I attended  ComicCon  again this year, and addition to the wild costumes, crowded exhibit hall, and over-priced food, there are a series of sessions. They cover television, movies, and print in a wide variety of markets.  And I like the sessions that aren’t associated with popular media (as waiting in lines is something I’m fairly averse too).  One I saw this year (not all of, for several reasons) was particularly thought-provoking.

As background, when I was  approached by the Australian Children’s Welfare Agency, many years ago, to do a game to help kids who grow up in ‘non-parental’ situations, they’d already spent their money on a video, and a comic book, and a poster.  As far as I know, it was the first serious game you could play on the web (and I’m happy to have that disconfirmed, but as I’ve thought about it and tried to find out to the contrary, I haven’t found to the contrary). And back then we didn’t even  have the label ‘serious game’!

And I’ve been a fan of serious games since before then (my first job out of college was designing and programming educational computer games).  In fact, one of the reasons I went to grad school was because  I saw the connection between adventure games and learning, but  it wasn’t clear they were commercially viable (at that time).

But I didn’t think about the comic book much.  I got a copy as part of the overall launch when the game was released along with the other materials, so I’m sure I read it (it may even be lurking somewhere in a cubbyhole somewhere, though could also have been the victim of a move or a tidiness binge).  And I’ve argued before about how graphic novel and such formats aren’t used enough in learning.

So this session was on serious comics, and it of course resurrected those thoughts. One panelist opened about how they were using comics to spark reading, and I was reminded how apparently the original Pokemon games (not Go, though that was obsessing my kids on the trip) required and consequently  sparked lots of reading. The second speaker introduced how he was using comics to spread STD/HIV awareness. These are actually both serious issues.

Of course, I was also reminded of an interactive comic book I once read on my iPad that had games interspersed that advanced the storyline (I couldn’t finish because I couldn’t complete one of the games: I’ve little time to spend developing the necessary ‘twitch’ skills).  However, more serious games, requiring applying the knowledge available through the comic, could provide an embedded practice environment.  It’s sort of a blend between a pure comic and a pure game, for important outcomes.  And this is very doable in ebook formats, even if the ‘game’ is just a mini-scenario or several, but with HTML 5 embedded you could do more.

I once wrote that in the future there would be lots of little interactive ‘learnlets’ that would teach you anything you needed to know (including how to make learnlets ;) and games or even interactive comics are what I meant  and what could be pretty close to ideal.  It’s been doable for a while, but now it’s doable pretty much with commercially available tools (e.g. not requiring custom programming).  We can make learning ‘hard fun’, and we should. So, what are you waiting for?

I recently came across an article ostensibly about branching scenarios, but somehow the discussion largely missed the point.  Ok, so I can be a stickler for conceptual clarity, but I think it’s important to distinguish between different types of scenarios and their relative strengths and weaknesses.

So in my book  Engaging Learning, I was looking to talk about how to make engaging learning experiences.  I was pushing games (and still do) and how to design them, but I also wanted to acknowledge the various approximations thereto.  So in it, I characterized the differences between what I called mini-scenarios, linear scenarios, and contingent scenarios (this latter is what’s traditionally called branching scenarios).  These are all approximations to full games, with various tradeoffs.

At core, let me be clear, is the need to put learners in situations where they need to make decisions. The goal is to have those decisions closely mimic the decisions they need to make  after the learning experience. There’s a context (aka the story setting), and then a specific situation triggers the need to make a decision.  And we can deliver this in a number of ways. The ideal is a simulation-driven (aka model-driven or engine-driven) experience.  There’s  a model of the world underneath that calculates the outcomes of your action and determines whether you’ve yet achieved success (or failure), or generates  a new opportunity to act.  We can (and should) tune this into a serious game.  This gives us deep experience, but the model-building is challenging and there are short cuts.

In  mini-scenarios, you put the learner in a setting with a situation that precipitates a decision.  Just one, and then there’s feedback.   You could use video, a graphic novel format, or just prose, but the game problem is a setting and a situation, leading to choices. Similarly, you could have them respond by selecting option A B or C, or pointing to the right answer, or whatever.  It stops there. Which is the weakness, because in the real world the consequences are typically more complex than this, and it’s nice off the learning experience reflects that reality.  Still, it’s better than knowledge test.  Really, these are  just a better written multiple choice question, but that’s at least a start!

Linear scenarios are a bit more complex. There are a series of game problems in the same context, but whatever the player  chooses, the right decision is ultimately made, leading to the next problem. You use some sort of sleight of hand, such as “a supervisor catches the mistake and rectifies it, informing you…” to make it all ok.  Or, you can terminate out and have to restart if you make the wrong decision  at any point.  These are a step up in terms of showing the more complex consequences, but are a bit unrealistic.  There’s some learning power here, but not as much as is possible.  I have used them as sort of multiple mini-scenarios with content in between, and  the same story is used for the next choice, which at least made a nice flow. Cathy Moore  suggests  these  are valuable for novices, and I think it’s also useful if everyone needs to receive the same ‘test’ in some accreditation environment to be fair and balanced (though in a competency-based world they’d be better off with the full game).

Then there’s the full branching scenario (which I called contingent scenarios in the book, because the consequences and even new decisions are contingent on your choices).  That is, you see different opportunities depending on your choice. If you make one decision, the subsequent ones are different.  If you don’t shut down the network right away, for instance, the consequences are different (perhaps a breach) than if you do (you get the VP mad).  This, of course, is much  more like the real world.  The only difference between this and a serious  game is that the contingencies in the world are hard-wired in the branches, not captured in a separate model (rules and variables). This  is easier, but it gets tough to track if you have too many  branches. And the lack of an engine  limits the replay and ability to have randomness.  Of course, you can make several of these.

So the problem I had with the article  that triggered this post is that their generic model looked like a mini-scenario, and nowhere did they show the full concept of a real branching scenario. Further,  their example was really a linear scenario, not a branching scenario.  And I realize this may seem like an ‘angels dancing on the head of a pin’, but I think it’s important to make distinctions when they affect the learning outcome, so you can more clearly make a choice that reflects the goal you are trying to achieve.

To their credit, that they  were pushing for contextualized decision making at all is a major win, so I don’t want to quibble too much.  Moving our learning practice/assessment/activity to more contextualized performance is a good thing.  Still, I  hope this elaboration is useful  to get more nuanced solutions.  Learning design really can’t be treated as a paint-by-numbers exercise, you really should know what you’re doing!

I‘ve talked in the past about the importance of engaging emotionally before beginning learning. And I‘ve talked about the importance of understanding what makes a topic intrinsically interesting. But I haven‘t really separated them out, as became clear to me in a client meeting. So let me remedy that here.

I‘ve argued, and believe, that we should open up learners emotionally before we address them cognitively. Before we tell them what they‘ll learn, before we show them objectives, we should create a visceral reaction, a wry recognition of “oh, yes, I do need to know this”. It can be a dramatic or humorous exaggeration of the positive consequences of having the knowledge or the negative consequences of not. I call this a ‘motivating example‘ different than the actual reference examples used to illustrate the model in context. In previous content we‘ve used comics to point out the problems of not knowing, and similarly Michael Allen had a fabulous video that dramatized the same. Of course, you also have a graphic novel introduction of someone saving the day with this knowledge. It of course depends on your audience and what will work for them.

Another story I tell is when a colleague found out I did games, and asked if I wanted to assist him and his team. The task was, to me and many, not necessarily a source of great intrinsic interest, but he pointed out that he‘d discovered that to practitioners, it was like playing detective. Which of course gave him a theme, and a overarching hook. And this is the second element of engagement we can and should lever.

Once we‘ve hooked them into why this learning is important, we then want to help maintain interest through the learning experience. If we can find out what makes this particular element interesting, we should have it represented in the examples and practice tasks. This will help illuminate the rationale and develop learner abilities by integrating the inherent nature of the task into the learning experience.

Often SMEs are challenging, particularly to get real decisions out of, but here‘s where they‘re extremely valuable. In addition to stories illustrating great wins and losses that can serve as examples (and the motivating example I mentioned above), they can help you understand why this is intrinsically interesting to them. They‘ve spent the time to become experts in this, we want to unpack why this was worth such effort. You may have to drill a bit below “make the world a better place”, but you could and should be able to.

By hooking them in initially by making them aware of the role of this knowledge, and then maintaining interest through the learning experience, you have a better chance of your learning sticking. And that‘s what we want to achieve, right?

In thinking through what makes experiences engaging, and in particular making practice engaging, I riffed on some core elements.   The three terms  I came up with were  Challenge, Choices, & Consequences. And I realized I had a nice little alliteration going, so I’m going to elaborate and see if it makes sense to me (and you).

In general, good practice is having the learner make decisions in context. This has to be more than just recognizing the correct knowledge option, and providing a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ feedback.  The right decision has to be made, in a plausible situation with plausible alternatives, and the right feedback has to be provided.

So, the first thing is, there has to be a situation that the learner ‘gets’ is important. It’s meaningful to them and to their stakeholders, and they want to get it right. It has to be clear there’s a real decision that has outcomes that are important.    And the difficulty  has to be adjusted to their level of ability. If it’s too easy, they’re bored and little  learning occurs. If it’s too difficult, it’s frustrating and again little learning occurs.  However, with a meaningful story and the right level of difficulty, we have the appropriate  challenge.  

Then, we have to have the right alternatives to select from. Some of the challenge comes from having a real decision where you can recognize that making the wrong choice would be problematic. But the alternatives must require an appropriate level of discrimination.  Alternatives that are so obvious or silly that they can be ruled out aren’t going to lead to any learning. Instead, they need to be ways learners reliably go wrong, representing misconceptions. The benefits are several: first, you can find out what they really know (or don’t), and you have the chance to address them. Also, this assists in having the right level of challenge.  So  you must have the right  choices.

Finally, once the choice is made, you need to have feedback. Rather than immediately have some external voice opine ‘yes’ or ‘no’, let the learner see the consequences of that choice. This is important for two  reasons. For one, it closes the emotional experience, as you see what happens, wrapping up the experience. Second, it shows how things work in the world, exposing the causal relationships and assists the learner understanding. Then you can provide feedback (or not, if you’re embedding this single decision in a scenario or game where other choices are precipitated by this choice). So, the final element are  consequences.

While this isn’t complete, I think it’s a nice shorthand to guide the design of meaningful and engaging practice. What do you think?

Why should you, as a learning designer, take a game design workshop?  What is the relationship between games and learning?  I want to suggest that there are  very  important reasons why you should.

Just so you don’t think I’m the only one saying it, in the decade since I wrote the book  Engaging Learning:  Designing e-Learning Simulation Games, there have been a large variety of books on the topic. Clark Aldrich has written three, at least count. James Paul Gee has pointed out how the semantic features of games match to the way our brains learn, as has David  Williamson Shaeffer.  People like Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkuhler, Henry Jenkins, and Sasha Barab have been strong advocates of games for learning. And of course Karl Kapp has a recent book on the topic.  You could also argue that Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun is another vote given that his premise is that fun  is learning. So I’m not alone in this.

But more specifically, why get steeped in it?  And I want to give you three reasons: understanding engagement, understanding practice, and understanding design.  Not to say you don’t know these, but I’ll suggest that there are depths which you’re not yet incorporating into your learning, and  you could and should.  After all, learning  should be ‘hard fun’.

The difference between a simulation and a game is pretty straightforward.  A simulation is just a model of the world, and it can be in any legal state and be taken to any other.  A self-motivated and effective self-learner can use that to discover what they need to know.  But for specific learning purposes, we put that simulation into an initial state, and ask the learner to take it to a goal state, and we’ve chosen those so that they can’t do it until they understand the relationships we want them to understand. That’s what I call a scenario, and we typically wrap a story around it to motivate the goal.  We can tune that into a game.  Yes, we turn it into a game, but by tuning.

And that’s the important point about engagement. We can’t call it game; only our players can tell us whether it’s a game or not. To achieve that goal, we have to understand what motivates our learners, what they care about, and figure out how to integrate that into the learning.  It’s about not designing a learning event, but designing a learning  experience.  And, by studying how games achieve that, we can learn how to take our learning from mundane to meaningful.   Whether or not we have the resources and desire to build actual games, we can learn valuable lesssons to apply to any of our learning design. It’s the emotional element most ID leaves behind.

I also maintain that, next to mentored live practice, games are the best thing going (and individual mentoring doesn’t scale well, and live practice can be expensive both to develop but particularly when mistakes are made).  Games  build upon that by providing deep practice; embedding important decisions in a context that makes the experience as meaningful as when it really counts.  We use game techniques to heighten and deep the experience, which makes it closer to live practice, reducing transfer distance. And we can provide repeated practice.  Again, even if we’re not able to implement full game engines, there are many important lessons to take to designing other learning experiences: how to design better multiple choice questions, the value of branching scenarios, and more.  Practical improvements that will increase engagement and increase outcomes.

Finally, game designers use design processes that have a lot to offer to formal learning design. Their practices in terms of information collection (analysis), prototyping and refinement, and evaluation are advanced by the simple requirement that their output is such that people will actually pay for the experience.  There are valuable elements that can be transferred to learning design even if you aren’t expecting to have an outcome so valuable you can charge for it.

As professionals, it behooves us to look to other fields with implications that could influence and improve our outcomes. Interface design, graphic design, software engineering, and more are all relevant areas to explore. So is game design, and arguably the most relevant one we can.

So, if you’re interested in tapping into this, I encourage you to consider the game design workshop I’ll be running for the ATD Atlanta chapter on the 3rd of June. Their price is fair even if you’re not a chapter member, and it’s great deal if you are.  Further, it’s a tried and tested format that’s been well received since I first started offering it. The night before, I’ll be busting myths at the chapter meeting.  I hope I’ll see you there!