You can’t declare it’s a game, your learners will tell you if it is or not.

I found a game for my iPad that I really liked.   A casual gamer, so that while it has a story, I can play it without having to get too crazy about learning timing issues or complicated commands.

I played it through, and several different times again with different characters, and eagerly awaited the sequel.   Which finally occurred and I was again progressing through the game.   Er, until the end, and that’s where this story begins.

When I got to the last boss, suddenly I couldn’t finish.   I couldn’t beat the boss!   Instead of happily progressing, suddenly I was grinding to get my character to level up, and trying again, while looking for more special equipment.   It was suddenly frustrating, not fun.

Now, I’d pretty well just bashed my way through: no finesse in movement.   But that had worked.   So if I was supposed to pick up more nuanced movements and commands, there had been no incentive. Well, I finally beat the boss after numerous attempts, and then the game was over, but I hadn’t really found out what I’d done that worked.

Again, I started with a different character, and again it was fun. Up until the end, and again I was faced with the unbeatable boss. Again I ground, and again I finally succeeded, but it was still an anti-climax after so much fun prior to that point.

The point here is not to complain about this particular game, but to point out that getting the experience right matters.   When I run my game design lectures and/or workshops, I point out that as Will Wright once told me, tuning is 9/10ths of the work.   And it’s got to go all the way through, with the right audience.   It may be that they didn’t test the end with a casual gamer like me, but it was a jarring ending to what had been.

Now, in most of the formal learning situations we design for, we have sticks as well as carrots, so we aren’t expecting our learners to pay for the privilege of completing our learning experience, but it’s important to understand what learner experience we think would be reasonable and shoot for achieving that.   It’s subjective, so asking them is just fine, but you want to set metrics for the user experience (tested for after you ensure usability   isn’t a barrier and you are achieving your learning outcomes) and then tune until you get them. Or, of course, until you find out you won’t on your current budget and adjust your expectations, but doing so consciously.

As I say, you don’t turn a scenario into a game, you tune it into a game.   And even when you are not shooting for a game, this applies to learning experience design as well.   Emotions and subjective experience matters, so do consider testing and tuning until you achieve the experience you need.

The Power of Role-Based e-Learning: designing and moderating online role play is a new book out that talks about simple methods to get powerful learning outcomes from collaborative games.   Written by Sandra Wills, Elyssebeth Leigh, and Albert Ip, esteemed Aussie colleagues all with lots of experience in this area, it’s a thoughtful presentation of why, and how, you should use these techniques to get valuable outcomes.

Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Written for educators seeking to engage students in collaboration and communication about authentic scenarios, the power of role-based e- learning offers helpful, accessible advice on the practice and research needed to design online role play. Drawing on the experiences of world- leading practitioners and citing an array of worldwide examples, it is a readable, non-technical, and comprehensive guide to the design, implementation, and evaluation of this exciting teaching approach.
Issues discussed include:

• designing effective online role plays
• defining games, simulations and role plays
• moderating engaging and authentic role-based e-learning activities
• assessment and evaluation

The power of role-based e-learning offers a careful analysis of the strengths and learning opportunities of online role play, and is realistic about possible difficulties. Providing guidance for both newcomers and experienced professionals who are developing their online teaching repertoire, it is an invaluable resource for teachers, trainers, academics, and educational support staff involved in e-learning.

Also note that it’s designed for education, but the lessons are valuable for organizational application as well.

As I state in the foreword:

This book stakes out important ground for e-learning, demonstrating how clever design trumps the miracles of flashy technology in achieving just such a practical approach.   While the power of gaming for learning has been the topic of a number of books, the particular, er, role of role-playing has been insufficiently explored and exploited.   Yet, as this book makes manifestly clear, there are powerful outcomes available, using simple mechanisms but capitalizing on deep understanding of learning.

The book also looks forward, talking about virtual worlds and, yes, mobile learning. Alternate Reality Games are a really interesting opportunity here.

Allow me to strongly encourage you to check out this book, and see for yourself how thoughtful understanding of learning trumps technological finesse when it comes to creating meaningful   experiences.   We need more good learning design, and as much help as we can get.

Eric Zimmerman spoke eloquently on games as the second day keynote at DevLearn.   In it, he talked about how systems thinking was important, how games are systems of rules and consequently develop systems thinking.   He talked about how our play brings meaning to the rules, and that creating spaces of possible outcomes allow us to explore.

He ended up advocating that we design for possibilities of unexpected outcomes to create meaning for our learners.   Cammy Bean has blogged the presentation too.

How do you systematically design learning experiences that effectively engage the learner?

This was the question I set out to address more than 5 years ago.   Based upon years of deep investigation into learning & instruction theories and design processes, and practical experience in designing games, I wrote Engaging Learning: Designing e-Learning Simulation Games.

The book was based upon work I’d published as an academic, but was focused very pragmatically.   There were already a few books out about the value of computer games to support learning, notably Marc Prensky’s prescient Digital Game-Based Learning, and Clark Aldrich’s Games and the Future of Learning was also already out.   Subsequently, books by Gee, Shaffer, and others have highlighted the opportunities.

However, I thought and think that my book had a unique contribution, being quite specific around:

• the principles that underpin why games are the best learning
• how to modify your design processes to successfully design games

Having looked at the books out there, I still feel it does the best job of making the case.

At core was an alignment between what makes effective learning practice, and what makes engaging experiences.   Looking across educational theories, repeated elements emerge. Similarly with experience design.   It turns that they perfectly align.   If you recognize that, and can execute against it, your learning will be greater than the sum of the parts, and will both seriously engage and truly educate.   Learning can, and should, be hard fun!

The workshops I’ve run based upon the book have been very well received, reinforcing the value of the book.   Similarly, the content has been solicited as a component of both Silberman’s Handbook of Experiential Learning, and the Guild’s Immersive Learning Simulation report.   I’ve now heard Tony O’Driscoll talk about the design principles for learning experiences in Virtual Worlds (in his and Karl Kapp’s coming book on the topic), and they’re the same principles!

So why hasn’t the book penetrated corporate learning more than it has?   There are several contributing factors.   First, the work I published as an academic didn’t hit the mainstream.   I was part of the international society on computers, and a member of the group specifically about learning through computers (IFIP WG 3.3). They’d just started their own journal, and I wanted to support it (and get a publication). In retrospect, it would’ve been better to publish in one of the more recognized journals on the topic.   As I was overseas, the work never hit the US academic awareness.

Second, I didn’t really understand book marketing then, and trusted that the publisher did.   At the time, they weren’t very pro-active in developing a joint understanding of responsibility (that’s changed), and my book fell through their cracks (and I’m not a marketing person).   (Still, I’m going to be a bit more proactive on the mobile learning book, and they have promised likewise.)

I still firmly believe that the book is the best guide to designing meaningful learning experiences that are centered on deep practice, and a guide for everything from better multiple choice questions to full on simulation-driven serious games.   I’ve tracked the rest of the books out there, and they do a good job of arguing why games are a powerful learning environment, why they make business sense, and more.   However, Engaging Learning is still the best book out there that tells designers how to go about making them.   Sure, I recommend having the workshop to actually get a chance to practice the skills (you know, get your whole team to lift their game), but many who have read it have told me they found value in the book on it’s own.

I don’t say this to generate sales; I get so little it’s not going to make a difference.   I say this because I really worked hard to ensure there is a lot of value in it for you.   I’m just trying to make sure there’s better learning out there, and there’s a lot more need than I can service individually.   There are other good books, Michael Allen’s Guide to eLearning being one, but my book focuses specifically on helping you make more meaningful practice, and that’s a big area of needed improvement, and a major opportunity in making your learning more meaningful.

Please, wherever you draw inspiration, however you figure it out, make more engaging learning. Align the elements of effective practice and the elements of engaging experiences, and make your learning rock. For your learners’ sake, please!