Would You Like To Play A Game?
By Julie Dirksen and Edmond Manning

When adding gaming elements to e-learning, there's this odd notion that after you include a wacky 'dinging' sound and a few zany graphics, suddenly you'll have Sexual Harassment Jeopardy: instructional, hilarious, and meaningful. It's just not that simple. (And really, do you want your sexual harassment training to be hilarious?)

In a www.gamasutra.com April 2005 feature discussing how little educators and game developers understand about each others' challenges, Nick Fortugno and Eric Zimmerman state: "Everyone—both developers and educators—forgets this one (fact): Making games is really hard. Even creating a wholly derivative game (a blow-by-blow clone of Bejeweled, or You Don't Know Jack, or Tomb Raider) is incredibly difficult to do well. When you add to this the ambition of creating an innovative game with new kinds of content and gameplay, as well as a game that actually tries to teach something meaningful to players, the problem is multiplied by orders of magnitude."

Good point. But just because gaming in e-learning is 'a problem multiplied by orders of magnitude' doesn't mean we give up on gaming elements. No, no: When the going gets tough, the tough play checkers. So let's take a look at some strategies that are important to consider when bringing gaming elements to e-learning.

All about dopamine

Dopamine is one of those happy brain chemicals that makes you coo and gurgle with pleasure, even when you're not a gurgling kind of person. Neuroscientists have researched and documented that your brain's dopamine neurons fire furiously when encountering an unexpected reward: witnessing a ninth-inning home run, getting a greater IRS refund than expected, or the kids washing and drying the dishes without being told. Even slot machines, with their ridiculously slim potential for payoff produce the dopamine rush; each time you tug the arm, your brain says, "Maybe this time...maybe this time..."

Why do we educators care about dopamine neurons firing? A brain stimulated by positive chemicals like endorphins or dopamine experiences enhanced performance, greater alertness, and tighter mental acuity. Hmmmm. I could see the advantage of that mental state when it comes to learning.

In electronic games, dopamine floods occur regularly because of the sheer volume of unexpected surprises: you acquire the bejeweled gold hammer, magic elves appear on the third level, an unexpected dark alley reveals great treasure, and so on. In e-learning, are there EVER unexpected rewards? Not likely. Most 'rewards' are exactly what was expected: a text box jammed full of words. Box full o' words: not so rewarding. But why can't we drop in surprises? A reward could be a stunning visual, a clever bit of animation, a printable coupon for $4 in the corporate cafeteria. Who knows what could be rewarding?

Surprise me.

Sound design for designing sounds

A video game on mute is a much different experience from hearing every little pling, crink, smoooooorsh, and krek-PLAM. Sound matters. And not just any sound—the right-fitting sounds. If you've ever played the popular game, You Don't Know Jack, recall that the experience is mostly auditory. Players are presented (over and over) with true/false and multiple-choice questions on a black screen. Creative visual appeal? Low. But if you close your eyes, the myriad levels of audio occurring at once make you feel like you're in a game show studio: the producer's busy chatter, the sound of equipment being moved, and the host's off-stage complaining about not having the right beverages. It fits, it works.

For many years, we were wise to be cautious of using audio in e-learning: file sizes and in disparities in sound card technology meant not everyone would have the same experience. Today, we would be wise to realize that bandwidth, hardware, and headphones mean we can design sounds that support and enhance the context created in the e-learning.

Halfway goals

Games do this wonderful thing in which they let you know that you haven't achieved the big goal, and then let you master all kinds of skills needed to get there. You never forget how far you've come, often because you have to start over when you lose a life or get conked by the barrel-wielding gorilla.

Imagine what it would be like if learners felt that way about learning: willing to utterly master question-asking techniques, rapport building skills, product knowledge (and possibly kill some zombies) all in service towards that giant $1,000,000 sale! In the real world, that gianormous sale would be great, but wouldn't we also be completely, joyfully happy if learners had utterly mastered those sub-skills along the way?

Does your e-learning reinforce the relationship between the ultimate goal and sub-goals?

So the story goes

Right after the storm, Barbara watched appalled as dozens of six-legged creatures with barbed, thorny legs hatched and crawled from the giant hail...

Ah, the narrative flow. There's nothing like a powerful story to grab and hold you. Most games contain an overarching story, a spectacular draw, that captures your imagination and spirit, enticing you to stay just a few minutes longer, invest a little bit more of your attention. It also gives the novice learner a familiar mental model that they can use to encode the new information.

In e-learning, we continue to grasp this ridiculous idea that a Flash introduction with spinning logos and sophisticated graphics will suddenly make an adult learners care about third-quarter business objectives. Why? Because they have to. Eeek.

I teach project management to college students, and sometime the temptation to say "Trust me, you'll be glad later that you know this" is almost overwhelming, but it's a cop out. A much better answer is to give them a reason to know and remember (a good story). So, I put the question back to you, gentle reader. What's your story? What's your draw? Why would allow your learner to "Wait! I know what to do here. This is just like that thing that happened to Barbara!"

When all is said and done, integrating gaming elements into e-learning must respect that the gaming world is vastly different from ours. We can learn so much from existing games and the experiences of game developers. And best of all, how we integrate these instructional strategies requires us to do something wonderful: play.

Julie Dirksen is the director of online training for RMC Project Management. She also is an adjunct faculty member at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, teaching courses in project management, instructional design, and cognitive psychology. She also believes that we need to learn how to use the addictive powers of Tetris for good rather than evil.

Edmond Manning is an instructional design consultant who spent 17 years consulting dozens of companies on creating powerful e-learning. He currently teaches several ASTD training programs, including Advanced Designing Learning and Blended Learning. His Masters of Instructional Technology comes in handy while training his parents not to be afraid of email.

This article was original published in the Allen Interaction e-zine; http://ezine.alleni.com.