teachers to come in and play the game, and that is the moment you were asking for the most honest feedback you were ever gonna get, and they’ll give it to you, which is great. And so we had teachers saying, hey, this is cool, but it would be more helpful if you could do this. Or, hey, I learned something really cool, but it wasn’t the most fun experience, so gathering that feedback from students and teachers all throughout the course of the production process really helped us elevate what we’re doing with the standards. The reality is we are game builders, game designers or brand strategists, in my case, so we don’t, we shouldn’t pretend to know what a student or teacher is thinking. So taking the expertise that Super League has but teaming up with an organization like AVID and then partnering with the students and teachers to get real time feedback, I really think we were able to bring the standards to life in a way that it’s going to work for students and help teachers in the classroom.

Rena Clark 11:02
I love that you’re actually modeling what you’re trying to teach in the game. You’re essentially doing the design thinking process, and you’re using, even bringing in that component of like empathy for your user, and then going through the engineering and design process and revising based on the data that you’re getting. So I love that. It’s like, meta, you’re doing that for that within the game.

Lauren Summerford 11:25
A whole lot of empowered learning happening.

Rena Clark 11:30
And I love even our listeners. And I know myself, I have a couple of my kids, like, I want to be a game designer. I’m like, what exactly does that even mean? So you talk a little bit about the mechanics of the game. Can you share examples of like, specific, like game mechanics for avid creator planet that help maybe achieve some of those standards that we’re trying to achieve?

Lauren Summerford 11:52
Yes, absolutely. So we have the different building challenges, so there’s the tower, the ramp, and the bridge, and so players jump in, and they can vote on which one they want to play. If they’re playing in a group, they can vote as a group. And then from there, they have to collect the materials. There are a host of materials, such as ice, cheese, wood.

Rena Clark 12:17
Cheese? I know you would try to [sic] cheese.

Lauren Summerford 12:19
I mean, it’s so, we just got fun with it. And so when they landed the challenge, and it’s okay, are we building a ramp? Are we building a tower, a bridge? Everybody is taking on a role. And so through that, the students are empowered to come up with, okay, how are we going to build not just the tallest bridge, but the most durable bridge? Or I’m doing the tower motion, but how can we build the most durable bridge, the most durable tower? And it’s really fun because we have the, I hope you get a chance to play the game, because it’ll all make sense. But we have these rovers in the game running around. And so when you’re building a ramp, you can take the rover and test the durability of what you just built. And so if you’re building your bridge or your tower with ice, that may seem durable for a second, but that’s going to melt, you want to come up with much more. I don’t want to give too much away for anybody listening, but you want to make sure that your structure can last. And then not only is it going to does it need to last, part of the engineering and design standards that we’re working on are focused on design solutions and data analysis. So we have these moments come in called remixes, and it is just going to jumble up everything you just did. And then you have to take all that and figure out, okay, how do we rebuild the structure into something that is, it’s gonna last, it’s gonna withhold, withstand the test that it’s given. But there’s also a limited amount of time, so the max amount of time the players have is 10 minutes. So you have to get really creative and just be really focused. And meanwhile, there are these just adorable little axolotls running around the environment. So you’ve got somebody like me, when I’m play testing, I’m just, I’m just chasing the lotls. Also, like Lauren, we have to build this bridge, like, get back to it. So it’s, it’s just a really good lesson in teamwork, too. Of okay, well, if you’re collecting the materials, I need to be gathering these other materials over here. Okay, we don’t have enough of this, so how do we get that? It’s just a lot of fun. So those mechanics of how they’re gathering the materials, how they’re building them, and then adapting to the remixes, I think, made for a really fun and unique way to bring those four standards to life.

Rena Clark 14:39
Okay, I’m glad you just said axolotl. I gotta jump in on this, because my son bought this pink axolotl hat. My husband’s not understanding. I said axolotls are in right now.

Paul Beckermann 14:54
I’m gonna be the dumb one. What? What is that?

Rena Clark 14:58
You can look up a picture. Right now, they gotta. They’re adorable.

Lauren Summerford 15:02
They’re adorable. They’re like these little characters on Roblox. They’re not quite a dinosaur. I don’t even know, you just have to look it up.

Rena Clark 15:11
Well, they actually…

Lauren Summerford 15:13
Go ahead, go ahead.,

Rena Clark 15:14
No, they’re adorable on Roblox, but they’re a real animal. And, like, I know, like our high school science teacher has them in a tank, they’re like an aquatic animal with I don’t know how to explain them.

Lauren Summerford 15:24
You just gotta, you just gotta look it up.

Paul Beckermann 15:26
I will look it up. Listeners, look it up. If you are like me and don’t know what this is.

Rena Clark 15:34
Axolotls are in. They’re everywhere. They’re in hats and key chains and earrings and on shirts.

Paul Beckermann 15:40
I feel like I’m missing out. Man.

Rena Clark 15:41
I want to learn a lot all, from my axolotls. Anyways, there’s all kinds of things.

Lauren Summerford 15:45
But we are calling that, so they are axolotls. We’re calling them Lotls in the game, though, but just for the sake of making sure everyone knew what we were talking about, we call them Lotls so you’ve got someone like me running around trying to collect all of them. They don’t help, they don’t help the structure at all.

Paul Beckermann 16:02
Are there a lotl of them.

Lauren Summerford 16:06
There are a lotl them.

Winston Benjamin 16:10
I love I see this is, this is the point of where, like, true learning and interactions happen. My favorite thing is, now I’m gonna learn and learn about an axolotl. I’m gonna go research that, really honestly, because a it’s fun, sounds fun and cute. And this is another example of how you’ve modeled one of those standards, which is global collaboration standards. It’s like every you’re talking about everyone bringing in all of these access points, and just thinking about designing an educational game, and you bring in educators. What was it like in creating a learning space or opportunity to really dig into these standards and try to bring them to life in a way that you just described? And how did you identify what each stakeholder brings and offers? And how do you work together to really offer that’s designed to be a successful game? Because it could go off in so many ways. But then how do you bring it back to to really focus in on the end result, which is student learning?

Lauren Summerford 17:13
Yeah. So we are really fortunate to have feedback from Roblox on this program, and that helped so much. And in our kickoff call, I remember writing down the one thing that was said, and it said, All gameplay needs to tie back to the learning standards, because it could be so easy to go off and come up with this or change that, but it’s like at the end of the day, are we adding elements that don’t accomplish what AVID has come to us to do. And so Super League, we like to consider ourselves expert in the metaverse. So we know Roblox very, very well, whether you’re trying to reach a new audience or you want to build a custom game, like we are here for you. But AVID knows students and teachers, and they know these standards. So it was so important. We were in constant collaboration on this project. I don’t think a day went by since January that I haven’t spoken with the team at AVID, making sure we were aligned and moving in the right direction. And you have to have trust. So we were really fortunate that our team and the AVID teams, especially Michelle and Philippe, we work with them on a daily basis, and they just gave honest feedback and but they also look to us of okay, what’s going to work with Roblox? Does this make sense? How can we bring this to life? So it was really important from day one of the project that we all understood that we are working towards the same goal, and that was to bring these standards to life and Roblox in a way that was going to be easy to play, but also very fun. Because I think the best learning experiences, like you were talking about at the beginning, you’re learning something you don’t even realize it. And so whether you’re learning about axolotls or bridges and Roblox, it’s just it all came back to those standards. And so every meeting, we would come out, okay, how does this align to any of these standards? And we had to challenge ourselves a fair amount of times, just because it, like I said, it was very easy to find you want to come up with these additions to the game, when, in reality, it could have been cool, but it may have distracted from the end goal, and that was, it’s important to do that, of putting aside anything extra to make sure we’re achieving what AVID came to us to do.

Paul Beckermann 19:29
So you really focused in on that alignment and making sure that you were meeting your goals. Can you see anything in the future that might strengthen that alignment between national standards and game development in general, maybe to amplify the experience that you went through or something else?

Lauren Summerford 19:50
That’s a really good question. I think one thing that would help anybody in my role or a game development role. When they’re building an education focused game, spending time understanding those standards. That was something I had started, but then as the process was going, I found myself diving deeper and deeper to understand what each of these meant and how they would be properly executed. And I know that’s more of a personal reflection to answer your question. But I think getting game developers excited about bringing education to Roblox, because I was of the Oregon Trail generation. And we just had, it was a fun game, and it was, it was the Roblox of my time. And so I would love to see game developers, whether no matter what we’re throughout Super League or elsewhere, learning about, on a deeper level, about these standards, and really getting creative of, how can we bring education to roadblocks? How can we make it fun? And just remembering there’s a lot of joy and satisfaction in doing something that people may not find to be the most simple thing to do, because at first it was a challenge, okay, how do we make this educational? But then once we were all like, oh, we can do this, it just became such a fulfilling journey, I would say, for everybody on this project, just challenging ourselves and really I mean applying the standards to our own work. You know, the empowered learner, I keep going back to them, but it was real time learning and just being agile to the needs of AVID.

Paul Beckermann 21:32
And those standards that you chose with AVID are those durable skills that kind of tie in with the conversation earlier about how many different jobs you’re going to have. Those are enduring skills that that kids can be taking away from that game. That’s really cool.

Rena Clark 21:47
Yeah and you’ve alluded to this within working with this team, but I was just thinking about the future of standards aligned, game based learning experience, and how that’s really going to impact teachers and education in the future. And I know this, but we’re kind of wondering like, how do you see the future of the standards getting aligned games? How do you see that manifesting?

Lauren Summerford 22:15
For this game specifically, or other games on Roblox?

Rena Clark 22:19
In general, just the future of standards align game-based learning.

Lauren Summerford 22:24
I think the short answer is, I think we’re scratching the surface of what can be done. There are 70 million players in Roblox. I don’t want to misquote it, but I believe it’s every single day, which is an astronomical number. I mean, it is. It’s just a crazy, crazy number. When you really think about it. The student-aged individuals, they’re spending more time on Roblox than other social media platforms combined. So what we’re doing here with AVID, I’m really excited, because I feel like we’re diving into something that people, like I said, are only scratching the surface of what can be done. And I think, I mentioned the play test, or of how we presented these games to students and teachers. We had them jump in the environment and play with us and give real time feedback, like we wanted to know what is working, what’s not working? Is this confusing? And in one of our last play tests, a teacher said to us, I think this could really help me in the classroom. And so it’s really interesting, because, I’m gonna back up. So one of my first mentors in the music industry, we, like I said, we were at the dawn of like, MySpace and Twitter, and then Facebook came along, or Facebook then Twitter. And he people would get so rattled so quickly. They’re like, what’s another platform, what do we do? And he would constantly say to us, our greatest challenges are our greatest opportunities. So if the students are spending this much time on these platforms, what an incredible opportunity to find ways to get creative with these standards and just use it as one more tool in your arsenal, I guess, not designed to take away learning in the classroom and the incredible hard work from teachers across the world, but just to be one more tool they can use to amplify what they’re doing.

Paul Beckermann 24:22
Speaking of tools, that is a perfect time for us to hop into our toolkit.

Student 24:28
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 24:39
All right, toolkit time. Winston, what do you got?

Winston Benjamin 24:43
I got this idea that’s been kind of alluded to and also stated is the idea of backward design. It’s knowing where you want to go at the end and how to move through the process from end to beginning. And I think with that, it really brings the teachers or anyone to really. Think about what are the things that you’re trying to add? Does it really add or take away or distract from the actual focus of the learning standards or the goal that you want to get students to understand? So I think utilizing that real ideal of how to say what is needed and what is not needed is a really good way of identifying work and standard learning.

Paul Beckermann 25:24
For sure. Rena?

Rena Clark 25:27
I see a real through path to making so many connections to this game, but also to the College and Career Connections, especially engineering design I was just thinking about in episode 298 when we had Lisette Terry talking about her role as a structural forensic engineer and how that connects to what they’re doing in this game, and how you connect it. Maybe even have people come in. So okay, maybe, if you’re building this bridge, might have an engineer that works on like, how are you connecting it? Or even talking about game design and like, how is this so I just think making those connections to career and different opportunities is very ripe with all different kinds of games.

Paul Beckermann 26:07
I think so too. I wonder how Lisette would do on this Roblox, this game, this AVID Creator Planet. I bet she’d rock it.

Rena Clark 26:14
I think so.

Paul Beckermann 26:18
So I’m just going to say once again, head out to Roblox and check out AVID Creator Planet and experience what we’re talking about here today. And Lauren, you have a chance to add something too. Anything you want to add here into a toolkit? It could be a mindset. It could be a approach to something. It could be a tool.

Lauren Summerford 26:41
You know, I will share. So I think, I know we keep talking about the standards, which is why we’re here, but I think the empowered learner element of taking the data and every challenge along the way and make the right decisions, and also collaboration. Like we would not have been able to make the final product be what it needed to be for students and teachers if we did not have the council of AVID sharing their expertise and telling us where to adjust and what to change. So that would be my takeaway. Collaboration. Awesome.

Winston Benjamin 27:19
I appreciate that you’re putting in, that in our toolkit, this idea collaboration, as we continue to define that as a one of our core standards, but it’s time for that one thing.

Transition Music 27:29
It’s time for that one thing, it’s that one thing.

Winston Benjamin 27:42
What’s the one thing that’s still roaming around in your head that you’re like, Oh, I like that idea. Hopefully I can think deeper about it later. So I’m gonna either throw it to Paul and Rena, what’s the one thing that’s on your brain? Paul?

Paul Beckermann 27:53
Durable skills. The things that kids would be learning through a game like this are things that they can carry with them through any of the however many careers they’re going to undertake in their lives. And if we can empower kids with those durable skills and transferable skills, wow, what a gift we’re giving those kids.

Winston Benjamin 28:11
I like that. I like that. Rena?

Rena Clark 28:13
I just really love what Lauren said about amplifying opportunity and thinking about just one more opportunity, another way to reach students, a different way, because we know different. Kids learn differently, and they learn best. Back to that quote, it’s like it is a problem-solving challenge. It is in an immersive environment, and you’re you’re touching more senses. It’s not just reading or watching. You’re using multiple senses. And we know that then that has a more of an impact in your memory, because you’re making more connections. So it is an opportunity to amplify.

Winston Benjamin 28:50
And I appreciate that. Mine is, is that idea of internal motivation. It’s like the more fun you have, the more you want to learn, and the more you want to learn, the more you want to have fun. And that’s how you continue to engage and do and move along the learning spectrum. So Lauren, is there anything with what’s your one last thing you would like to share with our audience, something you helped us to continue to think about as we move forward?

Lauren Summerford 29:13
Oh, my goodness. I will share briefly on the durable skills and how important I think that is. You know, I am somebody who definitely is very much in the durable skill category having these different roles in my career that are as a result of having durable skills. So I’m just so excited and so grateful that we were able to do something that brings what we know about Roblox to students and teachers. The core team at Super League who was really involved on this project. We all have such a passion for education, so the fact that we’re able to help students, help teachers find new ways to learn and discover the power of durable skills is just so fulfilling and such a joy. So thank you for inviting me on to talk about what we’re able to do with this game.

Rena Clark 30:02
We appreciate having you, Lauren, just dive in a bit deeper to the AVID Creator Planet and really the connection between that game and standards, and really the all the planning and everything that goes into it. So we really appreciate you giving us, like opening a window into how it was actually created. So thank you.

Paul Beckermann 30:21
Are you saying, Rena, we leveled up.

Rena Clark 30:23
Oh, yep,. We leveled up. Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 30:30
We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 30:45
We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 30:50
And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 30:53
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 30:55
You make a difference.

#350 – The Intersection of National Educational Standards and Game Development, with Lauren Summerford

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The Intersection of National Educational Standards and Game Development, with Lauren Summerford

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