Playing games is, thus, an ideal form of preparation for the workplace of the 21st century, as some forward-thinking firms are already starting to realize." The Economist.How can we make sure that our learners are getting the most of the courses provided without being bored with the same old version of eLearning?
Maybe we should try to place ourselves into the end users’ shoes and try to come up with what we would be interested in seeing.
Nowadays apps are the big thing when it comes to entertainment. There are social apps, travel apps, photo apps, food apps, you name it, it’s there.
But the interesting part of it all is that gaming apps are still the ones preferred by the vast majority of the audience. I believe they’re the ones that entertain the most, so why shouldn’t we use their base to help people learn?
They can help learners acquire new knowledge or abilities in a fun, fast way, they’re highly motivating and they generate real competition of people in a risk-free environment.
Saying it sounds really simple, but the big question mark in everyone’s mind comes up when trying to think about making it real.
In basic perspective, the goal is not to entertain but to use entertainment to reinforce learning; that was our main focus when developing learning games in SHIFT.
So we came up with a list of characteristics which we considered necessary when creating every single one of our games:
- Include realistic but safe environments for the user.
- Demand challenges but also make users satisfied.
- Help develop side knowledge: build a hypothesis, solve problems, and develop strategies.
- Have defined objectives for each problem.
- Entirely interactive.
- Have a suitable content: not very easy or very difficult for the student.
- Invite to think, develop, analyze, summarize, and conclude.
- Be fun: they keep people's interest.
- Meet industry standards such as AICC and SCORM
