Three Tools for Creating Digital, Online Card Games

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Introduction

One of the more frustrating and depressing aspects of this pandemic is the lack of face-to-face connections made while in a learning environment. What's missing is the excitement of sitting around a table together having a conversation, reviewing instructional content or even engaging in a friendly, but competitive, learning game. It's the little things that one misses the most because the little things (connecting with others) are really the big things. A huge aspect of learning is connecting with others.

I especially miss being able to connect with students and workshop attendees on a visceral level. I am used to teaching online but the computer screen stands as an unwavering sentinel creating an ever present barrier between myself and genuine human connection. This is especially frustrating for an instructional game designer like myself who thrives on connecting through gameplay and watching people interact and react to the games I create or co-create.

the computer screen stands as an unwavering sentinel creating an ever present barrier between myself and genuine human connection.

When playing a game, there is nothing like the instant connection and insights you gain about yourself and others as you play. Instructional games reinforce ideas, underscore important concepts and help to provide "ah-ha" moments in the middle of a learning experience.

If only a way existed for an online "game-night." A way to bring learners together around a virtual table to play a good ole-fashion card game.

It's with this concept in mind that I've invested a great deal of time and thought into creating digital card games. Here are three ways I've experimented with creating digital card games for learning. (Spoiler alert: The 3rd method is the best for L&D professionals who want to track progress and quickly create a card-game experience for learners.)

PowerPoint Card Game

I started out using PowerPoint slides to create the sense of a digital card game and the tool does work rather well up to a point (pun intended). PowerPoint has always fascinated me because, if you really dig under the surface, there are some incredible features and functionality that can be leveraged in a variety of ways to create great online learning experiences.

One thing that I have done to mimic the feeling of playing cards is to use the animation features of PowerPoint to make it feel like cards are moving and flipping. I use several animations to achieve this effect. I use the "Fly In" to move cards onto the virtual table as if they are being dealt. I use the "Grow and Turn" animation to make it look as if the cards are being flipped and I use the "Animation Path" to move cards from one area of the slide to an appropriate pile in another area of the slide.

The video below shows the results of using the animations to make it look like a card game.

PowerPoint does a decent job of mimicking card actions but you do run into some problems. One is that if you have a lot of cards in your digital card game, it can be a great deal of effort to set up and the second, more critical, is that you need to fake a lot of interactions. For example, the scoring on the screen is not real, it's just another slide with a number added on. I have to anticipate a correct answer or set up branching which becomes even more complicated. So PowerPoint can mimic the look and feel but it's linear and hard to keep score. And hard to make it feel like an actual game because of the limitations.

Also, it's rather laborious to type in all the card information on each card and then animate each card.

One compromise I've done is to have the learners use the annotation feature in Zoom and other software and mark the white "card" spaces on the virtual card table and use that to ask learners where they thought a card should go. So it adds interactivity and engagement but takes away a little from the flow of a traditional card game.

Prezi Card Game

An alternative to using PowerPoint to create a digital card game for playing with a group over Zoom or similar virtual classroom software is to use Prezi. One nice thing about Prezi for creating a digital card game is that Prezi has a built-in template for cards.

The card template consists of a large deck which has a main theme for the entire game and then you can click on smaller cards and zoom in on those cards. As the learners to pick a card and zoom in on that card. You can have the learners annotate, comment out loud or comment in the chat. The video below shows how the Prezi card game looks.

As always, Prezi has an easy-to-use interface and the editing of the cards is simple and, bet of all, it doesn't require you to add any animations. You can modify animation if you'd like but the game template provides you with an effective method of loading cards.

Again, like PowerPoint, Prezi doesn't keep score and if you zoom through the cards too quickly it can be a little too much movement for some learners. And, if you really examine the game, it's a multiple choice exercise with a card game interface. It can work well in many situations but it still not exactly like playing a game around the table.

Enterprise Game Stack Card Game

The Enterprise Game Stack solution is most effective for creating a digital card game because it is a purpose-built tool for creating digital card games. You aren't trying to shoehorn a card game into another tool.

What I like most about this platform is that you load up everything using a simple Excel spreadsheet. You complete a spreadsheet and the platform takes care of the animations, sequencing of cards and the process of playing. It takes about 10-15 minutes to set up a game once you've got the content. You can even add in your own instructions to guide the learner to play the game effectively.

There are two types of games you can play with the Enterprise Game Stack (EGS) platform.

Sort

One game is a sort game where you can ask learners to sort concepts, ideas or even opinions into different stacks and then, what is really nice, is EGS has a back end dashboard where you can see individual or aggregated results. This game is a solitary game and learners can play it on their own or with a group by sharing their screen with team members and reaching consensus on what card to sort into what pile.

I teach a graduate class in instructional design and toward the end of the semester, I ask students to sort the skills they have learned into three piles: Strength, Secondary Skill, Weakness. Then, because ESG has a dashboard and administration features, I can use the aggregated version of the student sorts to decide where I should focus my instructional efforts for the remainder of the semester.

On an individual level, the sorting activity forces the students to think through what they do well and what needs work. The results can be viewed on a dashboard or downloaded to an excel spreadsheet.

The video below shows the game and the subsequent sort results.

In terms of corporate learning, I've helped organizations to use digital sorting exercises to clarify priorities, teach product features and functionality, critical thinking, and even to help with Diversity and Inclusion training as an exercise where the learners need to identify different types of microaggressions and empathy statements.

If you want to try out a sorting game, click here!

Role Play

But what if you want a group card game to mimic the feeling of learners sitting around a table interacting with each other. The EGS has a role-play/scenario game which perfectly fits the bill. It was designed originally to move past the moans and groans of role-plays and to engage all learners in a role-play, not just the two people participating in the role play.

In the game, each player is dealt five cards. One card is a thumbs-up, one is a thumbs-down and the rest are challenge cards. A player, using Zoom and EGS, flips a card from the deck in the middle of the virtual table and then reads and acts out the role-play scenario.

When done, the other players react. If everyone votes thumbs-up, the player wins the card and a point. If everyone votes thumbs-down, the player loses the point and it is the next player's turn. If someone challenges, the player must respond. If they respond effectively they win, if they respond ineffectively, the challenger wins the card.

I've played this game with my students and one students said "this is the best social interaction I've had in months, I feel like I am sitting across from everyone playing this game." We've also used the game with corporate sales professionals who claim it's 100 times better than traditional online role-play exercises.

The short video below is a demo of what the game play looks like.

The EGS role-play/scenario game also has a nice backend dashboard and analytics (just like the sort game) so you can tell how many challenges were issued and won, how much time was spent playing the game, and a bunch of other analytics for you to slice and dice.

Conclusion

There are several ways to create digital card games for use in virtual classroom settings. Depending on your budget and comfort level with the tools, you can find one that works for you.

I've found the purpose-built Enterprise Game Stack to be the most efficient method of creating virtual card games to provide learners with an interactive, fun and engaging method of learning. And the simplicity of a digital card game means that players are on-boarded quickly and learning starts immediately, no reviewing complicated rules and loosing sight of the learning objectives.

Using one or more of these tools, consider adding a digital card game to your own training toolkit.

References:

• Designing a Digital Card Game to Teach Empathy
• Three Reasons Why A Card Game Paradigm is Good for Your Serious Game
• Investigating the Effectiveness of an Educational Card Game for Learning How Human Immunology Is Regulated
• Contextual Teaching and Learning Using a Card Game Interface
• Board Games and Card Games: Leading the Learning Game Field

Bio

Karl Kapp, Ed.D. is a professor of Instructional Technology at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA and is founder of “The Learning and Development Mentor Academy” which is a member-only consortium of L&D professionals which provides those professionals with self-paced courses and live, monthly educational sessions as well as a place to collaborate. Karl is author or co-author of eight books including “Play to Learn” and “The Gamification of Learning and Instruction.” He has consulted and spoken around the world on learning and development with a focus on the topic of games and gamification for learning. Contact him at [email protected]