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Corporate Play-Day: How The Big Boys Are Gaming

Corporate Play-Day: How The Big Boys Are Gaming

by on October 26, 2011 in Gaming Theory

Last Friday, my colleague Andrea May responded to a very timely “big question” from Tony Karrer’s Learning Circuits Blog.  This month’s big question, posted by Ben Betts of HT2 (Karrer is on blog-sabatical), is “Does Gamification Have a Role in Workplace Learning?”

It’s hard to deny that games-in-learning is something of the “cool new thing” on the learning block these days (although Andrea makes a great point that it’s not really all that new).  It’s also hard to deny that it brings results, however.  And while it’s never a good idea to do something just because others are doing so (I hear my mom yelling at me “if your friends jumped off a cliff would you do that too?”), the Wall Street Journal recently posted an interesting article detailing how the “big boys” are utilizing games these days.  Titled “Companies Adopt Gaming Techniques to Motivate Employees” it is …

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Games in Learning: Review of Grockit.com

Games in Learning: Review of Grockit.com

by on June 6, 2011 in Gaming Theory

Those of you who visit the Social Learning Blog frequently will know by now that I’ve been on something of a “games-in-learning” kick for a while.  One major reason, of course, is that games represent one of the cutting-edge aspects of our industry, and our blog seeks to explore anything that’s new and exciting.  Another reason, though – and this coincidentally helps to explain the appeal of games to learners in the first place – is that it’s such a fun topic to write about.  What’s not to love about a learning strategy that is informative and empirically proven to be effective, yet engaging and entertaining at the same time?

While we at Dashe & Thomson are generally more in touch with advances in learning techniques in the corporate sphere, it’s always good to stay abreast of what’s going on in education generally (after all, the fields are related…).  With …

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Can Bill Gates Lead the Informal Learning Revolution?

Can Bill Gates Lead the Informal Learning Revolution?

by on June 1, 2011 in blended learning, Classroom Learning, Gaming Theory, Informal Learning, social learning

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear Julie Dirksen, an instructional designer from Minneapolis, give a presentation on the use of games in learning.  She described games’ effective use of rewards (points, money, etc.), leveling (the strategic increase in difficulty over a period of time) and other psychological techniques and I left wanting to learn more.  I have seen a few uses of gaming in adult education, but nothing overwhelming.  In addition, I’m a novice gamer myself, growing up alongside Nintendo and Sega Genesis, so I sat down at the computer and used some personal directed learning time to explore the prevalence of gaming in education.

I stumbled upon an article about an effort by the Gates Foundation to swing the direction of education standards with a mega-investment in digital learning.  It turns out Gates has invested millions in educational video games, funded the game-centered Quest2Learn…

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Virtual Boot-Camp: Games and Learning with the U.S. Military

Virtual Boot-Camp: Games and Learning with the U.S. Military

by on May 19, 2011 in Gaming Theory

Think game-based training doesn’t have anything to offer your organization in the way of savings?  The Department of Defense disagrees with you.  What’s more, they don’t just mean by saving money or time (although their games are doing that, too).  They mean by saving lives.

The New York Times recently featured a fascinating article by Andrew Martin and Thomas Lin that details the shift in thinking within the military that may soon take it to the forefront of virtual training.  In addition to the use of video games for recruitment purposes, which have been available for some time, the Department of Defense has begun embracing the use of combat simulators, culture-based eLearning, avatars, and even cell phone apps, all designed specifically for military use.  The Army even recently held a contest for soldiers to develop the best military-applicable smartphone app.  The results included apps for bugle calls, a body …

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Can Games Transform the World?

Can Games Transform the World?

by on March 11, 2011 in eLearning, Gaming Theory, Instructional Design, Training Development

Over the last year or so, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to incorporate games into eLearning instructional design projects. What I hadn’t stopped to fully consider is why I would do that. Games seem like a really cool way to add some fun to learning and seem to pose little or no risk to the learning outcome.

Fortunately, the question Why persists, and I am beginning to better understand why (and how) we should incorporate games in learning.

In his recent Wired article (March 2011) “Better Living Through Games,” Clive Thompson describes how editors at UK’s Guardian newspaper created a web app videogame to involve the public in analyzing millions of pounds’ worth of bogus personal expenses filed by British politicians.

The game randomly presented the players – the public – with the questionable receipts. If a receipt looked suspicious, players could write a description and hit an Investigate This! button. To …

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