Differentiation Techniques and Their Effectiveness for Video Game Art and Design Lectures in Higher Education

Abstract

In video games higher education, lecturers are often presented with a student cohort that represents a broad range of ability levels. Teaching such groups can be a challenge, as it is easy to under or over stretch students on the extremes of the ability spectrum. Differentiation is a methodology and teaching philosophy in which the goal is not to raise each student to a set level, but rather to ensure that each student improves as much as they are individually capable. While there has been much written on the subject of differentiation techniques in a school level and further education context, there is little in terms of differentiation literature in a video games higher education context. Using the principles of Action Research, three differentiation techniques were employed across six lectures, with a total of 38 student interviews being conducted after the lessons concluded. These were then critically analysed in conjunction with self-refection from the lecturer. The results determined that all three techniques had individual strengths and weaknesses—and are therefore appropriate in different situations. A particularly promising technique was the “Choice of Task”, where students were able to select from a short list of tasks designed to provide them with varying levels of challenge, allowing them to self-manage their learning. The technique shows potential to be effective within a video games higher education context, and the manner in which it is used represents a potential avenue for further research.

Appendices

Appendix

This is the raw data, collected from student interviews after each lesson. The students have been anonymised, with the numbers simply indicating chronological order when performing the interviews. The interviews have been slightly rearranged here for ease of navigation, grouping the lessons by technique.

Art Students, Extension Task

2.1 11 Students: 3 Female, 8 Male

Note that one female and one male student came out as transgender after data collection, but prior to publication. The overall gender ratio, of course, remains unchanged.

Student 1 Not challenged enough. I knew the engine so I could follow on from what you were doing, but it was still something new which I didn’t know. Just needed to learn it. I think it helped, it meant that people who were caught up and knew the engine could try something they’d never tried before.

Student 2 Adequately challenged. It wasn’t something extremely difficult, but something that I’d do a couple of times to get done right. I guess?

Student 3 It was mainly learning rather than challenging. I wouldn’t have said there was a challenge to it, it was just learning something new. When I’m learning something I normally pick it up quite quickly, and then its going in depth with those things that I find quite challenging. If it was going to be a challenge for me it would have to be about doing it in more complex ways. The extension task was useful, it was putting together things we’ve learned to see how they can work together, which was always good.

Student 4 Adequately challenged. It was something I haven’t done before, but it was still not too far away from what we had been taught, but not too much of a stretch, while still feeling like I was learning something new. I think so, it was more optional, so it was kind of how comfortable you felt, so I think in that regard it was more tailored individually. Because it was optional, those who felt confident enough could use it.

Student 5 Adequately challenged. The decal one was easier to keep up with because it was a lot simpler than the atlas one for instance, it was simpler and easier to get your head around. Yes, because some people would finish the task way before others, so it was good to have those people doing something else as well. So I ended up making a panning texture which kept duplicating itself for the decals, so it was good to have something else to do in that time.

Student 6 Adequately challenged. It was really interesting and I managed to keep up. I think as far as I remember because this is what you usually do, you go through it on the board and you do it again. I managed to keep up the first time and go through it on my notebook the second time. It was easy enough that I could keep up the first time around, but it was still a complex subject so it wasn’t like too easy. I remember making a master so I definitely did the extension, so yeah. When there is an extension I still feel like I’m pushed to keep learning stuff. Because I was keeping up, if you had just stopped there I would have felt like I was not learning any more, but because you did an extension I felt that I could keep learning new things rather than just going back to my project.

Student 7 Adequately challenged. It wasn’t too hard, but I had also not done it before. I did find that one a bit tricky actually, because I guess things in Unreal are more difficult, they don’t make that much sense to me. Its logical stuff which does not come naturally, I think other people were probably better at that one than me. I think it helped because the more you do things like that it becomes easier to understand over time.

Student 8 Not challenged enough. I knew what you were trying to do, but I wanted to do it on my own and work in Zbrush. What you were saying was fairly simple. I can’t remember if I did it now, I’d say maybe? Yes. It got you to do the work. I guess I kind of prefer having homework. I know we’re at uni, we are meant to be going out doing this ourselves, but some kind of objective will help you get on with what the lesson was about.

Student 9 Adequately challenged. You explained it really well so it was easy to follow what was going on, that’s my main thing because you went through it more than once—once really quickly and then round again slower and that helped follow it. I really liked it (the extension task) I’d say it did help. I definitely thought, it’s an extra bonus. I really liked it. You went through the first very thoroughly, which then meant that I was really confident progressing into the extension task.

Student 10 Adequately challenged. I guess it was good because we… it was good to learn to use, and not too difficult to follow. It was one of those things where without your assistance with… it was nice to be able to do it. It was good to have the extension task, as without it it would have been too easy. Yes, I do. It achieves it because it does allow those who want to go further to be able to. It was a bit difficult because everyone wants to do a different thing, everyone wants to learn one specific thing and has to ask for that individually, and something that’s set might not be relevant. It’s all stuff we can learn which might be relevant, so those who do want to challenge themselves and go further can do so, so the extension task was appropriate.

Student 11 Not challenged enough. It was quite easy to do, and easy to follow along with, but I thought it was really interesting. I feel like it wasn’t challenging to do, I don’t feel like anyone was behind as such, but it was one of those things that was quite useful. I think it does. I don’t think I did it but from what I saw of others they did it and I thought it was beneficial. I didn’t do it, I don’t know why.

Design Students, Extension Task

3.1 5 Students: 1 Female, 4 Male

Student 25 Not challenged enough, as it was pretty simple. I knew how to use the pen tool before, but I did find it interesting, and pretty simple to learn which was nice. I think it will be a helpful for when you want to make things a bit more smooth, depends on the context.

Student 26 Not challenged enough. Compared to what we learned, it was quite easy. Yes, I found that using multiple helped. Because you can create a shape that you want, you can create what you want, whether with one character you will only have one. I could make it harder, definitely.

Student 27 Not challenged enough. But it was quite a good thing to learn, because though it wasn’t hard it was useful to know, so finding it out it can help me a lot, I just didn’t know it previously. It doesn’t always have to be challenging to be useful to learn. I think it was good, because if you just said find one character and do that and they do that, we’ve already watch you do it on the board so we might as well be copying, but we can do a more difficult version of what I‘ve been shown. It was good to learn a more difficult way.

Student 28 Not challenged enough. It was a relatively simple task, and it was shown to us in a simple manner, it was something you had to know to do, but easy to learn. Yeah, I guess so, it was slightly more challenging, but it didn’t look too much more harder. They might be different levels, but they weren’t too different if that makes sense.

Student 29 Not challenged enough. When you showed us the tutorial it didn’t look difficult to do, you could do it in different ways and that’s the only way I could see a challenge happening. I think it helped because it showed us how it could happen, and how we could deal with it using the new skill set. Yes, it helped. Something like that would occur, and it was better to practice.

Design Students, Choice of Task

4.1 8 Students: 1 Female, 7 Male

Student 12 Adequately challenged. It didn’t feel like I was doing anything too complex, I was just keeping it simple, but I did enjoy doing it. I think it was interesting just trying something different and seeing what I could do with a limited set, though I did pick Dwarf Fortress because I liked the style rather than racing games which would have been easier to work on. Yes. I thought I would choose one that I would have a better idea of.

Student 13 Adequately challenged. I’ve come into the course with a basic knowledge of the software that we’ve been using, and I found that in most circumstances what I’ve been asked to do has required me to use those basic skills. In a few circumstances have I found that it’s been too difficult to carry out what’s been asked of me. Yes, because in giving two options, one being a more difficult one, it stopped students that had a higher ability completing it in a very short amount of time and then proceeding to just talk or waste their time. By giving the option of a harder task it can be more stimulating, and improves level overall.

Student 14 Adequately challenged. It wasn’t too difficult, because we could just get images and change them, and make effects and stuff, while when we need to draw stuff it’s more difficult. Yeah, I mean if you take Dwarf Fortress its way more difficult to make something good than Burnout, just because of the graphics. You don’t have graphics in the game.

Student 15 Adequately challenged. It wasn’t exactly like a hard task, I’m not very experienced in Photoshop, but I was able to play around and get the task done. I have a very limited knowledge. Yeah, it does help. Because given two different options, with Burnout it’s a bit easier as it’s a nice vibrant one, easier to create a big play style with different colours. A bit harder to create a nice graphic with the second one in Dwarf Fortress.

Student 16 Challenged, but purely because of my mistakes. In retrospect I haven’t really been engaging hard enough with anything because like outside influences, I’m really bad at letting go of things, I can’t get out of a thought loop to engage with something else. I feel like instead of the difficulty curve of each thing, I kinda had a lot of trouble engaging with the options because I have a lot of other ideas based in different genres. I get energised by things that I’m already thinking about. If I like find a certain thing more appealing, I’m able to find more about it.

Student 17 Adequately challenged. In other lessons you just get stuck and I didn’t get stuck. The actual lesson itself isn’t too challenging I think I’ve just been distracted personally today. I picked the Burnout Paradise one because I don’t think I could have done the one with Ascii. I liked that there was an option to do something more difficult even if I didn’t pick it personally.

Student 18 Adequately challenged. I learnt a fair bit of new skills in photoshop and different ways of putting images together. I’d probably argue that this was a very much needed lesson just to show you how to put together several images that may not immediately fit together and make them fit together. I think it was really useful, if you felt particularly uncomfortable, you could pick the easier option to get more of a hang of the basics more, but if you were looking more to improve with the detailed skills then it was useful to have the second option.

Student 19 Adequately challenged. Something I’ve never done before by myself even though there were two of us there, but it was engaging enough that I gave it a try, I had an idea of what I wanted to do and we went from there. I think so, because if you go for the option you prefer you’re going to be more engaged with that one. Say you gave us No Man’s Sky, then I obviously know nothing so I’m not going to engage with it.

Design Students, Choice of Task

5.1 5 Students: 1 Female, 4 Male

Student 20 Adequately challenged. It’s just… It gives us an acceptable amount of time to do an example piece of work, and we can use that to get feedback on what we’re doing right and get feedback on.. It’s just helpful. I think being given—you can do it this way but it’s a bit more simple, but then you can pick up on the little things, or something bigger that you can put more into, but then having put more into you can have more of a challenge, more interesting to see the outcome and get feedback on that.

Student 21 Adequately challenged. It’s not something really impossible for us to do, and you were showing us step by step how to get good stuff. You give us feedback, and ways to improve. I think that’s the main thing so I didn’t think its too challenging, this. I can see where it comes from, and I think if someone tried to do the hardest one… Having an option is good, it gives you the freedom to choose something.

Student 22 Adequately challenged. I feel that there are stuff that is a bit harder for some of us, even myself as I’m not used to it, even the graphic parts from the class—but I feel that with your help, I can improve and try to do small steps, try to start doing stuff in the subject that I’m not that good as. It’s not impossible. We have room to improve, even if we don’t get it perfect. Yeah, I think it’s really good, even if you have one that’s more difficult than the other, but I choose based on my taste not difficulty—so I like to have options, it would make me more enthusiastic, as I’m more enthusiastic about car games, but Rpg is boring I don’t like it but I’m going to do it anyway because its an assessment. Giving the option gives me an idea like they… the option to choose is a good thing. We live in a society like we customise everything.

Student 23 Adequately challenged. So with the task there were certain features I could do and knew how to do, but in the same time because we were in pairs I could pull knowledge and ask you and do reasonably well, so we learnt from each other. Yeah, because they’re such different games, we chose Burnout Paradise because our game is going to be graphically grand, but if you were doing something harder Dwarf Fortress would be an option, it tailors to the assessment. You could pick the one you weren’t doing to gain experience in a different way, or gain more practice.

Student 24 Adequately challenged, it was not that difficult but it was something interesting. Actually I don’t know if it helped, but I like the fact that we had multiple choice to choose between because we were able to choose the more difficult one, but without the choice it’s just the flat, the middle, I think it helped.

Design Students, Directed Questioning

6.1 6 Students: 1 Female, 5 Male

Student 30 Not sure. I was forgetting technical terms and didn’t know what to do a lot of the time. Well, it’s probably just because the techniques are a bit hard to remember, it wasn’t too entertaining. I think it would have worked better if it had some options, to make us remember what it is, like ooh it’s probably this one, help us remember what is which. So we can remember what it is.

Student 31 Too challenged. First because I didn’t have the vocabulary to answer sometimes, and maybe because it was a no knowledge that I have sometimes, there were a lot of questions that are not really something I know stuff about. I think the technique helped. Just because it was more structured, because otherwise everyone will want to answer at the same time.

Student 32 Adequately challenged. We have been through all of it in the past, though some of it caused us to recall quite a far way back! It was a bit of a memory recall. I think the questioning was better than leaving it to the floor, as some people wouldn’t get involved, whereas directing it means everyone had to get involved in the session, and stops them being lazy in effect, and not learning.

Student 33 Adequately challenged. It was all stuff we learnt before so not unfair, but obviously it was done at the start of a unit and some of it we forgot, it made us think back. It was trying to think back, like what’s the word. I think it helped, because people that wouldn’t want to put their hand up would have to give an answer, it gets them involved.

Student 34 Adequately challenged. It was based on stuff we had learned but it was a while ago, so if any of us had forgotten it was refreshed in my mind. Kind of, but at the same time not many people are going to have the answer because there wasn’t a panic and they might have the wrong answer—and people shouting out like I did, excited because I knew the answer, alerted others.

Student 35 Adequately challenged. It was a lot of things that made me think about what we had done before, I didn’t necessarily remember it but I had to sort of work it out which was good. It wasn’t—there was stuff on there I didn’t know, but not too challenging as not everyone need to know all the information for everything. Yeah it helped, because it meant people couldn’t avoid answering anything, but still an element of—you could answer if you knew.

Design Students, Directed Questioning

7.1 3 Students, 1 Female, 2 Male

Student 36 Adequately challenged. It was not too hard, not too easy, I think it was okay. It’s a funny thing to do. I think it’s fine, I don’t know really I think it’s how you’d done it. Is there a better way? No, I don’t think so.

Student 37 Adequately challenged. I should probably know more, I didn’t know most of the stuff but it was just because I didn’t pay attention. I think they were good questions to see if you were paying attention overall. That’s a good technique, it’s a good technique. Because you are more random, and it makes us all pay attention and be prepared to answer.

Student 38 Adequately challenged. Yes I can explain. I think because you are something we had during the course, nothing during… stuff that we, not that we learned, you talk about those stuff during the lecture, but not stuff that like, doing at home. Yes, speaking about my background I prefer this type rather than alphabetical order as you never know when you are picked. So I think it’s a good way of asking questions.