Majarkeun

LSG Webinar How to design learning aka “Serious” games

LSG Webinar How to design learning aka “Serious” games

Its been a really busy time which has left me with no time whatsoever for webinars, PKM, tweeting and everything that makes life on the internet really interesting. Anyways, Ive spoken to my team about making time for this webinar, so thanks to the guys whore being nice to me - I get to attend Patrick Dunns webinar on designing serious games.

This is my second webinar with Patrick - the recap of the last one is here. Patrick Dunn has been designing, producing and thinking about various forms of learning technology for more than twenty years. I particularly enjoyed his last talk and Im guessing this one will be quite exciting too.

So, here are the live blogged notes.

Don starts off in his (now famous) midnight presenter voice and is introducing Patrick in the way only he can. And after Dons usual house keeping, Patrick begins. Good morning, Patrick.

Typically in the west, people spend more on games than on films. Modern games are starting to permeate peoples lives in different ways. The above video from YouTube is a nice one to watch and see how this landscape is changing.

SG = OP + LO + PC (Patricks formula to explain serious games - explained below)

Serious Games = Organised Play with Explicit Learning Objectives usually delivered on Computers

Learning Games are part of a wide spectrum of learning exercises. You mix ingredients to come up with an experience that actually solve problems. So you mix elements from traditional elearning and learning games to create learning that meets a business objective.

So some of the elements of game design/ and even a good learning experience:

• Relevant challenges
• Sensory stimulation
• Flow
• Learner Centricity
• Repetitive Rehearsal
• Personalisation
• Safe failure
• Socialisation
• Incremental challenge
• Guiding feedback
• Contextualisation
• Stories
• Emotional Engagement
• Characterisation

But all of this is tough to distill down and simplify - why do games really matter is the big question?

First things first we can categorise most of these elements into 3 areas:

• Simulation
• Sensory Stimulation
• Repetitive Rehearsal
• Safe failure
• Guiding feedback
  
• Motivation
• Flow
• Relevant challenge
• Learner Centricity
• Personalisation
• Socialisation
• Incremental Challenge
• Narration
• Stories
• Emotional Engagement
• Characterisation
• Contextualisation

So once you need a game, you need to pick and choose elements from these buckets to decide what makes sense for the experience youre trying to create.

So heres the notion thats really makes a difference:

Extrinsic Games: Youre just dressing up a dry topic to be a game.
Intrinsic Games: Youre helping learners practice a skill by playing a game or simulation.

Big questions to ask ourselves when designing the game

What game is it?
How do you play?
How do you score?
How do you win?

And heres where my webinar screen goes kaput! So all Im doing is following Patricks voice! So pardon me for being stupid with my writing. Oops and Ive lost sound too.

OK - Im back after logging in again. Patrick is now showing a bunch of learning games examples I guess - I still cant see whats on. Patricks now showing a great example from Cathy Moore.

The idea is that all successful games produce an emotional reaction. And the challenge is to cultivate these reactions from a design perspective.

• Some questions about your story:
• Whats the perspective?
• Who are the characters?
• What are the surprises and twists?
• How does the story resolve itself?
• How will learners feel when they play the game?
• How do you establish the mood?
• Most importantly how does this relate to the business objectives?

So what keeps us interested when playing games?
We play by exploring, calculating, shooting, picking clues, etc. So there are bunch of things to take care of  when trying to plan this interest.

• Micro-macro structure?
• One thing at once/ many things at once?
• Few similar interactions/ many different interactions?
• You could try different things:

• branching journeys - like the branching simulations you can create using traditional tools;
  
• guided discovery - more like the controlled learning games from Thinking Worlds;
• open - more like the games that we usually play and of course you can create these using Thinking Worlds too.
  

Patrick is demonstrating a great example of a controlled simulation with a series of decisions that affect whether or not you win a penalty shoot out in a football match. Your decisions have a real-world impact, so you get feedback for how your actions affect the overall outcome of win or loss. Good stuff.

You have a lot of choice when designing things - so you need to be able to nail down various aspects of game design well in advance.

Most importantly, your game needs to give you feedback on whether youre doing well or not and whether you failed or succeeded. Feebdack is crucial - you need to decide how much is intrinsic and how much is extrinsic.

Top Tips:

• Play games yourself!
• Think experience not content
• Be 100% clear of learning rationale ("Why am I designing a game?")
• Really know your learners
• Plan your architecture (macro structure) carefully.

Sorry, my writings all messed up today - Im at a hotel with bad internet, so Ive just snapped up the pearls of wisdom.

Available link for download