Medallion

Build a community to advise, to teach and achieve financial literacy in varied cultural contexts


























by
Abby Adams
Meera Ravi
Samuel Potter Cahn
Tianyu Yang
Xiyang Wang
Yang Qiu




Cognitive Science & Ed Tech II
NYU Steinhardt
October 17, 2013





The project and the need for it.


Currently students lack the opportunity to make informed decisions about money and
manage their finances responsibly. Our web platform, Medallion enables peer-to-
peer sharing of sound financial knowledge and practices with learners across the
globe. When we look at educating young people, we must recognize their needs,
demands and abilities. Leveraging games as a tool, Medallion will help students
aged twelve and higher, acquire budget and financial literacy skills. Our concept
games will teach the most basics of budgeting, what it means to budget, balancing
expenses, making a budget plan, knowledge of credit, smart shopping, price
comparison and much more.

Medallion, a user-directed game based online learning network, harnesses the
collective intelligence of many to personalize learner-generated content around
cultural practices of money in an increasingly interactive world. In other words, upon
playing the games available on our website and gaining some level of mastery over
it, students become content creators editing and personalizing game content to
provide apprentice users culture specific financial skills.

Financial literacy, not limited to financial knowledge, includes skills and behaviors
that must be rehearsed and habituated. To establish sustainable training, autonomy
and mastery of subject matter, Medallion offers students the following features, a)
simulate real-world activities using virtual money, b) rank games for optimum play, c)
track achievements to promote healthy competition, d) level up with earned points or
exchange earned points for in-game accessories, e) mentor fellow learners of
different cultures with similar interests.

As online education has expanded in recent years, functional life skills education
have not enjoyed the same explosion in popularity. Medallion is a tool that allows
users to explore personalized authentic life experiences in a safe environment.
Medallion is a unique venture, but harnesses features that have been successful in
other online games and communities. Here are examples of sites that have similar
goals to Medallions.





Existing research and Literature review


Review of existing products:
1)Practice Money Skills for Life
This website aimed to provide financial
knowledge to users. Users can choose
topics about finance, such as credit and
debit, budgeting and spending, and
saving. It also includes some videos and
games to teach financial knowledge. The disadvantage of it is the lack of social
community through which users can communicate with each other. And the learning
experience is not personalized.
http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/




2) Spent


This is a reality game where users
should make a wise choice in
different real-life situations: choosing
apartments, paying for schools and
medical insurance. This situation in
the game is realistic, but the user
may get boring after playing for a
long time because there is no
stimulus to motivate them.
http://playspent.org/



Literature Review:
We read a number of articles that are related to our main concept - budgeting. We
found that teaching budgeting skills is extremely important in social studies
education in school. Students in grade 7 will learn political science and economics
concepts and learn budgeting skills in a budget simulation game
(Jackson,1981). Due to the importance of budget learning, there are many activities
designed for budgeting in junior high school classes and these activities usually last
four to ten weeks.


There are more non-traditional students now than before. Not everyone comes from
a rich or middle class background, so the teachers should consider this difference in
background. In order to take consideration about those socioeconomically
disadvantaged students, some budgeting activities are to create budget plan based
on poverty wages. (Carreiro & Kapitulik, 2010) These in-class activities share the
basic elements of any educational game: teacher's guide, learning materials such as
worksheet, game board, simulation budgeting games and team collaboration and
competition. In the articles describing budget game activities, they all mentioned the
game simulation. Communicative game can provide an enjoyable atmosphere in
true-to-life situations (Harbour, 1984). The content within the game can be anything
that related to financial literacy, such as making budget plan, learning differences
between savings and checking account and learning about paying bills. In Libresco
and Balantic's article, they talk about two famous websites teaching financial
knowledge. One of them is National Priorities Project: users can enter data about his
own location, and then compare the programs with each other; the other is New York
Times--Budget Puzzle (Libresco & Balantic 2012). These two websites are all about
teaching how to control the nation's finances that makes them not so related to
everyday life of individuals.


Social media has grown tremendously in the past ten years, namely through
websites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Most students are
adjusting to using such media during their study. Social networking has become one
of the essential personal developing skills. (McCorkle, D. E., & McCorkle, Y. L.,
2012) Learning based on social networking could increases learning motivation and
interest more learners. Existing research shows that middle school students believe
social networking provided opportunities for making international connections and for
sharing their perspectives especially for literacy learning. (Leland, C., Ociepka, A., &
Kuonen, K., 2012) In addition, students are willing to participate and collaborate with
each other, even though they never meet previously. They trust online relationships
and would like to share resources. (Stornaiuolo, l. A., DiZio, J. K., & Hellmich, E. A.,
2013) Other study shows that social networking could increase student-student and
teacher-student interactions that could motivate students behaviors in class( Sezen
Balcikanli, G., 2012).

Existing Website
Facebook is one of the largest online social networking services. Users could build
up their own profile and friends circle, exchange messages, receive automatic
notifications and share favorite messages, articles and medias. In addition, users
could join in common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or
college. Facebook has become the most popular platform that people sharing
feelings, ideas, thoughts and information.


Considering Facebook as a social learning websites, it expands learning methods
and content, and increase learning motivation. Learning is no more limited in
classroom or at home. Because of the development of high-tech devices, people
could post their ideas, share valuable articles and communicate online anywhere.
The content on the Facebook include all the topics people may interest in, and users
could add whatever they are interested in. Facebook could help users to build up a
learning circle or community where people with similar interests could collaborate
and assist with each other.

Create Group Game: Example-Chinese Background Game
This is a brief example of the kinds of scenarios that students may create once they
edit games with their groups. Also see our flow charts and storyboards at the end of
this paper.

Description: The game is designed by five users; each of who use 400 points they
gained from basic games. If the player finishes the task, they will win 400 each; on
the opposite, the player will lose 50%, 1000 RMB, to designers. By this way, the both
designers and players have motivations to design or play a budget game.

The background of the game is in Beijing. There is a 15-year-old high school girl, Li
Mei who wants to travel to Shanghai at the end of the semester. She has to save
2000 RMB from September to December.

Here are some possible situations she may earn money or spend money. Li Mei
should make a wise choice in different real-life situations based on the table below in
case of not saving enough money.

Earn Money Spend Money
Parents +20/week RMB Party -200 RMB
Scholarship +800 RMB Book -200 RMB
Tutor work +80/week RMB Repair bicycle -20 RMB

Gym -100 RMB

Question 1:

This weekend is Li Meis best friends birthday party. She needs to decide
A) Spend 50 RMB to buy a fancy gift
B) Spend 20 RMB to buy a normal gift
C) Dont buy anything.

Tips: If Li Mei choose C, her best friends will have an argument with her, and Li Mei
have to treat her friend with another 30 RMB.

Question 2:


The Math teacher requires an exercise book, which will be useful for the class. Li
Mei needs to decide
A) Spend 100 RMB to buy a new book
B) Spend 50 RMB to buy a used book
C) Spend 10 RMB on the paper and copy the book by herself

Tips: If Li Mei chooses B, the used book may have some pages missing. If Li Mei
chooses C, she has to spend lots of time on copying the book and may dont have
time to work, so she may lose the 80RMB that week.
How This Project Relates to Cognitive Theories
In designing our game, we tried to include as many learning theories as we could
while still remaining streamlined, entertaining, and effective.

Part of the learning that is done through our game is done through behaviorist
measures. Behaviorism is the theory of learning that says that all learning is
conditioned through the use of punishment and reward. The way to assess learners,
according to behaviorist theory, is to watch learning manifest itself in observable
behaviors. (Goldman, 2012) In Medallion, we award medallions to praise success -
either successfully completing a level, or demonstrating knowledge by making a
good decision. When learners realize which behaviors result in medallions, they will
trend toward those behaviors, leading to a measurable change in a learners money
management behavior, and thus, learning.

We also designed Medallion to be heavily constructionist. Constructionists believe
that all learning is constructed through experiences that learners have (Goldman,
2012). Knowledge cannot simply be transmitted but must instead be experienced
and analyzed by individual learners, each one making their own meaning based on
what occurred. Further, constructionists believe that it is essential that students
make something in order to learn something (Papert, 2000). When game players
master the basic lessons of budget management, then they will go on to edit the
games for their self-chosen culture or geographic area. Learners will be permitted to
use the information they have just constructed, and then they will build a game about
their own experiences in their own cultural context. Adding features, editing text,
and creating their own design for the game will help them internalize the materials
more, and will also give them a sense of ownership since they have made something
with their knowledge. Instead of simply having the students learn the lessons, they
are then creating a game, which in this case acts as their object to think with
(Goldman, 2012).

Social constructionism is building knowledge in a group. Members of the group
construct knowledge with and for each other, collaborating to create a culture where
each member shares meaning based on shared experiences (Goldman, 2012). In
Medallion, each user is part of a global community. They are involved in different
chat windows discussing different cultural practices, money management, or
whatever they are interested in. In these arenas, users can construct knowledge
about the world with other people. These people may be from different cultures, age
groups, and backgrounds, and thus gives breadth to each user's shared
experience. Also, users choose a group (or many) that they self identify with to work
together to build a game about their individual culture. In all of these experiences,
users are constructing knowledge with other people, making the learning easier to
internalize and recall.

Similar to social constructivism is the idea of distributed cognition. If players are
having discussions in a group, their knowledge is not only limited to their own
experiences, but the collective experiences of the entire group. Since each other
member of the community is a resource, they can their collective knowledge is
greater than any of the groups individual members. (Salomon, 1997) Players will
collaborate with other students and mentors in order to design their own games and
to learn about others cultures.

Scaffolding plays a large role in our game. Scaffolding is providing temporary
assistance to a user in order to get them to the next level. Scaffolding can be
provided by an expert, helpful environmental resource, or through in-depth social
interactions that occur while immersed within the play space (Barab, 2008). In
Medallion, the mentors scaffold newer users to make good money management
decisions. If students have a problem, they can request guidance from an expert,
who will assist them. Scaffolding is most effective when it is just in time and
necessary now, (Gee, 2008) and since the player is asking for the needed
information, it is more likely he or she will remember it later.

Similar to scaffolding, players will also be acting as cognitive apprentices during
game play. When a player is taught by an expert, through modeling and in-depth
explanations of internal processes, they will eventually gain those skills, according to
a theory called cognitive apprenticeship (Goldman, 2012). Eventually novices will
grow to be the experts, and the cycle will continue. Mentors, or experts, will be
specifically instructed to speak to the newer students about the cognitive and
physical tools that the struggling student needs to possess for success.

Finally, our game contains some elements that embody constructivist
viewpoints. Constructivism looks at and explains the connection between new
information and existing knowledge within a student. (Goldman, 2012) Constructivist
theorists say that learning happens when knowledge is discovered and
experienced. Our game, as an open source, student-built game is a knowledge
building community. Students of a specific culture, or of a specific career aspiration
can build micro-knowledge building communities, when develop their own
collaboratively designed games. Mentors will grow more knowledgeable and more
confident in the materials as they consider how best to teach it. The process is
social and dynamic - always changing with the addition of new group members and
the promotion of new users to mentors.

While these are some of our included learning theories at play in Medallion, we hope
to include more as other games are created and other features are designed.

Barab, S., Ingram-Goble, A., & Warren, S. (2008). Conceptual Play Spaces. In R.E.
Ferdig (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in
Education, 989-1009. New York: IGI Global.

Carreiro, J. L., & Kapitulik, B. P. (2010). Budgets, board games, and make believe:
The challenge of teaching social class inequality with non-traditional students.
American Sociologist, 41(3), 232-248. Retrieved from
https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/85
4552733?accountid=12768
Gee, J. P. (2008). Good Video Games, the Human Mind, and Good Learning. In
Good Video Games + Good Learning. Peter Lang Publishing. (pp. 37-38)

Goldman, R., Black, J., Maxwell, J.W., Plass, J.L., & Keitges, M.J. (2012). Engaged
Learning with Digital Media: The Points of Viewing Theory. In W.M. Reynolds &
G.E. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Harbour, L. J. (1984). Le jeu du budget (the budget game). promoting functional
language use through a simulation game Retrieved from
https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/63
266702?accountid=12768

Jackson, E. L. (1981). Improving citizenship education: Elementary handbook
Retrieved from
https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/63
475685?accountid=12768

Leland, C., Ociepka, A., & Kuonen, K. (2012). Finding our way: Eighth graders
explore social networking sites. Voices from the Middle, 19(4), 28-33.

Libresco, A. S., & Balantic, J. (2012). 10 top websites for teaching about issues in
the election season. Social Education, 76(4), 189-192. Retrieved from
https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/13
73088515?accountid=12768

McCorkle, D. E., & McCorkle, Y. L. (2012). Using LinkedIn in the marketing
classroom: Exploratory insights and recommendations for teaching social
Media/Networking. Marketing Education Review, 22(2), 157-166.

Papert, S. (2000). Computer and computer cultures. In Reader on Technology and
Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp.229-246.

Salomon, Gavriel (Ed), (1997). Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational
considerations. Learning in doing: Social, cognitive, and computational
perspectives., (pp. 88-110). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press,
xxi, 275 pp.

Sezen Balcikanli, G. (2012). Social networking in physical education: Undergraduate
students' views on learning. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education,
13(2), 277-290.

Stornaiuolo, l. A., DiZio, J. K., & Hellmich, E. A.,. (2013). Expanding community:
Youth, social networking, and schools. Comunicar, 20(40), 79-87.










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