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However, when given a college textbook chapter about a related historical topic that
was not covered in the game they were able to learn much more from that chap-
ter than the expert players of the comparison game—and they were able to learn
facts, images, procedures and systems knowledge better. Thus, the grounding expe-
riences of grappling with historical issues in the Civilization historical simulation
game prepared the expert players for future learning from the formal symbolic task
of reading a college history textbook chapter (Bransford & Schwartz, 2001). This
result also fits with Dewey's (1938) stress on the importance of having related expe-
riences when trying to learn something new; these experiences provide the needed
perceptual grounding need for the symbolic learning to make sense.
Similarly, Ahn (2007) found that college business school students' experiences
in playing an entrepreneurship business game yielded the best learning and under-
standing when combined with a more formal symbolic learning experience that
involved contemplating the strategies used in the game and relating those strategies
to background readings in the course. Here again, the experiences provided from
playing the entrepreneurship business game (several times in this case) provided the
grounding needed to learn more from the college course readings.
Learning from Graphical Computer Simulations with Movement
and Animation
In learning a mental model for a system, students need to learn and understand the
component functional relations that each describe now as a system entity changes
as a function of changes in another system entity. Chan and Black (2006) found that
graphic computer simulations involving movement and animation were a good way
to learn these functional relations between system entities. For example, the roller
coaster graphical computer simulation shown in Fig. 3.1 allows students to learn the
functional relation between the height of the roller coaster cars in the gravity field
and the kinetic and potential energy by having students move the slider at the bottom
of the screen to move the roller coaster cars along the peaks and valleys of the
track and simultaneously see the resulting changes in kinetic and potential energy
shown in the animation of the bar graph changes. Thus one variable (the height in
the gravity field) is directly manipulated by movement (of the student's hand and
mouse) and the other two variables (kinetic and potential energy) are shown by
animated changes in the bar graph.
The direct manipulation animation version of the simulation was compared to
other versions involving just text, text and pictures (screen shots of the simula-
tion), and a “slide show” showing screen shots, and the more grounded/embodied
direct manipulation animation version yielded the best memory, problem solving
and transfer problem solving to another context. Further research has shown that for
simple systems (e.g., a swing instead of a roller coaster), text and text-plus-diagrams
are sufficient for 6th grade students to master the system, but 5th grade students do
better with the direct manipulation animation. For more complex systems (e.g., a
pole vault instead of a roller coaster) both 5th and 6th grade students needed a direct
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