Serious about Games (Enterprise Learning 2008: Shanghai)

Abstract

People don’t really learn at a screen by reading, watching or listening. They may absorb facts but to develop understanding and competence they must be engaged, entertained and challenged to perform job-relevant tasks.

Confucius concluded: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” These words might have been written last week, not 2,500 years ago. The challenge we face today is not to try to fill the minds of our staff with facts and information but to help them develop appropriate skills and responses to the real situations they will face.

‘Serious games’ provide an environment in which adults learn more deeply by doing things.

What is a game?

The role of serious games

Before suggesting the key ingredients for effective learning games, consider some of the characteristics we should remember about a typical modern learner:

• They are impatient for results and get bored quickly
• They have high expectations, developed as they grew up in a sophisticated interactive world
• They love to compete, to be measured, to prove themselves
• Amusing, engaging experiences create lasting imagery and memories, readily recalled in future situations

For the organisation, serious games deliver safe, cost-effective practice in otherwise hazardous, expensive or inaccessible tasks … anywhere and at any time. A good game should serve a dual purpose: as a training tool to develop staff skills and judgement and as an assessment tool to measure their competence.

A serious game immerses the learner in a familiar yet virtual environment in which they may make mistakes, ask for help, refer to documentation and (when feeling ready to be measured) the chance to demonstrate their competence in a way that answering the usual multi-choice quiz questions never can.

A ‘game’ is usually defined as being a structured activity whose key components are rules, goals, challenge and interactivity. Rather than being purely for fun or entertainment, a ‘serious’ game has a serious business justification. (The word ‘game’ is an unfortunate title, perhaps giving the impression to serious-minded management that employees are going to be playing, rather than working …)

What are we trying to achieve?

Nowadays ‘information’ is often free and accessible anywhere and at any time. We don’t need to remember pecific facts until the moment we need them. The problem is that training for many organisations is still seen simply as an exchange of information from knowledgeable experts (armed with huge PowerPoint presentations) to the minds of the learners.

All organisations need competent, skilled staff but how can we best develop and assess them?

Certainly not by filling their heads with data. After all, a 2Gb memory stick will carry and instantly recall far more information than any human brain.

How about imparting ‘knowledge’, equipping people to be able to recall information in an appropriate context? Well, this is more useful than carrying around raw facts but it still lacks the vital ingredient for competent performance: judgement.

Consider this example. A technician has learned the function and purpose of every switch and indicator on a large equipment control panel. He has studied into the small hours and is now a walking technical manual. He is highly knowledgeable. But what he lacks is the ability to select and apply this vast knowledge effectively in real world situations, calling on the skills and wisdom that underpin sound judgement and which are only acquired from experience. What if our eLearning programs could not only impart knowledge but also provide opportunities to gain experience? Now there’s a challenge!

Examples include…