Shall We Play a Game?
Introduction
Games and gamification of learning have been employed since the introduction of computers and game consoles in the early 1970s. Popularized by movies and advertising, an entirely new generation of gamers were born.
As game interfaces and graphics capabilities became more immersive, the amount of time that people spend playing games also increased. Today’s youth grow up playing video and computer games from an early age. The average gamer spends 6 hours per week playing games. Numerous studies have concluded that gamers are better learners and are able to rapidly learn complex subjects when learning content is integrated into game interfaces.
Learning Objective Support
While 3D and virtual reality games are far more immersive than more simple game interfaces, they often require motor skills to achieve success that are irrelevant to the objectives of a lesson. They also tend to require specialized equipment, be very expensive to develop and are nearly impossible to maintain.
"Interfaces that demand significant motor skills to succeed in a learning game should be avoided unless these motor skills are actually required by the learning objectives."
Games that require “luck” are counterproductive. Measurement of learning objective mastery and development of learner leaderboards should never include elements of luck. All learners should be measured with the same yardstick, not with the spin of a wheel or the roll of the dice. This issue eliminates most traditional board game interfaces as a method of learning gamification.
Game show, flashcard and 2D simulation interfaces are far less expensive to develop and maintain than 3D simulations and virtual reality interfaces. They are also more easily focused to support specific learning goals. These types of interfaces allow for every learner to get the same questions or tasks to accomplish. They also provide the ability to support timed exercises, participant competition and leaderboards.
Many popular game shows allow for a certain number of wrong answers or provide a fixed number of “lifelines” to enable participants to continue should the participant be stumped by a question or simulation task. These types of interfaces promote competition, can be scored, produce leaderboards, and can include interactive audio and visual prompts. They can also enable a virtual classroom instructor to play game show host.
2D simulation interfaces are very effective for learning and measuring skills. For most tasks, they do not need to be elaborate or have unlimited branching logic. An incorrect action can be immediately remediated and the learner can be put back on track without having to develop complex branches for every possible learner action. Allowing a learner to proceed too far down an incorrect path is almost always counterproductive to learning.
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Delivery Methods
Gamified learning content can be delivered as stand-alone eLearning, as an element used during a virtual classroom or hybrid learning lesson, or as an element of a lesson generated during a recorded virtual classroom event. During the design and development of gamified content it is best to not lock the content to only one method of delivery.
Click the image above to play "Who Wants to Be Rich" at KMxDirect.com
Gamified content should be developed to support learning technology standards to ensure proper recording of student results to learning and education management systems.?The following examples demonstrate gamified content elements that produce scores, leaderboards and support all possible delivery methods:
Each of the above examples can support any learning management system, provide an instructor dashboard when used during a live virtual classroom session, and will embed into a virtual classroom session recording. ?Gamified learning content also supports the needs of visual, auditory and tactile learners.
Click the image above to see a recorded virtual classroom lesson that includes a selection of gamified learning elements.
Summary
Game show, flashcard and 2D simulation interfaces produce measurable results and are generally suitable for individual learning and for competitive learning methods. 3D and virtual reality game interfaces often require unnecessary motor skills to achieve success, need specialized equipment to operate, tend to be very expensive to develop, and are nearly impossible to maintain. Gamified content should be developed to support learning technology standards to ensure proper recording of student results to learning and education management systems.?During the design and development of gamified content it is best to not lock the content to only one method of delivery (eLearning, virtual/hybrid classroom, recorded virtual sessions, etc.). Gamified learning content can also be leveraged to support the needs of the visual, auditory and tactile learners. Click here to learn more.
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