The Total Learner Experience

Create Losing Designs

We spend a great deal of time planning for learner success. Do we ever create the ability for learners to lose? Should we?

Our society puts a premium on “winning” -- nowadays it seems like every team gets a trophy -- not just the winner. Americans are culturally bound to the ideal of winning. However, in the real world people lose all of the time: athletes lose games and tournaments, politicians lose elections. In high stakes situations like these, losing has a real consequence. How does this affect learning?

Low stakes losing occurs every day. When we lose, we tend to either give up, or continue to practice to overcome the failure. Any casual gamer is familiar with losing and attempting to overcome the loss by quickly replaying the game. Losing, in this context, can be a big motivator, driving the will to practice, which can lead to increased skill. Learning to lose effectively is actually a skill in itself. Resiliency in the face of losing and using strategies to improve is an important life lesson and professional skill. If losing always equates to complete failure, then learners stop striving, stop attempting creative solutions, and see themselves as incapable.

In learning design, a primary goal should be to create an atmosphere where losing is acceptable and intrinsically motivates the learner to try again. The potential learning value from this type of experience is measured not by how often the player loses, but by how much they improve through repeated practice.

In your training design include opportunities for low stakes losing before learners are thrust into their high stakes, real-world situations -- be it a qualifying exam or on the job performance.

Recommendations for a “losing” design:

• Make content available on demand so that learners can review material as needed
  • A common mistake is being overly controlling with content. If the goal is for learners to gain knowledge and skills, shouldn’t they have free access to the tools that can make that happen?
• Communicate how the learner is performing relative to passing scores or via peer-to-peer review as appropriate
  • By communicating how comparatively well they are doing, learners can better sense where they can improve. This also gets their competitive juices flowing.
• Allow plenty of practice opportunities before the final assessment occurs
  • If the only time that learners can demonstrate knowledge is a final graded test, their opportunities to “lose” are reduced to one high stakes moment. Build in low stakes assessment opportunities that prepare learners for the one that counts.

On Winning

“Training” and “competition” are not usually words that are associated with each other. However, competition is an innate motivator and humans by nature enjoy winning.

Certain aspects of winning are universal to all competitive activities, including learning. A recent Newsweek article about winning provides insight into how instructional designers can create more engaging training. The author notes that winning by itself is not the most compelling impetus, but that winning while a competitor loses is more satisfying (this would seem obvious to anyone with siblings).

Rather than using  a “task completion” metaphor, instructional designers should use a gaming and winning metaphor when designing training. Rote tasks can be made more engaging if instead of simply reading and reacting in a safe environment, the learner triumphs over a tension-filled activity. Similarly, you can provide competitive opportunities with other learners virtually.

In many K-12 situations “safe” learning environments take out so much of the excitement of competition and rating. You have an obligation to make sure every beginner learner succeeds, but you also have an obligation to groom the special talents that individuals have as well.

How do you turn cognitive tasks into challenge?

Learning objectives can remain the same, but it’s the way that it is presented that changes. You don't have to completely redesign your training to make it more challenging. Consider these simple ideas:

Allow learners to be wrong

• Allow and penalize for incorrect answers. If learners can complete a course by merely clicking through content, they have little reason to engage with the content. Activities that allow for “failure” can create “good tension”.

Add variable scoring

• Reward learners for learning more difficult material by acknowledging that all content is not equal.

Add timed components for some activities

• While not appropriate for all activities, it does create a feeling of tension.

Allow for replay opportunities

• This reduces some of the negative aspects of the capability for “failure” allowed by other competitive components.

Create opportunities to share leaderboard scores outside of the learning environment

• Rather than learning taking place within a silo, authentic learning events can bleed into the larger community.

A simple multiple choice game can be either boring or competitive with a simple design tweak:

Boring

• The learner answers a question and then views the answers tagged with "correct" and "incorrect" feedback.

Competitive

• The learner answers a question. They receive variable points based upon the correctness of the answer, difficulty of the challenge and the speed with which they answered. They are then shown their score relative to other learners. The feedback is also contextual and continues the gameplay.

Take some lessons from this short quiz. How many times did you feel compelled to play?

The Potential of Augmented Reality for Education

This month I will be participating in a panel discussion about the Potential of Augmented Reality (AR) for Education at SXSW in Austin. I'm lucky to be joined on the panel with some leading experts in the field of AR: Tish Shute, Brendan Scully, Karen Hamilton and our fellow blogger here, Enzo Silva.

Tish Shute, founder of Ugotrade, a leading AR blog, explains that AR is in a critical development stage:

"Augmented Reality is in its infancy and we are just beginning to see AR learning apps emerge for young children on consumer devices, and museums are pioneering AR in situated educational experiences. AR has a long history in military and industrial training and simulation excercises because in these areas bulky high priced equipment is not an obstacle to adoption. We are in the middle of a data revolution. Soon just about everything in our world will have a data shadow. Sensors everywhere will allow us to communicate with the world around us in totally new ways. AR is the natural interface to bring relevancy to data. It will turn arcane spreadsheets, vast unstructured data sets - the data wakes of our cyborg lives - into visible, visceral, interactive, optimizable, and actionable parts of everyday life." 

Others on the panel include Brendan Scully from metaio, Karen Hamilton from George Brown University in Toronto, and Enzo Silva from Oracle. Enzo organized the panel, and will be moderating.

We're hoping to have a dynamic and interactive discussion about where AR is currently, where it's going, and how organizations can begin to leverage the technology to build more authentic and immersive educational experiences.

We hope you can join us in Austin! Until then, check out this cool video from metaio on multichannel AR:

 

Do You Have a Curriculum Strategy?

Many training organizations may think their curriculum is aligned to the company's business needs. Can you confidently say that yours is?

When you look holistically at your curriculum, does it:

• Meet definable and observable performance standards?
• Enable you to determine if learner achievement of the curriculum objectives occurs?
• Allow you to determine if the instructional elements effectively meet the curriculum objectives?

Do you evaluate the effectiveness of your instructional programs along the following criteria:

• The instructional content teaches to the objectives specified
• The time required for instructional programs are appropriately aligned to the student time available
• Instructional materials and resources are easily accessible and contextual to the student's physical and virtual environments
• Appropriate assessment mechanisms are included that provide performance-related remediation
• Performance-related data is tracked and stored
• The instructional activities are evaluated to determine effectiveness

Too often, training organizations become siloed and redundant in their efforts to train the workforce. Consistently measuring the effectiveness of your curriculum and ensuring it's aligned not only to identified business needs, but also to the organization's competencies, will help you provide a measurable and sustainable ROI to the business.

The question is: how do you intend to ensure your curriculum strategy stands up to the test of alignment and effectiveness? Consider these three actions to help you get started:

• Evaluate all curriculum and instructional components annually
• Leverage business intelligence software to gather usage data on your course catalog. Consider deeper analysis on courses and/or programs that are not being used or accessed frequently
• Ensure that all courses fit into a program or curriculum that is tied directly to a business need
• Question the request for training if it can't be easily shown what the desired outcome is or how it is aligned to a business need or goal
• Provide supplemental support services for post-course evaluation

The primary success factor resulting from a well-defined curriculum strategy is performance improvement. By focusing your efforts on an appropriate strategy, you will move one-step closer to demonstrating true ROI to the business and the audiences you support.

Building Motivation in Online Learning

When creating online learning, the primary goal is to create a course or program that fosters "a continuing motivation to learn," which is defined by Maehr as "voluntary engagement in continuing to learn more about a given topic."

The complexity of human motivation makes it hard to find a one-solution-fits-all model for learners. However, the ARCS model establishes basic criteria an instructional designer can leverage to increase the potential for establishing learner motivation while reducing learner malaise, frustration, and/or dropout. 

The ARCS model consists of these four components:

• Attention
• Relevance
• Confidence
• Satisfaction

Consider the following tactics for each ARCS component. However, there is no substitute for proper analysis to uncover the motivational elements specific to your audience. Without that analysis, you are likely to include too many, too few, or wrong motivational elements.

Attention:

Gain learner attention by integrating:

• High-resolution graphics
• Interactivity and animation
• Conflict and failure
• Problem-solving and inquiry

Relevance:

Provide relevance to the learner's situation:

• Describe clear goals that are consistent with learner expectations
• Connect content to the learner's prior experience and/or knowledge
• Include guided instruction and navigational systems (while allowing self-determination in the consumption of the content)
• Incorporate "authentic" activities based on learner's job or tasks

Confidence:

Make the learner feel confident and aware of learning outcomes:

• Communicate clear expectations for successful completion
• Teach to the learner's "Zone of Proximal Development" -- avoid tasks and/or activities that are too easy or too hard
• Include activities that require critical thinking and minimize guessing
• Provide positive and contextual feedback that emphasizes learner achievement

Satisfaction:

Design for happy learners by:

• Recognizing learner achievement through reward mechanisms and in-context encouragement
• Providing opportunities for the learner to apply what they're learning
• Designing the right amount of work for the subject material
• Creating consistency between the content and assessment mechanisms throughout the material

Also, consider these additional design strategies:

• Reduce the word count on the screen compared with printed or narrated text
• Improve the quality of quizzes (consider quizzes as a motivational tool)
• Incorporate more interactive elements
• Create an automatic messaging system triggered by learner progress that can send positive email providing encouragement, reminders, empathy, and advice. 

References:

• 1986. Maehr, M.L. The motivation factor: A theory of personal investment. Lexington Books.
• 2004. Keller, J.M. and Suzuki, K. Learner motivation and E-learning design: a multinationally validated process. Florida State University, USA, Iwate Prefectural University, Japan.

Designing for the Auto-Compulsion Loop (ACL)

Instructional Designers can take a lesson from the popularity of social games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars. These social games are played primarily through Facebook and allow players to play asynchronously in competition and cooperation with their friends. A recent study conducted by Popcap resulted in some interesting statistics (via Raph Koster's website):

• There are around 100 million social game players
  
• 24% of US and UK Internet users play social games at least once a week
  
• Slightly more women than men
  
• Average age of 43
  
• Only 6% of them are 21 and younger
  
• They’re not all housewives: 41% of them work full time, and only 11% are homemakers.
  
• 2/3 of them also play other sorts of games — casual or hardcore.
  
• And if they, do they spend more time on the social games than on the casual or hardcore games
  
• And they’re stuck: more than half have been playing for a year.
  
• A third play more than once a day
  
• 2/3 of them play over an hour a week — 12% report over 10 hours.
  
• And they report that their social game playtime is increasing
  
• For half of them, it’s the MAIN reason they use Facebook.
  
• And also, half of them say it’s very unlikely they will spend real money

The underlying phenomenon behind these statistics is in the factors that motivate players to repeatedly engage -- this audience isn't the stereotypical hardcore 20 hour a week WoW addict -- the motivating factors seem to be the granular achievements earned while playing combined with the inclusion of the player's real friends. 

Explorative Play

Part 3 of a six-part series reviewing examples of the six activity modes. Read Parts 1 and 2.

Brandon recently asked me to clarify the point of my recent posts regarding the activity modes. I'm hoping curious sorts will play the games I discuss and reflect on the commonalities between them. I'll post how these games can be used educationally once I've discussed examples of all six. Excuse the slowness of this feature -- I'm posting from Virginia, and the record snowfall = lack of electricity.

Explorative Play.  Another activity mode widely experienced in games is explorative play, where physical space and travel is simulated through the layout of the game arena. By hiding certain areas from view, the player is allowed to discover new areas and challenges in turn. Explorative play can be easily modified by the addition of other activity modes. Many three-dimensional "shooters" combine active and explorative play, where players find their way through virtual buildings or cities while dodging bullets and shooting enemies. Slower-paced educational games often pair exploration of an area with problem-solving activities.

I personally dislike explorative play. It makes me anxious because I don't know what's around that corner or in the hidden parts of the game board. I love Civilization. The first time I played Civ3 I played for 10 hours and then realized that I didn't know what I was doing. Finally aware of the actual rules, I played for another three hours. Similarly when Civ4 came out I played til dawn one long night. But the initial stages of the game -- the time where you send explorers out to scout the edges of the world with a completely hidden topography holds no appeal to me. Sure, there's treasure and unknowns, but those things can be scary and dangerous as well.

In Little Wheel, the player explores the game space by solving puzzles and problems. Successful players are taken to another game space to undo other puzzles. Myst is the best known of these types of puzzle games.

Second Life is, of course, a social experience at heart, but it also incorporates a large amount of exploration of space and environments. In virtual worlds, people navigate their avatars through areas, discovering new spaces and interacting with objects by flying, walking, running, and jumping.

Bubble Tanks is a shooter that takes place within a series of contiguous bubble realms. Rather than experiencing player death, the player's bubble tank is spat out to another bubble once its power has diminished.

The key to the explorative mode is understanding that not all options may be available simultaneously, and rarely is there a tiered, linear progression through levels. The explorative mode allows the player to feel in control of their movements through a larger space.

8 Tips for Designing an ARG (as a Learning Experience)

In November 2009 myself, Brandon, and Dolly published an article about Alternate Reality Games in the eLearning Guild's Learning Solutions e-magazine (download a copy here).

Since the article was published, several instructional designers have asked us to pull out some practical tips on how they can get started designing their own ARG. For this post, we thought we would reference eight key tips from the article that provide a starting point for you to consider as you embark on your ARG design.

1. Establish Clear Goals	Document what are you trying to achieve with the game. What are you trying to get your audience to experiment with or learn? After all, participants should be learning something while having fun. The Threshold, a game designed by Cisco had clear goals from the beginning, generating very positive feedback from players: "The Threshold was a four-week long alternate reality game designed to build teamwork, build awareness of Cisco products and services, and to provide an entertaining and fun experience."
2. Tell a Meaningful and Entertaining Story	Make your story relevant to your audience and engage them in the unfamiliar by tapping into what is familiar to them. Don't get too carried away with the story to a point you forget it's all about the audience. The designers at LAMP (Laboratory for Advanced Media Production, Australia) felt that an intriguing story about the school's production studio would motivate new students to participate in their game. The "Safesets, Sabotage and Madame Blash" mini ARG (mARG) is an excellent example of a game that has a relevant setting and background story that is sure to entice players.
3. Don't Become Overly Attached to Your Story and Characters	Be quick to adapt to your audience's responses. Let them participate in the design process as the story unfolds. Interact directly with them (via non-player characters), respond to their reactions, be prepared to change strategies, puzzles, and/or storylines to conform to how the audience is changing the game. The Cloudmarkers were a self-organized group of players involved in the famous ARG "The Beast." They initiated a Yahoo! group in order to discuss the latest findings in the game. Their discussion was closely followed by the developers and, since ARGs are normally developed as they are delivered, the developers would often include members of the group in the game plot as it unfolded.
4. Plan, Plan, Plan	Even though you need to be flexible, lay out a plan of the events and outcomes. For instance, create a flowchart of the action items such as clues, puzzles, characters interactions with the players, next moves, etc. This will make it easier for you to visualize and strategize how the game is going to be played and will give you a better idea of when, what and how to adapt. Here is an example of a flowchart being used to plan the actions in Ascendency Point, a live event for the game Perplex City.
5. Create a Reward System	No matter how cool your game design is and how engaging your characters and story are, chances are you may still have difficulty getting people to participate. Instill competitiveness and collaboration by offering rewards. Make it fun. In the Duke's Quest ARG we created, it was a challenge to get players involved without a reward system. This can be a challenge when organizing small group ARGs which tend to involve even those who might not be interested in games just for "fun's" sake. A reward system might be that extra incentive they need to get involved. The Dark Knight ARG (developed for The Dark Knight movie), had a message from the Joker requesting players to submit photos of themselves in Joker make-up in order to receive a mystery package in the mail.
6. Leverage Social Media	Consider using social media utilities to both design and deliver the game. Services such as blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and others can serve as a medium for puzzle delivery and for players to interact with each other and non-player characters.
7. Have Closure	It's OK to have cliffhangers for a next instance of the game, but make sure your game has closure. Players need to feel like they've achieved something at the end. This can be a live event at which players gather with characters for a final announcement, conclude the game going over their achievements, distribute rewards or even set up expectations for a segue.
8. Play an ARG	It is true, the best way to design something effective might be to actually get your hands dirty. If you want to know how to design a good ARG, play an ARG. By actively joining a game you may learn how to relate to your audience's feelings and expectations when designing your own ARG. You can find active ARGs and read up on old games on websites and communities like ARGnet.

I hope these tips can help you get started designing your own ARG. The potential for active engagement is inherent to ARGs and may help you deliver a truly effective and experiential learning activity. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on ARGs in general. Please feel free to contact me or add to the comments here with your responses to these questions:

• Have you designed or played an ARG before?
• Was it specifically designed to teach or motivate the audience to experiment with technology or a concept?
• What are your best practices and advice for those interested in using ARGs for learning?

The iPad's Potential for Education

With the unveiling of the iPad, Apple will more than likely re-invent mobile computing once again. The real magic behind the iPhone became the App store -- it unleashed an endless supply of software -- making the smart-phone much more than just a phone... it became a "weightless office" in the palm of your hand.

The iPad widens the mobile computing ecosystem's possibilities to include usable applications for education. The iPhone is the first seemingly learner-centered mobile platform -- the gesture-based touchscreen combined with a screen size amenable to displaying content, and the Safari browser accesses the internet just like a "regular" computer. However, with its 9.7-inch multi-touch, high-definition screen, a powerful processor, and convenient and flexible form function, the iPad now becomes a perfect mobile learning device: instantly access textbooks, make annotations, connect to social learning communities, download apps with new learning content, upload your own content, watch videos, listen to podcasts, prepare assignments, etc. Sure, all these things you can do on a computer laptop... but imagine the ease of use with a device that is much more portable, feels natural in your hand, and is flexible in a multitude of "real-life" situations. No longer will you question whether or not to drag along your laptop with you -- your iPad now will be a constant -- just like your pen or pencil.

iPad-related innovations for education will widen the discussion about how we educate as well. With access to the SDK, students can build their own learning apps, or professors may be able to customize apps to present their own content in iTunesU. Even now, many are doing that and even making their content accessible to non-students.

The platform becomes a fertile playground, either for expanded functionality beyond the iPhone, or for innovations in how content is presented, and how it becomes more interactive and experiential. With location awareness, the ability to mobilize learners in remote locations can help engage distance learners as well. At first glance, you may think of the device as just another gadget, a laptop with less functionality. But remember, many naysayers doubted the impact of the iPhone. What Apple does best is understand how real people use technology, and what their expectations are from their device. A platform like the iPad releases the constraints that regular laptop technology foists upon us -- the iPad is nimble, reacts to real situations, and is so easy to use that it feels natural in your hands. That is the difference, and that is how this platform will speed up adoption of mobile learning.

Now, educators need to start figuring out how we build effective learning apps for this platform.

Creating Effective Training Evaluation

Dolly: Brandon ranted about ineffective evaluations while I was holed up under the 2 feet of snow here. The snow is still here, but my Internet is finally back. His comments about evaluation made me wonder what I consider effective evaluation to look like. Cumulative evaluation should be as authentic as possible. If you want someone to be an effective salesperson, you'd better identify what competencies are required and then have them replicate and practice as best they can in the classroom environment.

Brandon: Good point. I concur. However, more and more organizations are hit with the high-cost of travel and the inefficiency of removing people away from their jobs for instructor-led training. We need to provide effective strategies for authentic evaluation in an online format.

So I can think of two ways to recreate these situations in the digital world: virtual simulation and/or role-playing. Learners will have different profiles. Does someone who is technically minded need the same practice as someone who is naturally a people person? Both these individuals need to come out with the same skill sets at the end, but perhaps they need different practice. Formative self assessments combined with flexible course sequencing can allow individuals to focus on their areas of real need.

That just describes a sales training course I completed using Thiagi's 4-Door Model. It allowed the learner to "self-adjust" the content based on their own self-leveling of knowledge. It does beg the question though: how do you "branch" an evaluation based on different learner profiles? Can you have an effective evaluation instrument via a dynamic system that presents a contextual series of assessment items based on the learner's individual profiles? 

I think that you can have a self-assessment that gives the learner guidance in their own strengths and weaknesses.

OK, so you're talking about self-assessment. What about an actual skills certification? One that can affect a learner's job status, salary, or in the case of compliance or regulatory situations, a learner's knowledge that could have life or death consequences? Can a dynamic evaluation instrument provide the appropriate assessment of knowledge?

I don't know what you mean by "dynamic evaluation instrument".

"Dynamic pooling" is when the system displays content based on a learner's input at the time of input.

What you are talking about now is less about the assessment/evaluation used and more the consequences related to that assessment or evaluation. The SATs are pretty weighty and they've been using a dynamic response for years. A student gets progressively harder questions until incorrect responses are entered. Then a cycle commences where easier and harder questions are given to the student until the logarithm determines what the student's level of mastery is. I'd say that stakes are high, but the College Board feels comfortable using this dynamic response.

Right. So I'm saying we need a similar system in corporate learning where appropriate assessment techniques seem to be a missing factor. In eLearning, there is a cycle of ineffective self-check systems instead of situational problem-based assessments. For example, a colleague was discussing with me the usage of "misconception" problems in assessment. They can present more authentic situations such as posing the problem in a scenario and requiring the learner to identify the parts of the scenario that are wrong or inaccurate. Even using open-ended question types where the system evaluates based on a keyword or series of keywords can be quite effective. How are we truly able to measure whether knowledge or skills are transferred if we're not willing to properly evaluate?

I like that because some people are just natural or trained to be good test takers. That kind of exercise actually accurately tests knowledge that they have, rather than their ability to suss out a poorly written stem or item. I know you are all about performance. Shouldn't people's training be based upon actual deficits in their performance and knowledge? And if they are high performers or can demonstrate mastery of course materials, shouldn't they be rewarded by being allowed to choose their own training regimen, anyhow?