Games and e-Learning

Caspian Learning has produced a set of whitepapers looking at the use of learning based games in training and education.

Here are their 10 pedagogic reasons for games in learning:

1. Motivation
• Games typically involve good marketing, and level based design, keeping players interested through achievable goals, good feedback, and high quality production values. Motivation comes through good game play design and high levels of interaction.
2. Learner-centricity
• Games are massively interactive and rarely take control away from the learner, unlike traditional e-learning. Well designed games transform the learning process from a passive experience into an active learner-driven experience.
3. Personalisation
• The use of avatars and customisation is a strong form of personalisation. Games regard you as reaching certain states or goals, and allow users to earn rewards, which offer a user designed experience and a sense of personal progress.
4. Incremental learning
• Good games pull you onwards to the next task, upwards to the next level. Most games have an overarching goal along with levels and sub-goals. Players like to live on the edge of success and failure (regime of competence).
5. Contextualisation
• Games create a world in which learning takes place. This can be useful in terms of encoding and recall. Learning how to do something in the context in which it will actually be applied is good for transfer.
6. Rich media mix
• Games use 3D avatars, environments, objects and audio, which make their contextual worlds seem relevant. Games get the users to "do" something (challenges and tasks) rather than just watch it.
7. Safe failure
• Users learn by failing. Catastrophic failure (dying or getting thrown out of a level) is a strong feature of game design.
8. Immediate feedback
• Games are relentless on giving feedback in real-time: incremental feedback when progressing in a game, strong feedback for completion of a level, and overall progress couched in a league table and the ability of save progress, bookmark, and view your progress against others.
9. Lots of practice and reinforcement
• Games are played and replayed, which is rare for traditional training. Players learn how to overcome failure and get plenty of chances to reinforce the learning with a range of different challenges and tasks on the same subject, unlike traditional learning where the experience is often short term and we assume transfer of knowledge has been achieved (i.e. MCQ).
10. Lots of collaboration
• For those who see gamers as loners, it may come as a surprise to discover that their online communities are among the largest on the web. Game sites invariably have discussion groups, and gamers engage in dialogue about the games, and related strategies. Gamers genuinely seek to learn and teach other to reach their goals, which stimulates mutual support.

The psychology of motivation and learning tells us that these are the primary features of successful learning. If games can deliver these ten things then they're not an option in learning; they're a necessity. We'd be fools not to use their intrinsic strengths to strengthen, motivate, and accelerate learning.