Archaeology Simulation Assessment

The end of this past week saw the Digital Archaeology Project reach it's scheduled ending date. The team worked for 5 weeks on developing a digital, educational experience that was appropriate for a 4th grade level of student. This post will focus on the positives and negatives of the project.

Background On the Project
The team on this project consisted of eight students, four CS students and four Anthropology/History students, as well as three faculty advisors. The focus of the project was to create an experience that accurately depicted the archaeology process. The player would discover an artifact through digging, categorize the artifact, explore the house for more artifacts, research their findings in the library, all the while opening up interpretations. Their findings and research allowed them to make claims about the people who inhabited the land.

Our goals were pretty lofty considering that we had zero starting out. Knowing this, our advisors realized that we wouldn't be able to give the game the polish it would need. Therefore, our team of eight students would be in charge of the game design and initial development of the software. We wouldn't put the polishing touches on it, but we would have the game working completely by the end of our project. Then we would hand our product off to another on-campus organization to polish it up and prettify it.

Results
At the end of our 5 week period, we have a game. It's very, very raw, but it is a game. The data is there, the game flow is there. It's just ugly. It's all programmer and placeholder art, which is notoriously hideous, but it did it's job.

We didn't have to change our goals to meet our production rate, which is good. However, our goals were very, very aggressive - perhaps too aggressive. We weren't in a place where we could playtest a prototype with actual 4th graders, so we're carrying quite a bit of risk still. I say 'still' because the game can still be changed, once what's there is beautified. There are plans to playtest it and tweak what needs to be tweaked.



In the vein of SCRUM, I'll lay out areas that were successful and those that needed more work.

Positives

• Diverse team 
•  we had a very diverse team, but we were able to find a group identity and work well together.
• SCRUM 
• we used what I would call SCRUM lite, but the parts of it that we did use worked well. The group took to it quickly.
• New technology
• the tech team (the CS students) picked up C# and Unity3D quickly. It was fun to work with new software.
• Built off of past success
• Speaking from a tech team perspective, the Morgan's Raid experience was helpful in this project.
• Empowered team
• the faculty advisors did a good job of directing us initially, but by the end, the students were making the decisions, even the big ones

Negatives

• Pressure of lofty of goals
• while we were successful, had our goals been smaller we could've polished the game mechanics more
• Feelings of being unfulfilled
• handing off a project to someone else to finish isn't enjoyable. You get protective of a project and to see it go before it's done is a little saddening, even if it's necessary.
• Empowered team 
• having the students making the big decisions led to moments where the decision took longer than it might've, had an advisor just dictated what to do.
• Short deadlines
• having such a short timeframe for a big project led to some software debt. At the time, it made more sense to keep implementing new features instead of refactoring. Also, our Product Owners didn't dictate that they wanted code refactored, so I'm not sure who should've spoken up. 

Conclusions
After everything is said and done, the project was a success. We set out to create something educational while still being accurate and we did that. Things weren't perfect, but I feel that we (the four CS students and two of the advisors who have worked together before) are perfecting our process.

I'm glad to have taken part in the project and I would encourage others to look for similar Immersive Learning opportunities. While these projects are great learning opportunities, one problem with Immersive Learning is that not every major supports it as well as they could. I know that art students in particular have trouble finding room in their schedules to accommodate it. If I were on a tighter schedule I may not have had time for this project.

I'll use this experience, and the Morgan's Raid experience, to make the most of this Spring, where I'll be working on a project at the  Virginia Ball Center. I'm really excited about this opportunity, and I'm sure I'll blog about it in the coming months. I'm not entirely done with the Archaeology Project, as I'll likely be doing some additional development on it in the next few weeks, but I'm proud of what we were able to accomplish.