So, today I was interviewed by Training magazine for the October issue, which will be featuring game-based learning. To prepare for the interview, I started listing some predictions I have for the future of eLearning and game-based learning, based on the current trends.

From what I've learned from my pals over at Electronic Arts, you need to announce a new release with a bullet list of your five top "features" for the game. So here's my features list for what's coming soon in elearning and game-based learning:

1. Cooperative play -- One of the most popular features that I've seen in commercial games is cooperative play. This feature enables players on a team to cooperatively compete for a common goal. We designed this feature into a game design we pitched to Cisco, called the "Network Assault" game. It's a perfect example of immersive game-based learning. The game is a "capture the flag" mod to the Unreal Tournament PC game. The "Capture the Flag" style game involves teams attacking another's flag, while simultaneously protecting their own. The cooperative play means that teams need to delegate tasks, searching the level for network patches, firewalls, etc, so they can defend their network, while also seeking viruses and trojans to assault the opponent's network. This not only builds teamwork but reinforces the principles of good network design.



2. Clans or Guilds -- World of Warcraft is arguably one of the most popular online games. One reason it is so addictive is that you join guilds and clans, and these online families tend to rely on you. There's a real sense of community and connection, along with prestige when your guild performs well. Sound familiar? Isn't this what we've always tried to promote in a classroom environment? I predict that eLearning will include more of these components. Imagine an online simulation where players are grouped into teams or clans. They have a common mission -- launch a new product line for a fictional brand or retail chain. The missions simulate real world situations, where success depends on meeting deadlines and delegating tasks to certain team members. The feature could work both synchronously (using game engines like Unreal) or asynchronously, where players work on the level individually, then save their game to a Shared Flash object file, so that a team leader or other team members can contribute later.



3. Holodeck -- Remember the Star Trek episodes where Picard ran a war game simulation to find solutions to those unwinnable situations with the Romulans? Did you ever hear Picard or the crew refer to that as a "game" or "training?" It was living virtually, rehearsing possible solutions and seeing the consequences. Sound familiar? Isn't that what good user-centric learning should do? The military has been doing this type of simulation for years, but now that the technology has become more commercialized, I think we'll see "holodeck" in a box, sold as a peripheral to your PC. Now that the Wii has untethered us from the mouse and keyboard, I predict that we'll soon be interacting in virtual space.



4. "4-D" models -- Fine, so we have our holodeck in a box, but who's inside this virtual world? In Second Life, other players inhabit the world. This is fine for entertainment, but for training, we need to make sure that there is efficacy. We can probably extend the Heisenberg Principal to also guess that people don't react online as they would in the real world. So developers, instructional designers and behavioral psychologists will begin developing and marketing "4-D" consumer models. Based on your targeted demographic/psychographic segment, you could "purchase" 4-D models who will inhabit your Holodeck simulations. This way, your sales force can explore a virtual sales floor and interact with people modeled to respond realistically. These “4-D� models could be downloaded and integrated into a variety of simulation games, so that sale training could become sales practice.



5. Modding and user-generated content -- So you have your Holodeck environment and now you have a library of 4-D personas to interact with. So what's the storyline? Here's where instructional designers, writers and producers will be able to create situations and events. I predict authoring tools that will enable designers to use a simple dashboard to tweak and refine the algorithms, so that they can constantly refine and create new situations and explore "what if" scenarios. This type of control will allow organizations to tailor their immersive learning simulations, encouraging creative solutions to tricky situations -- like Captain Picard. And as in the holodeck, by providing variability in the situation, environment and personas, we can truly create a virtual world and revolutionize how we learn to live in it.

Game-based learning? If some of these predictions come to pass, this will be serious technology and have serious implications on how we learn. By then, I don't think anyone will be referring to any of this as merely a game.

The most common question we hear related to game-based learning is... does it really work? And that's a question that has been difficult to answer using actual research... until now. Last week, the University of Central Florida releases a new study that shows math scores increasing when presented using game-based learning.

Up to now, most of us assumed as much. It seems pretty obvious that it's more enjoyable to play a game than to sit through a class. And we can probably safely assume that since it is more interactive, it might be more readily applied.

Last week, the University of Central Florida released a new study that seems to provides some qualitative evidence that game-based learning is more effective than more traditional teaching methods.

The study was conducted with 193 high school math students over the course of 18 weeks. The students were split into two groups: those who played the interactive math videogame as part of their coursework, and those who did not. The game itself contained traditional videogame elements such as 3-D graphics, sound, animation, and an immersive storyline.

The results indicated a significant difference:

• Students in the test group, which played the videogame as part of their learning, showed an 8.07 point increase in their math scores.
  
• Students in the control group, which did not play the videogame, showed a 3.74 point increase in their math scores.

Just as significantly, both the students and teachers felt that the videogame component truly made a difference not just in how the students learned the material, but also in how much they wanted to learn it. Students remarked that the videogame elements made the learning fun, while teachers noted that having math concepts in a videogame enabled many students to conquer a phobia of math.

This is only one study, and it is far from definitive, but it is some good science to support what most of us have known.

If anyone knows of other studies supporting or dispelling the use of game-based learning, please let me know.

I was manning the Digitec booth at the Society of Pharma and Bio-Tech Trainer's (SPBT) Conference in Orlando last week and had the opportunity to sit in on an excellent session by Doug Stevenson on Story Theatre. Being a theatre guy, his booth caught my eye, and I ducked into his session. He has a really interesting approach to creating dramatic and memorable learning. While his session was directed more to trainers and stand-up instruction, I think eLearning designers can apply these nine steps to create really effective eLearning.

Doug reinforced, though, that you need to choose a story with one very specific educational point in mind. We've all sat in on classroom training, and probably suffered through long-winded stories that didn't seem to have a point. Doug's advice is to make sure that your stories have a single focused point. Next, a good story will be personal, and it is set at a moment of crisis. Visualize a crisis you faced in the past, one that illustrates some instructional point. Okay, got a story? Now, follow these steps to make it memorable:

1. Set the scene. Establish a sense of place and dig deep for the details to bring that scene to life. Establish the exact time, specifics on the place, the emotion. Now, paint that picture. Use video, audio, whatever, but use details.
   
   
2. Focus on a main character. The most memorable stories I've ever heard were confessional. Think about how powerful it is to confess your own personal blunder. But they don't have to be personal to be memorable. Your story should focus on a main character facing a crisis.
   
   
3. Begin the journey. Here, you want to focus on action. What is the main character doing, specifically when the crisis occurs? Action is the heart of drama, so choose a story where the main character is doing something meaningful.
   
   
4. Encounter the obstacle. This should be the climax of the story. Who does the main character confront? What happens? Doug acted out the scene onstage, which worked really effectively. For eLearning, consider using video with professional onscreen talent to achieve this. I know it's expensive, but you get what you pay for, and the minute your audience sees Joan from HR trying to act, you'll lose the suspension of disbelief that a story conveys.
   
   
5. Overcome the obstacle. While Doug didn't suggest this, an eLearning technique to acheive this may be to leave the story hanging at that crisis. Then you can introduce your instruction while you've got the learner's attention. Hopefully, you've established a sense of urgency and anticipation that will keep them engaged. You can then come back to the crisis to look at how the main character dealt with the obstacle. Here's where incorporating short video segments into your eLearning will help convey the story more effectively than words.
   
   
6. Resolve the story. Pretty obvious, here. Remember, use poetic license as necessary to make sure the resolution reinforces your one single point. Lie, whenever necessary. Remember Blanche DuBois' famous line in Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire: "I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth."
   
   
7. Make the point. Doug describes this as "sticking the landing." Like a gymnast doing a dismount, make your point, then salute. Don't ramble or stumble. For eLearning, make sure this point is made clearly. Doug's suggestion was to even frame the message with: "What that experience taught me was...." This approach ensures clarity of message, and I completely agree.
   
   
8. Ask the question. Here, you are trying to evoke personal reflection. Has this ever happened to you? The irony is that a story is really memorable when it's personal and universal. The learner must relate! For eLearning, consider posting the question to a forum. I've been pleasantly surprised at how strong the responses are, and it creates a great sense of community among the learners, too.
   
   
9. Restate the point. Pretty obvious. It's that "rule of three" I learned writing for theatre. If you want the audience to remember something, you need to mention it three times.
   

So those are the 9 steps. My thanks to Doug Stevenson for this session. While attendance at the conference was disappointingly low, this session made the event worthwhile.

Dick Hofmann at Digitec found this link off YouTube, and it's so apt, based on what I heard at the eLearning Guild conference earlier this month, and what I see teaching my college students.

This is a challenge we all need to meet... and we're running out of time.

Next Gen Learning video

So the eLearning Guild 08 Gathering just wrapped up in Orlando, and there were some really good sessions. I moderated a session on "What does the Next Gen Learning Experience Look Like." Even though the session was held a 7:15 am on Tuesday morning (and I hadn't slept at all the night before), we had a good group and a productive session. These are the results of our collective brainstorm.

Next Generation Learner

With recent studies showing that 40% of the workforce will retire by 2015, we used the "21st Century Students Deserve a 21st Century Education" survey of 1.2 million K-12 students, teachers, administrators and parents representing over 14,000 schools in all 50 states. This seemed like the obvious place to start, since this group will constitute our target audience in a few years.

So to predict what the Next Gen Learning experience might be like, we started by listing what we saw as the trends. Here's the list we came up with:

• "Always on" connectivity with their peer group
• User generated content, self-publishing video (YouTube), blogging and posting to (MySpace, Facebook)
• Social connectivity, accessing a looser set of networks more casually for problem solving, companionship or just to feel connected to a larger group
• Gamers, with nearly a 50% split between males/females enjoying console or computer games

Based on these trends (which are certainly not exhaustive), we tried to imagine the type of learning environment that would engage this profiled learner. Here's what we came up with:

• Bite-sized intruction - the group pretty much agreed that an instructional session longer than 40 minutes would be deadly. Ideally, ten minutes is even better.
• Context-heavy - The Next Gen Learner is less likely to accept an instructor's opinion of the importance of the content.
• Embedded learning - Rather than "force-feed" content, learners seem to want more "just-in-time" learning that they can access only when they need it.
• User-generated content - Based on the research, students value creativity and teamwork, moreso than the Boomer or Gen X, so more project-based instruction and constructivist styles would be more effective.
• Scenario-based/role-play - Learners are used to virtual worlds where there are multiple choices that can be made, rather than one correct answer.

What Does Nex Gen Learning Look Like?

We agreed that we may need to rethink the traditional form of assessment, looking at outcomes first and perhaps measuring assessment through job performance, rather than based on arbitrary learning requirements or test scores.

We need to foster the creativity to allow learning to be ad-hoc, continual and learner-directed. This continuing education model may require managers to play a larger role in professional development and performance assessment. This could actually take the form of learning through special projects - acheiving a true constructivist model that encourages creative thinking and decision making.

Finally, the tools for learning need to be portable to many devices, so that learning occurs on-demand, when learners need it, rather than when we decide they need to learn. These "job aids" may need to include performance support, featuring interactive multimedia.

So that's the recap. Feel free to chime in and contribute to these ideas. This was a really cool exercise, and this type of mind-experiment is a great way for educators to continually leverage new media and technology to explore better ways to evolve and adapt to the nex gen learner.

So in prepping for our upcoming session at the eLearning Guild Conference in Orlando, on April 15, I've been doing a bunch of research on the trends in learning management systems.

I ran across a really good white paper by Ecto, titled: In search of the next generation online learning environment. The thing that really impressed me was one quote in particular:

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, classroom pedagogy was characterized by one-way, teacher centered/text-book-centered delivery of single-media information to students whose role was that of passive receptor.

This is dead on, and those days are gone. How are today's learners learning? Well, it's collaborative; it's social, and it's quasi-connected. So how do learning management systems accommodate for these qualities?

According to the 2007 eLearning Guild 360 report, the Department of Labor studies show that 70% of our learning is "informal" or non-classroom, then why do we continue to turn to an outdated "classroom" teaching mode to model our learning environments? These don't reflect how we're learning or how we're living.

I've been teaching Humanities as an adjunct on the college level since '95, and I miss the days of standing in front of a classroom, interacting with live students, but this approach is fast becoming ineffective. It's not that it's just passive; it's no longer engaging to the 21st Century mind. We can't continue to model systems on this delivery method, exclusively.

So how do we create the Next Gen learning environment? The key is in turning to the use-case. Let's do some old-fashion learner analysis to see what needs to be learned and how. Then let's design a system that not only allows but encourages that behavior. If necessary, let's include technology that doesn't even exist yet. Maybe that will force us to consider near-term alternatives, creatively brainstorming an iterative approach to the next platform, rather than cherry picking from an outdated feature listing.

As we've developed the Knowledge Direct platform, we've continually asked ourselves "how and when would a learner user this?" If there's no clear vision, then it's probably just a feature, and not a function that will benefit the learner, administrator, instructor or content manager.

In my opinion, Next Gen learning needs to focus on continuing education, with learning portals that create centralized access to layers of interest -- sort of a true object oriented approach to learning. I run a technology company; I teach Ancient/Classical and 21st Century Humanities, but I also write stage plays. So I need a portal that centralizes just-in-time and filtered RSS feeds on those subjects, so I can continually develop and connect with resources to help me succeed. I need to be in control of my learning. But as long as we refer to training as a "learning event," it implies a singular, non-recurring interruption in our lives. This is wrong.

Learning must be continual, and we have a responsibility to invent a world that encourages that.

It seems as though Web 2.0 is pushing everyone in IT to change the paradigm, making the online experience more user-focused and experiential. And eLearning is no exception. Nowadays, a simple drag and drop "game" can hardly be considered "game-based elearning." So then what is considered "good game" by Web 2.0 standards, in terms of game-based elearning?

The short answer is "game," and what makes a good game isn't unique to Web 2.0. It's always been true of games. It's about strategy. A good game is one that sets a goal that can be attained in more than one way and provides a variety of success and fail combinations. And strategy needs to revolve around the choices a player makes.

Yes, this means your elearning needs to support multi-pathing. It needs to be non-linear, but it doesn't need to be daunting. So even though you might need to throw out the traditional eLearning precept of "scope and sequence," you can still simplify.

Game Play

Remember how the classic board games used to come with a dog-eared pamphlet that had the rules, objectives and how to play? That's a great way to look at designing effective game-based eLearning, too. It comes down to those three sections.

Objectives:

Consider a sales training game. Don't throw out your learning objectives. Instead, focus on the terminal learning objectives and align these with the performance objectives for the game. If a sales person needs to close 30% of sales, then the game objective might be that the "Player needs to engage with the animals in the dark forest of Trade Show Wood. To win, the player needs to use their selling skills to focus on the right prospects and sell the right product to the right animal in order to emerge from the woods."

Rules:

Any good game has rules, and the best games have SIMPLE rules. From a Web 2.0 perspective, these rules equate to defining the business rules for the game. If you're designing sales training, the rules have to state that a player has to successfully respond to the prospect's questions to win credibility and make the sale. If the player continually misses the mark, the rules need to state that if the player continually loses credibility, they should lose the sale. If they lose more than 30%, they lose the game. Keep it simple! And try not to require players to access "resources." Players will smell learning and get turned off, but once they figure out that if they access these, they'll win, you won't need to force it.

 

How to Play:

Forgot those long tutorials! A great rule of thumb for teaching players how to play is to avoid a long extracted "intro". When people think of games, they want to play not watch, so when you have a long intro Flash animation, players will typically skip this. Instead, have a set of Help files that  players can access along the way. Or better yet, set a business rule that if a player hits a new event, trigger a short setup scene. Maybe have a character pop in and explain what's going on.

So if you're an eLearning designer, go 2.0, and have a good game!