2020-12-29 14:00 Workshop - Building pen&paper IT security training games

tl;dr We will attempt to build an education game for end-user IT security from scratch.

what is this about?

The plan is to use RAID to design a pen&paper wargame about IT security for end-users from scratch. This will take us about 2 hours, leaving one hour to play and/or discuss the monster we created.

Using RAID during game-design is a way to ensure the in-game depiction of the right time-and-space scale, the right actors, and the right content. However, RAID does not address the level of knowledge and agency of players is representative.The workshop is an attempt to integrate RAIDS with an agency-based framework.

who is the target audience for the workshop?

RAIDs was developed to deliver a tool anyone can use to design fun and serious games. Consequently, anyone can participate. However, I want to encourage anyone with a background in (serious) game design or game-based learning to consider participation: It is an opportunity to widen you horizon and grow your network, while at the same time contributing to game design research.

a bit of background.

Usually, teaching can be seen as the voyage from A - the point where the learner does not know something - to B - the point where future learner knows it. (Maybe you should get something to sketch all the routes and points, we do not want you to get lost where there be dragons.) A is the situation in a specific learning context, which may be characterized by different constraints of the learner (time, resources, formal or informal learning environment, individual endowments and motivations, ...). Point B does not change the situation much, except for the learner having acquired more knowledge and/or competences. The shortest way from A to B is most often to throw information at the learner. But this is often not the best (i.e. most effective and/or efficient) way.

Using games to teach something means the learner is taken out of situation A, into a safe, virtual, "fantasy" environment, where they can learn. Often they explore solutions to problems given in the game-environment. At the end of the game, they are at a point D, where they have learned. Point D should be somewhat close to B, the target. And the route from point C to D should be one that is easier to travel than the shortest A-to-B route.

Most often, designers of educational games have the A-to-B route foremost in their minds. Similar to other forms of education, they put the necessary information into the game. And - to our everlasting emberassment - this is what RAID does, by the way. However, taking the A-to-B route within the game-environment, starting from point C, might lead to a point D that is not even on the original map, making it hard for any learner to find their way from D to B.

Putting a player into a fictional situation that has nothing to do with his real life, poses the risk of teaching them to beat the game, without being able to solve their real life problems. In this workshop we are going to try to include agency as a major consideration into the design process. Thereby mapping the way back from the fictional C and D, to B.

and a bit of context.

This workshop contributes to the research-project NERD.NRW. Anonymized date will be collected in order to improve game-design experiments. If you have any questions about the research project, use this eMailadress to contact me: k.koehler@fh-aachen.de