Advantages of Instructional Games

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In the crazy, mixed up world we currently live in, it would be easy to dismiss games---especially learning games--- as a frivolous waste of time. As something that is "cute" for good times but is not necessary in times like these.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Michelle Colder Carras, a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University writes that “When you’re battling yourself with traumatic thoughts, you can lose yourself in a game. Right now, during this pandemic, real life is the traumatic situation. What games are able to do for people in mental health recovery, all of society now needs.”

And while there is plenty of strange and traumatic events going on, let's not forget that games can be useful tools for learning in non-chaotic times as well. Organizations have many reasons to embrace games and should do so with vigor. Here are some advantages of games for learning.

Engagement is Built-In

The world of a game draws the player/learners into an atmosphere that temporarily captures all their attention and wipes away everyday distractions. When well designed, the game can create a state of flow. A game can allow the learner to singularly focus on the task at hand (a rare luxury in today's hectic environments.)

One thing games do really well is that they engage the learner.

A game environment also provides intrinsic motivation by including both immediately achievable objectives and objectives that become achievable as the action of playing the game builds the knowledge and skills necessary to play the game better. A well designed game incorporates a kind of motivational spiral, where players see each failure, because it occurs at an appropriate level of difficulty, as a chance to “get it right” the next time. When they do get it right, they have learned something new, and the game supplies another level of difficulty in a manner that invites them to master it. Thus players feel themselves growing in the game and ever more desirous of playing it.

A good game can be seen as a continuum of difficulty that presents players, whatever their skill or learning speed, with goals that are hard enough to be challenging but not hard enough to be overwhelming. 

Not Consumers But Producers

Well crafted games require players to be “producers, not just consumers” (Gee, (2005). Many games occur in an environment that includes a virtual identity for each player, and each player helps make the game what it is by becoming part of the game.

Each player makes the game a different world than it would be without that player.

In learning theory terms, game playing of this kind is an example of extreme constructivism, for each player builds an individual body of knowledge based on that player’s perspective. Gee (2005) goes so far as to say that the players co-design games “through their unique actions and decisions.” We know that when individuals build their own knowledge, as opposed to being told information, the knowledge is retained longer and is internalized. Games can help with that process. We've conducted online decision-making games for executives that have "forced" them to think through difficult decisions that they had not encountered before or not analyzed before and it helped them subsequently make better decisions within their organization.

Build Expertise

Games allow you to prepare for the unthinkable. I've written before how table top exercises like the Crimson Contagion exercise conducted before the current pandemic actually predicted many of the obstacles the United States would run into when the actual pandemic hit. (See Games, the Novel Coronavirus and Learning) but that's not the only example.

Way back in a March 2005 issue of Simulation & Gaming there is a good example of the learning that a game can create. The issue (Vol 36, No. 1) contains descriptions of five simulations that investigate the effects of utility deregulation. The simulations allow players to manage virtual companies in industries like natural gas, electricity, telephone, and water in order to test the effects of deregulation of rates.

Games can accelerate the acquisition of expertise and encourage learners to think about the unthinkable.

The participating players’ companies sometimes go bankrupt, sometimes become monopolies, and sometimes maintain a position between the two. The players are engaged in a realistic business world where they break off affiliations and form new ones, where they define problems, propose and implement solutions, and suffer the consequences of their actions. The number of variables is large, and the possible permutations vast. The outcome is seldom certain, but simulation/game supplies a generous body of data and affords an interesting analysis. In short players learn about how to run a deregulated utility.

And the use of simulation games goes back even further. It is thought that the first simulation game ever used for training was introduced in the 1930's in Russia. And, of course, before that war games were used to help prepare armies for battle in the 1600's.

The attempts of all of these simulation/games in utilities, factories and "war gaming of a pandemic" are designed to help the learners become experts before the actual events occur so that the players have already thought through decisions, trade-offs and consequences of their actions. Few other tools exist to help foster such thinking.

Conclusion

Games for learning are not a luxury.

Games for learning are not really a luxury, there are solid, compelling reasons to use games to help engage learners, allow the learner to construct their own knowledge and encourage them to think through problems and situations before they actually occur so the person is closer to an expert level of knowledge then before they started.

Bio

Karl Kapp, Ed.D. has been in the field of Instructional Technology for over 20 years as a professor and as a practitioner. During that time, he's shared his knowledge and insights through books, LinkedIn Learning courses, peer reviewed articles, and keynote presentations at industry events. He's a learning professional who happens to know gamification, online learning and interactive course design. Follow him on Twitter @kkapp or subscribe to his LinkedIn Newsletter "L&D Easter Eggs."