The latest ‘flavor of the month’ is so-called gamification. Without claiming to be an expert in this area (tho’ with a bit of experience in game design), I have to say that I’ve some thoughts both positive and negative on this.

So what is ‘gamification’? As far as I can tell, it’s the (and I’m greatly resisting the temptation to put the word ‘gratuitous’ in here :) addition of game mechanics to user experiences to increase their participation, loyalty, and more. Now, there are levels of game mechanics, and I can see tapping into some deeper elements, but what I see are relatively simple things like adding scoring, achievements (e.g. badges), etc.   A colleague of mine who released a major learning game admitted that they added score at the end to compensate for the lack of ability to tune further and needing to release to appease investors. I get it; there are times that adding in gamification increases bottom lines in meaningful ways. But I want to suggest that we strive a little bit higher.

In Engaging Learning, I talked about the elements that synergistically lead to both better effectiveness of education practice, and more engaging experiences. These weren’t extrinsic like ‘frame games’ (tarted-up drill-and-kill), but instead focused on aligning with learner interests, intrinsic elements of the task, and more. This means finding out what drives experts to find this intriguing, a role that learners can play that’s compelling, meaningful decisions to make, appropriate level of challenges, and more. That’s what I’m shooting for.

The benefits of intrinsic motivation instead of extrinsic have been studied since the late 70’s in work by Tom Malone and Mark Lepper. In short, you get better outcomes when people are meaningfully engaged rather than trivially engaged. Dan Pink’s book Drive lays out a wealth of related research that suggests we need to avoid rewards for rote performance and instead should be focusing on helping folks do real tasks. I can’t remember where I first heard the term ‘engagification’, but that’s just what I’m thinking of.

To me, it’s the right way take gamification, focus on intrinsic motivation. If we’re gamifying, we’re covering up for some other deficiency, I reckon. Yes, there may be times that intrinsic motivation is hard to find (e.g. to get fit), but that probably means we haven’t tried hard enough yet. I recall recently hearing about gamifying kids math problems; yes, but rote problems are the wrong thing to drill. Can’t we find the intrinsic interest in math, solving real problems (like the ones they’ll see in the real world, not on tests)?  I reckon we could, and should. It would take more effort initially, but the payoff ought to be better.

Perhaps gamify if you have to, but only after you’ve first tried to engagify. Please.

In writing about mobile for higher education, other than meeting learner administrative and information needs, I obviously focused more on the formal learning roles mobile devices could facilitate.  And one of the things that has been of interest to me is looking differently at pedagogies.

Traditional

In the traditional view, we activate the learner’s interest, we present them with the concept, we provide examples, we have them practice (with feedback), and we conclude the learning experience.  I think this makes sense cognitively, but it doesn’t make sense when we start considering the learner’s emotional side.  Unless we open up the learner emotionally, I reckon the rest of the effort won’t stick. We can do this with the intro, but there are other approaches.

Navigable/adaptive

For one, we don’t need to stick to the traditional order.  At least with elearning, we can make the order navigable, allowing the learner to choose what they want to see.  We took that approach when we developed a course on speaking to the media (which had some other innovations too) back around 1997.  It was also seen at UNext.  We provided a ‘follow the bouncing ball’ path for uncertain learners, but anecdotally we found half the audiences, presumably confident self-learners, explored in other approaches than the recommended approach.

This approach also provides the necessary structure to support adaptive systems, which can present different objects at different times. We used this approach when developing the Intellectricityâ„¢ system that adapted the learning experience based upon learner characteristics.

Problem-based

The approach I typically refer to as the problem-based approach (similar approaches are seen in case-based, project-based, and service learning) essentially puts the problem, an overarching practice, first.  By showing the learner the type of problem this learning experience will help you address, you build in the emotional side.  Now they’re understanding why this is important, and are motivated to go explore the concept, examples, and perhaps do trial practices before it matters. This is the pedagogy that drives the interest in serious games, embedding meaningful practice in a compelling context.

The problem-based approach more closely mimics the motivation learners will feel when faced with real performance contexts, and makes the content more meaningful.  Engaging the learner in meaningful practice provides experience for reflection, and shifts the instructor to be a facilitator and guide instead of a content presenter.

The point, of course, is to think more broadly about the learning experience, tapping into intrinsic motivation, whether for learning or for the problem, and start embedding what we know about the emotional side of learning into the learning experience.