Games & Learning
Games and gamification are powerful ways to enhance engagement, adding elements of story, challenge, motivation, and other gaming principles to improve learning outcomes.
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Digimodernism and Learning
Technology extends what we can do at work, at play, and in our careers. It also reorganizes relationships and culture. Designers who think effective use of mobile technology is just a matter of fitting learning content onto smaller screens, or who approach social media as just another learning delivery channel, may be missing the bigger picture. Here are some ideas to consider.
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Playing Cards at a Tech Conference: A Game of Phones Reviewed
The card game A Game of Phones made its debut at The eLearning Guild’s mLearnCon in June. While you might wonder what a card game has to do with mobile learning, the experience of the players showed the value of combining social interaction with a game around the context of using mobile technology. Blended for sure! Here’s the impressions of one who played and won.
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Dispatch from the Digital Frontier: Imagining a Badge System for e-Learning
Badges, those little icons so loved by gamers, have some surprising uses in e-Learning. These uses go beyond providing superficial rewards, including improving recall, increasing motivation, and supporting social interaction. Here’s what we’re learning about this element of gamification.
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Spring Revival: Alternate Reality Game Breathes New Life into Old Course
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) create a fictional scenario in which learners interact with people and information to play out a story in the form of a game. Imagine a role-play on steroids, where the participants don’t have to pretend to be anyone else, because it’s the world around them that changes. Enjoy this case study!
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Taking Cues from Industry: Using Casual Games for Learning at DAU
The Defense Acquisition University in the U.S. is launching a gaming portal today. While this was an obvious move, it required strategy. This week’s spotlight explains how and why DAU is taking this step.
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Dispatch from the Digital Frontier: This Crazy Gamification Craze
Gamification – adding game elements to applications for business and education – is a hot trend. But does this dumb down the transformative nature of games? Anne examines the question.
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Dispatch from the Digital Frontier: Engagement and the Dopamine Squirt
Learning can literally be addictive, thanks to the effects of dopamine on the brain. A well-tuned game heightens these effects. Anne explains the principles that will help you leverage the learners’ physiological responses.
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The Human Factor: Feedback, or Things I Could Have Learned Playing Zuma
Videogames show us how to provide useful feedback, even in conventional e-Learning offerings. There’s more to feedback than correction, as this week’s column demonstrates!
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Dispatch from the Digital Frontier: Games as Meaning Makers
Stories have been the basis for teaching for thousands of years. Today, online and computer games are based on a “backstory,” and this makes these games compelling. Why not use this to facilitate learning?
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Social Is Not An Option
As we find out how learning happens, and how technology can support learning, some interesting hybrids (mash-ups?) are appearing. Four ideas dominate: informal learning, social learning, mobile learning, and games-based learning. This week’s feature looks at how a team in England is putting these together, plus features to motivate learners. The result: a very different way of learning.