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.
  This post also appears on Wiggle Learning.

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?

This post also appears on Wiggle Learning.

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. 

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?

Designing A Degrading Learning Experience

Since Dolly is snowbound in Virginia without internet access right now, I decided to post this week without her... and she is sorely missed. 

Recently I was asked to perform some basic instructional design on an already created eLearning storyboard. One of the duties assigned to me was to edit existing content, and ensure the content was optimized for the engine the developers would use to build the course. As I went through the content, I decided to add a knowledge check interaction at the end of each module. Although these would not be mandatory interactions, they would provide an opportunity for the learner to self-check their learning, and to receive contextual feedback. Before I continue this story, let me digress just a bit about instructional design:

Earlier this year I was presenting to a group of technical writers and instructional designers on what instructional design is. This was a request from a group of technical writers who really felt like they were also performing instructional design duties when they created "tutorials" and/or "labs". They wanted clarification on what my idea of instructional design is.

I noted three primary responsibilities of a typical instructional designer:

1. Applies instructional strategies to aid in the acquisition, creation, retention and retrieval of knowledge.
2. Matches content type to strategy. Creates a learning environment by providing examples and non-examples for teaching concepts and facts.
3. Applies systematic approaches to instructional messaging to aid in learning (pedagogy).

There are a few key components that an instructional designer brings to a learning intervention:

• Designs the information to assist the learner in building on prior knowledge
• Scaffolds the information to enable new knowledge to be acquired
• Provides relevant, contextual feedback in the learning environment

OK, back to my main story... the course design assistance I was providing... Just remember the items I listed above, cause they come into play in this story.

So I was informed that new game templates had been created by the developer that I could leverage to make the knowledge checks more engaging. So, as a game designer, I thought great! Can't wait to get my hands on them. This was a basic "learning by listening" course presented in a PowerPoint-like template to begin with, so any form of interaction would help (I thought) -- until I lifted the hood on the "game" template and peered inside its functionality.

The game template provided was based on the standard Wheel of Fortune format. As you can see in the screenshot below (click the graphic to enlarge), it contains four primary components:

1. Question selection mechanism in the form of a wheel with a spinning arrow
2. A fixed region for the item types. Two types of items are available: multiple choice with single or multiple correct response options, and a true or false type
3. A timer
4. A score indicator

 

The template affords eight game questions. The learner clicks the "SPIN" icon, the arrow spins and randomly lands on a question number. The question is presented in the fixed question region and the timer begins to count down from five minutes awaiting the learner's response which requires selecting a choice, and then clicking a Submit button.

Your first thought may be similar to mine when I came upon this game-like interaction: a nice graphical interface and higher levels of interactivity affording the learner the chance to actually do something. Great!

But as I began to develop the test items, I dug a bit deeper into the functionality, and quickly realized this interaction was not just instructionally unsound, but detrimental to the learning opportunity at hand. A templatized interaction should first strive to be instructionally sound, and then be visually engaging (if appropriate to the learning context). This template has the following problems:

• A game should heighten emotion. It does not meet the basic criteria I establish for a game. A game has to contain an element of play. There are many definitions of play, but one component I look for is heightened emotion. To heighten emotion there must be a compelling desire for the learner to want to engage. Think of the standard Wheel of Fortune game: the choices on the wheel contain different types of elements, such as values (5000 points, 100 points, 300 points) that denote item difficulty. There are also spoilers, such as "Bankruptcy" (forcing the player to lose all their points). Those elements heighten player emotion after spinning the wheel.. "do I want the 5000 point question... oh gosh, I hope it doesn't land on bankruptcy..." This game simply has question numbers as wheel choices. It would not be difficult to change these choices to make them more game-like.
• A game should contain an element of unpredictability. This template displays the same questions in order each time it's played. It does not randomize items from a larger pool. So every time the learner plays, question 1 is question 1. This corrupts the basic tenet of the game: it should easily be able to provide a "new" experience each time it's played. This is not hard to program into the Flash engine. I've done it. This feature would encourage the player to "play again" which potentially increases their ability to learn.
• Visuals should always support the learning content. I wrote feedback for each item before discussing any limitations with the developer (I never thought my feedback would be limited). After the developer received my items with feedback I was told that I must limit the feedback to 108 characters (not counting spaces). By limiting the feedback space, I am forced to NOT display all the feedback I may need for the learner to gain a deeper understanding (which really is the point of the whole interaction, right?). By simply reducing the size of the wheel graphic, I could gain maybe another 100 characters for feedback. The wheel is only the conduit to display the question in this representation anyway, so having it take up MORE screen real estate than the question box itself is just bad design. Reduce the graphic, and give me more room for content. 
• Adult learners need to know there's a reason for what they're doing, otherwise, they will become distracted, bored, and/or question the authenticity of the intervention. To attract the learner to a richer level of engagement, an element of competition is desirable. With multiple rounds, for instance, the player can achieve a higher game level or at least compete against the game for points. This can also provide a scaffolding opportunity. In this template, the score is meaningless -- there is no leaderboard, no saving of the score, and no demonstrable representation of the value of the scoring algorithm. The learner needs to easily understand the "value" of their score. What does a score of "30,000" mean anyway?
• As an instructional designer, I have a better idea of the time element required for the item other than an arbitrary number created by a programmer. When I wanted to control the timing options for the game, I was told that the timer amount was fixed at five minutes. I may have question items in a True or False format that require just a bit of time, and not the whole five minutes. Sure the player can answer quick, click Submit and move on... but with 5 minutes on the timer, where is the challenge?
• Every item type should support learning outcomes. True or False item types simply do not. I can't defend them. This item type is just not instructionally sound. What data does it give the learner? It does provide them a 50% chance of gaining more points. These item types should never be used.

Games designed for learning can be powerful interactions to help attract and engage learners, and have shown to be powerful agents in building problem-solving skills. I have nothing against game "shells" or templates (I worked with Thiagi to design game shells years ago that are still in use today), however, if divorced from sound instructional design, they can be demotivating. If you decide to use templatized game engines be sure to validate the instructional integrity before you adopt and use them. The best is to create them from scratch and design them to your unique requirements. Templates can provide a solid foundation for reusable, rapid development, but they should never take precedence over the ability to create an instructionally sound learning intervention.

What's the Difference Between a Game and an Educational Game?

Continuing our conversational posts, Dolly and Brandon went into Google Wave and discussed their opinions on the difference between a game and an educational game. The distinctions are key for instructional designers to consider when deciding to design a game for a learning intervention. Until we can embed Waves into Typepad, we lay out a simple reconstruction of the Wave conversation, with Dolly kicking it off:

DOLLY: Games vs. educational games. I know, one's fun and the other one is not! Really, though, what are the differences? I think intentionality of design is a key point, because I think that all games -- indeed all experiences -- are educational. Bernie deKoven  talks a lot about children's games providing an opportunity to roleplay and work out developmental issues. I know I learned a lot about what a ruthless sort  my brother is when he beat me repeatedly at every board game created. So, if we accept that every game has learning opportunities, how do we make sure to include the fun?

BRANDON: Both can be fun, right? The basic difference is an educational game is designed with specific learning objectives and should be able to assess whether learning occurs.   

I think assessment is key. That's the external component that is often artificial. So many times assessment of learning within games have two basic problems:
 

1. It's completely external and separate from the game play.
2. It's too "safe"-- Alex Trebek doesn't give you second chances in final jeopardy. It's FINAL!

I was thinking about that whole shift in board games with the advent of Cranium. Their whole goal was to remove the idea that there was one winner who had all the fun, but that players of multiple intelligences could play and those people could have fun. Bonding, instead of board throwing!

Hmm... Good point -- Cranium could be looked at as a "learning game " although it doesn't have traditional learning objectives, right? 

 

Well, if you look at their objectives they are met. And their learning objectives fall nicely within affective measures and an arts curriculum. 

 

For example?  

Well, the goals of the game include team cooperation and communication through graphic arts and music.

 

"Game" is such a broad term. A game must include some element of Play, I presume. I also assume a game designed with a learning outcome in mind has structured play (as opposed to unstructured play -- like when a kid plays with blocks).

Garvey said that a game is institutionalized play. Look at football. It's a game, clearly. We wouldn't say that it's educational, but you can learn it (and those who learn it best find it financially rewarding). Also by using it as a metaphor you can teach life lessons and/or management strategies, or you can teach math from the stats of the game.

So this leads me to think about the "game perimeter". Most games have boundaries, right? We step into the perimeter's "magic circle" to play the game. In the corporate workplace, the "magic circle" is the game's play boundary the instructional designer/game designer creates. The trick for instructional designers is to craft what learning occurs while the player is in that circle... so does that mean that the assessment needs to occur inside or outside the perimeter?

I think the best assessments are seamless and inside that perimeter. Examples could be performance-, point- or victory-based. 

 

So are we saying that the differences between a game and a successful educational game can be minimal if assessment can be more embedded and genuine?

 

Sure.

 

This post can also be found at Wiggle Learning.

10 Ways To Use Facebook for Training

Brandon: You know as I work to create social learning micro-sites on the internal corporate network, it sometimes hits me that in a lot of ways I'm just re-creating what Facebook has already hit a home run with. So, Dolly, the question for you today is: How can I leverage Facebook for training? 

Dolly: What content is best suited for Facebook? Is Facebook for content or is it for social networking and engagement?  

 

Well it seems that technical training, soft skills training... really any type of learning content would work. The power of the platform seems to be around the integration of peer-to-peer dialogue and sharing with the context of learning. Facebook users are collaborating by default because they are exchanging comments and creating dialogue interactively. What we need to do is make this engaging activity applicable to work/training.

 

Shall we brainstorm? What are the features of Facebook are conducive to training?  

OK, so let's make it a contest. Let's list 10 ways we can use Facebook for training. I mean we're professionals right? With imaginations like ours, we should be able to easily list 10 ways! Here's one way:

1. Discussion threads. People seem to love engaging in dialogue about relevant subjects. A simple discussion board functionality is key in attracting learners to a higher level of engagement.

Facebook recently took out the updates about when people commented on others' walls. I liked that and was sad to see it go. It allowed me to see what my friends were saying -- even if it was directly relevant to me AND it often introduced me to new people that I liked. You never know what tidbit of seeming off-topic information will inspire a new idea. 

 2. Class notes and links to supporting information. In academic settings I've seen many professors, trainers and facilitators add their syllabi, notes, and links to websites. I'm using Microsoft Sharepoint now to create a wiki where I will host pre-work content and activities for a workshop I am designing. A Facebook-like platform is great for this, although versioning control would be a nice-to-have.  

Sharepoint? 

Sharepoint is Microsoft's collaboration platform. A lot of people are using it for collaborative learning environments. Check out more about it here.

3. Course feedback. Students can provide feedback about their favorite or least favorite aspects of the training.

This is where a "two-way" information stream can provide excellent near real-time feedback. An instructional designer could easily move to a more "agile" design process by using Facebook's social utilities to gain "instant" feedback on instructional content. I've been using similar methods for several years by building database systems. Facebook has this functionality built in!  

4. Student Reflection. Students are required to post some "takeaway" from any training that they just completed in their status, which can help their community at large.

5. Events. If you can get out of the whole departmental competition thing, it could be really interesting to have online "events" that everyone was invited to facilitate cross-company brainstorming for new initiatives.

6. Build your personal network/brand. It's important for individuals to be able to broadcast their expertise and interests. Facebook-like platforms could become similar to an "auctioning" of skills. IBM does this now with their internal Blue Pages. Employees are encouraged to list their skills, expertise, and availability. People can search using keywords to find suitable candidates for their projects.

I like this idea. We haven't talked about LinkedIn, but it seems like this might be an internal version of that.

7. Post-classroom events (extended learning). We used this recently on a leadership training program. Although the primary component of the training course was a 3-day classroom experience, we designed pre-work activities for the cohort to participate in online, and, to ensure retention and reflection we also designed post-classroom activities. The cohort remained engaged, and continued to work on the post-class activities. One benefit were the "breadcrumbs" left behind by the cohorts... subsequent cohorts could learn from them.

 8. Games. We could do a post of different types of games. But clearly all sorts of games are popular on Facebook. I don't play, but I know that Mafia Wars, Farmville and the like have some real appeal. I could see seeking out people who had certain skill sets to form your teams. You and I play Scrabble and its knockoffs. Facebook serves as a portal to every kind of game imaginable. I could also see some scavenger hunts for content and personnel.

How many games on Facebook are designed for learning though? Quite a few I think... it's just not real obvious.

I FIRMLY believe that every activity people participate in teaches or reinforces some learning or knowledge (even if only a physical response). Even if games are not designed with education/instruction/learning in mind, they still have features that can be exploited and minded to fold in formal/planned learning opportunities. I mean, somehow they have made the most inane, tedious tasks on Farmville completely compelling. Who knew? Which leads me to think about another way to use Facebook for training:

9. Quizzes. What kind of programmer are you? What does your desk say about you? What kind of cubicle mate are you? While these are humorous, I could see some actual useful ones, like providing Myers Briggs profiles and the like. Oh, and here's the 10th (I beat you to it)!

10. Fandom. I was interested to see that the number one corporate identity on Facebook is Coke. Their presence was first created by a zealous fan. The page has become their corporate identity, and hugely popular. A lot of times employees can be the biggest fans of a company and hold the most knowledge. Creating a safe environment to tell the positives of the company can offset some of the griping that we all need to do sometimes.

Yes, but some companies are paranoid about their "intellectual property" being made public. It's akin to the music companies obsessing over DRM -- the one thing a company needs to understand about today's information revolution: you can't control everything ... so focus on influence rather than control. Comcast learned this quickly, and adopted Twitter to broadcast network statuses to its customers. Now it uses Twitter for customer support.

 I see we keep returning to the theme that companies need to have a more flexibility in this era of accessible info.

Well there are 10 ways... but there are many more. The big question for companies: are you going to build internal social platforms, or leverage the public ones? It seems like many companies will want to keep their social networks behind their firewalls. This may work in the short-run, but newer generations of workers (Millennials and the 2020 Gen) will want to be able to blend their public and work networks and profiles. That will make for an interesting dialog... maybe we can discuss that one soon? 

 

  This post also appears on Wiggle Learning.

Alternate Reality Games: Leveraging Collective Intelligence for the Enterprise

Read our new article on how to effectively use the emerging genre of alternate reality games in corporate training to increase learner collaboration and sharing. You can read the article from the eLearning Guild's newsletter, or download it.