Open All Games are Educational — I'll Prove It With Space Invaders

All Games are Educational — I'll Prove It With Space Invaders

Are all Games Educational?

Are games a guilty pleasure or an unparalleled learning experience?

The answer to this question may allow us to view games in a different light.

Take, for example, Space Invaders— one of the original and most iconic games ever made. A very basic game in comparison to what’s available today.

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Open How To Design a Board Game & 5 Challenges to Overcome

How To Design a Board Game & 5 Challenges to Overcome

Everyone should try designing a card game or board game — it's fun and it's all upside, no downside.

I've designed a number of board games and card games over the years. Collectively these are sometimes called tabletop games.

The most successful board game in history is often considered to be Monopoly — most likely because it's been around forever. I don't love Monopoly (more on this below). In terms of tabletop games in general, Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, and likely some card games may top the list as most popular of all time.

Designing Board Games

Board games are fun to design and play and c

Open Using Games for Education

Games designed for education are quite different than games designed for entertainment.

I have previously described how all games are educational —  It doesn’t matter if we are shooting aliens, flinging angry birds, or leading a guild into battle, our brains are wired to learn.

Let's take a closer look at the benefits provided by games designed for entertainment and the challenges they pose for educators who want to use them.

WOW

First, consider the skills required by a person who is leading a guild into battle in World of Warcraft (WOW)— a massively multiplayer online role playing game with a fantasy-science fiction theme.

<img src = "https://books.playgoventure.com/u/1658578738680-CT

Open Learning Styles — Debunked?

You have probably heard this before.

That we learn best based on our preferred learning style:

• Visual

• Auditory

• Reading & Writing

• Kinesthetic

Multiple intelligences are also widely discussed:

• Spatial

• Musical

• Naturalist

• Linguistic

• Interpersonal

• Intrapersonal

• Bodily-Kinesthetic

• Logical-Mathematical

But are these concepts true and accurate?

Not quite.

It seems that the concept of learning styles has become a neuromyth — a widely held belief of the results of brain research that may not be true.

Current thinking suggests that these original theories were inaccurate or have been misunderstood— or both. And they are sometimes being misrepresented even by those who have attempte

Open 1 Cool Thing About Inflation — And How To Teach Students

Here's one of the benefits of high inflation — cool money bills like the one below. I think this was real back in 2008.

Want to teach students about inflation?

Play an investment simulation and let them experience it as investors.

Interest rates go up. Current bond prices drop. New bond issues have higher yields. Stocks may fall (or not). Mutual funds diversify the risk (or dilute the upside). Gold may serve as a hedge (or not). Real estate is in flux.

That's an example of saying a lot without actually saying anything.

But one thing is for sure — talking about all these concepts to students goes in one ear and out the other.

Allowing students to invest money, even if it's virtual, changes the game.

Re

Open Is Your VR Metaverse Experience On Time?

Time — this is one of the most important considerations when designing educational experiences.

And a particular challenge for the VR metaverse.

Why?

Because instructors have a limited amount of time to achieve specific learning outcomes for each course that they teach.

And, with courses that have synchronous delivery (live online or in person), each session is often less than one hour.

Instructional designers must consider how much time their learning experience will take, and how it can be segmented into multiple short sessions when necessary.

Students may spend time on lectures, textbooks, videos, lessons, activities, games, simulations, virtual reality, quizzes, and more.

If one learning experience requires too much time, many instructors will not be able to fit it into their curricula, otherwise they risk not being able to achieve all the required e

Open Rote Learning Builds Your Brain's Muscle Memory

Rote Learning is a memorization technique based on repetition. Most of us have used it to learn and remember the alphabet or our math multiplication tables.

Rote learning is often considered to be a bad way to learn. It seems inefficient and uninspiring.

But, just like any tool in a toolbox, it can be very powerful when used strategically.

Muscle Memory

In sports there's a concept called "muscle memory."

Through practice, athletes repeat a physical movement thousands of times so that the movement becomes consistent.

This muscle memory helps a golfer swing a club with better accuracy, a basketball player sink a higher percentage of shots, and a hockey player skate more efficiently.

We use our muscle memory every day to walk across the room, climb stairs, and do many physical motions we don't have to think about.

For athletes, muscle memory do

Open Converting a Book Into Microlearning Modules

The Future is Micro

The Internet is conditioning us to want our content in short micro-doses instead of longer experiences.

We want to learn exactly what we need to know when we need it. This is sometimes called "just in time" learning versus the conventional approach of learning a bunch of stuff in advance "just in case" we may need it.

We already know that the old-school "just in case" approach doesn't work well, because we forget everything by the time we actually need it.

So, how can instructional designers repurpose long-form content into just-in-time learning?

There are a variety of ways to do this, and I'm going to illustrate one specific way I repurposed a business book into microlearning modules used to supplement a business simulation.

Perhaps this may help give you some ideas on how you can apply microlearning in your work.

F

Open A Day In the Life of an Educational Game Designer | Podcast

Rob Alvarez Bucholska has interviewed over 200 gamification gurus, experts and practitioners of education on his Professor Game Podcast.

I'm pleased to be the guest of episode 251, where I answer the questions listed below — timestamps included for your convenience.

What a regular day with me looks like — 00:00:44

Busy. And how I micro-read throughout the day.

The story of my favorite failure — 00:04:55

Hint — i

Open The First 5 Things I Do When Designing An Educational Experience

I've created hundreds of educational resources used by millions of people around the world — books, videos, activities, board games, card games, mobile apps, video games, software simulations, massively multiplayer worlds, and more.

Regardless of what I'm designing, the process always starts the same way.

Here are the first 5 things I do. Perhaps this may help with your work.

1️⃣ Change in Behavior

I identify the change in behavior I want to trigger in the learner. This can be broken down by high-level learning outcomes identifying specific knowledge and skills.

2️⃣ Learner Profile

I consider the profile of the target learner — location, language, age, background, prerequisite knowledge and skills, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to learn, etc. And the level of human facilitation available to deliver the experience.

3️⃣ Time

I consider the time av

Open How To Design An Experiential-Learning Activity, Game, or Simulation

What should the learner do?

That is the key question I ask when designing an experiential learning activity, game, or simulation.

Notice the "do".

This is different than when designing a textbook, video, or page-turn elearning. With these types of conventional learning resources, the question being asked is this:

What should the learner know?

"Know" is very different than "do".

"Know" leads us to create a list of content items to be covered in the learning. The content is then created and presented in its required form (book, video, elearning, etc). Some type of assessment, like a quiz or basic activity, may also be included to confirm that the learner has reviewed the material.

It's all basically a list of things to know. Experiential learning is different.

Learning By Doing

Experiential learning is oft

Open How to Design a Narrative Story For Experiential Learning

I frequently write about experiential learning and how to use this methodology effectively. I'm going to share my design thinking behind a very basic narrative story-based activity.

One of the challenges with designing experiential learning is that it's much more difficult to create than conventional learning. It requires much more effort, skill, and budget — perhaps 10 to 100 times more.

This means that it's not always feasible to deliver learning content in this way. That's where text, graphics, and video can be used effectively. Not as the main activity in the learning experience, but as subactivities or supplemental resources.

When I have a lot of content I need to deliver as supplemental resources, my current preference is to use one of these methods:

• Microlearning — Short video, followed by summary text for reflection, followed by a short activity or

Open Designing a Digital Marketing Simulation

I'm designing a digital marketing simulation — I'm going to share what inspired the idea, the instructional-design thinking I'm applying, and the reasons why.

I hope you may find this helpful in your work.

Update Dec 2022: The program described in this article is now available at GoVenture.net/dm

Experiential Learning

More specifically, I'm designing an experiential learning activity that teaches digital marketing using:

1. Narrative story

2. Microlearning

3. Simulation

These are three design methods I have written about in detail in previous issues of this newsletter. Now, I'm going to illustrate how they can all be integrated together.

Why Digital Marketing?

I'm develo