eLearning Manifesto - 20 Supporting Principles

The Key to Success?

"We believe that learning technology offers the possibility for creating uniquely valuable learning experiences.

We also believe, with a sense of sadness and profound frustration, that most elearning fails to live up to its promise.

We further believe that current trends evoke a future of only negligible improvement in elearning design—unless something radical is done to bend the curve."

This is the preamble to the eLearning Manifesto (http://elearningmanifesto.org/) put together by Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, Clark Quinn and Will Thalheimer. 

They set out 20 supporting principles:

• Do Not Assume that Learning is the Solution
• Do Not Assume that eLearning is the Answer
• Tie Learning to Performance Goals
• Target Improved Performance
• Provide Realistic Practice
• Enlist Authentic Contexts
• Provide Guidance and Feedback
• Provide Realistic Consequences
• Adapt to Learner Needs
• Motivate Meaningful Involvement
• Aim for Long-term Impact
• Use Interactivity to Prompt Deep Engagement
• Provide Support for Post-Training Follow-Through
• Diagnose Root Causes
• Use Performance Support
• Measure Effectiveness
• Iterate in Design, Development, and Deployment
• Support Performance Preparation
• Support Learner Understanding with Conceptual Models
• Use Rich Examples and Counterexamples
• Enable Learners to Learn from Mistakes
• Respect Learners

I agree with the above principles as they, in part, overlap with my games based learning manifesto (http://www.games-based-learning.com/2013/10/a-games-based-learning-manifesto-10_11.html). They also have a venn-like link to a blog I wrote regarding Marrying up to Situated Learning Theory  (http://www.games-based-learning.com/2012/10/marrying-up-to-theory.html)

Here is a video where the four announced their manifesto:

Oh and for balance, it is worth not everyone appreciates the top down approach to defining a manifesto. Have read of Donald Clark Plan B  (http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.in/2014/03/gang-of-four-proclaim-serious-elearning.html) . And here is another cutting and funny parody (http://www.eqsim.com/blog/?p=413) from EqSim Ruminations. The latter makes some interesting generalised criticisms of e-Learning industry, which are valid in their own way and is probably the reason I have focused most of my efforts on learning simulation for the last decade. 

In conclusion, I think well designed e-Learning and simulations/games both have their place BUT what is key is making sure that they are learner focused and they deliver against the required needs and outcomes. And not lets crow bar in an ill-fitting solution that is simply about cutting costs.

Please follow @paulladley on Twitter, games-ED on Pinterest and like games-ED’s Facebook and Google+ pages for blog updates and interesting games based learning findings.

What Can g-Learning Designers Learn from Commercial Games?

First of all, if you don’t know what g-Learning is, have a look at our post “g-Learning: Is this the learning term we have been looking for?”.  Then have a look at the infographic courtesy of topwebdesignschools.org and our insight below.


Source: TopCollegesOnline.org

So, what can we learn from the above infographic?  Does it contain any useful information for g-Learning designers?  We think so.  There are some useful reassurances about perceptions of games and some interesting demographic insight (average game player is 30 years of age).  However, we think that g-Learning designers should take note to the types of games and gameplay that feature on this list as the ‘top’ games.  The top games on the list can be split into several broad genres:

• Adventure (e.g. Assassin’s Creed, Halo)
• Sport (e.g. FIFA, Madden NFL)
• Strategy (e.g. Age of Empires, The Sims)
• Party (e.g. Just Dance, Guitar Hero)

This is useful in itself, as g-Learning designers could design their games around these genres/styles.  However, what interests me, is how most of these games are famously played cooperatively.  Obviously you can play most of them solo, people may only ever play them solo and some of them can only really be played solo (e.g. The Sims).  However, by and large, the top games seem to be the ones which allow cooperation and collaboration.

This is interesting, as it suggests yet again that gamers aren’t all anti-social loners and that this view of gaming is seriously outdated (see our article, “Gamer Myths: Infographic and 10 Facts").  However, for g-Learning designers, it suggests that perhaps we should be creating more collaborative learning games.  Perhaps these are the most enjoyable or engaging.  Click here for a case study of one of our collaborative learning games, to see how we do it.  Interestingly, our market for sim-uni is also adults.  Click here to see our “Adult Games Based Learning and sim-uni” post.

Please follow @paulladley on Twitter, games-ED on Pinterest and like games-ED’sFacebook and Google+ pages for blog updates and interesting games based learning findings.

Women and Game Design

This week, we thought we'd share an infographic with you.  One of our fans from webdesigndegreecenter.org alerted us to it.  Hopefully it will be inspirational for some of our readers (and particularly young women, like myself).  If you would like to learn more about easy ways to get into
programming, click here or click here for more about designing a learning simulation.


Source: WebDesignDegreeCenter.org

Please follow @paulladley on Twitter, games-ED on Pinterest and like games-ED’sFacebook and Google+ pages for blog updates and interesting games based learning findings.

10 Resources on Creating your Own Learning Game

Image Courtesy of Ian Dick on Flickr.

I hope you all enjoyed our previous post (our very own infographic: “Quick Guide to Developing a Learning Simulation”).  I thought I’d follow up this week by sharing with you a list of resources to help you further in designing and developing your own learning game.  The resources cover cognitive flow, feedback loops, making games engaging, common usability testing mistakes and so on.  The list is obviously not exhaustive and some of the more academic papers may warrant something closer to ‘skim reading’, but these are just some of the best and most useful articles, papers etc. that I have found.  The first one is particularly interesting and definitely worth a read.

1. Cognitive Flow: The Psychology of Great Game Design 
2. Improving The Way We Design Games for Learning by Examining How Popular Video Games Teach 
3. Learning Game Design Series, Part 1: Play and Evaluate Games 
4. Creating Flow, Motivation, & Fun in Learning Games 
5. Designing Learning Games That Don’t Suck 
6. Designing Mobile Games For Engagement and Learning 
7. Games For Learning 
8. ‘Narrative’ in Serious or Learning Game Design Research 
9. Feedback Loops in Games and Learning 
10. Five Common Mistakes in Game Usability Testing and How to Avoid Them 

And for good measure, you might want to have a read of our post “Three ‘Games Based Learning’ Development Tools Explored”, if you are thinking about developing your own learning game.

Please follow @paulladley on Twitter, games-ED on Pinterest and like games-ED’s Facebook and Google+ pages for blog updates and interesting games based learning findings.

Quick Guide to Developing a Learning Simulation

It's been a long time coming, but as promised, here is our very own infographic.  It is a quick guide to the process of developing a learning simulation.  Feel free to use our infographic, but please credit us and direct people back to us if possible because they might be interested in our other posts.  Click image for larger PDF version.  Enjoy and let us know what you think in the comments section!  

Gamification in Education

Part 3 of a Blog Series

1. Gamification of Life.
2. Behavioural Economics and Education.
3. Gamification in Education.
4. Gamification and Behavioural Change.

Overview
Building on a previous blog (Behavioural Economics and Education) that considered education from a behavioural economic view point, this blog looks at gamification design in order to shift behaviours. The argument is focused around B J Fogg’s behavioural model.

Games based learning can have a direct impact on performance in terms of subject understanding. I have seen this directly with games-ED products and I have blogged about the “proof of pudding” on a couple of occasions – Proof of the Pudding and Proof of the Pudding Part 2.

In addition, by providing virtual worlds, games based learning such as simulations improve personal, learning and thinking skills and can also be used to tackle specific behaviours.  So how do we design games and game-like interventions to modify behaviours? And what behaviours do we want to change?

Gamification Design and B J Fogg’s Behaviour Model
If we want to achieve behavioural change then we need to design accordingly. B J Fogg’s Behaviour Model provides a method of understanding how we can change behaviour and specifically how we can design to increase the chance of achieving a likely outcome. The model states that an individual needs to be motivated, have ability and be triggered into action.

The following section considers the three aspects (motivation, ability and triggers) in turn and highlights the design impacts for gamification in education.

Motivation
Fogg’s model puts forward three core motivators (sensation, anticipation and social cohesion) each with two sides.

• Sensation: pleasure/pain
• Games and gamification offer a huge potential to make learning fun and effect behavioural change without the preaching.
• They can be used as a replacement for an existing curriculum activity or they can be used to encourage activity. In the latter the game acts as treat.
• Anticipation: hope/fear 
• Game’s competitive elements encourage the players (learners) to get to the end of the activity. This desire to win is probably more crucial than the fun element. In a game, players (learners) will endure frustration and challenges that in other situations would cause them to give up. This is incredibly important as behavioural change is typically something that will need to be worked at.
• Social Cohesion: acceptance/rejection
• Different types of games allow different students to succeed. A few years back I took a class in school, the young lad who got the highest score got an amazing reaction from his classmates. The teacher told me later that she had never seen him really engaged before and he certainly hadn’t succeeded at anything.
• At games-ED, our games are simulations of real world situations and are collaborative in nature.  Groups build their understanding of the game, the wider world and each other.

Ability (Simplicity)
As Fogg states, there are two paths to increasing ability. You can train people, giving them more skills (more ability) or you make the task simpler. Simplicity is the least risky option and is thus the most effective way to change behaviours.

Fogg outlines 6 Factors affecting simplicity: Time; Money; Physical effort; Brain Cycles (mental effort); Social Deviance (going against the norm); and Non-Routine (breaking habits). And he notes that simplicity is a function of your scarcest resource at that moment.

Questions for designers:

• Time: How much time have teachers got to learn products and what slack is there in the existing curriculum?
• Money: How much do the games costs including hidden costs such as potentially buying kit?
• Physical effort: Will the games based learning session require decamping to the IT suite?
• Brain Cycles: Can teachers and students justify the mental effort required?  
• Social Deviance: games based learning is currently in its early adopter phase. By nature early adopters don’t mind going against the norm (indeed they get a kick out of being the first). But, to be successful games based learning needs to recruit the majority. How can gamification in education be more widely marketed?
• Non-Routine: Isn’t it just easier for teachers to do what they have always done?

I have covered the answers to many of these questions in a previous blog (Six Key Principles of Games Based Learning), so I won’t repeat them here. But what is worth noting is the seeming contradiction between the need for simplicity AND complexity. Specifically, complexity generates a richness to the gaming experience and provides engagement and challenge yet simplicity is key to usage in the classroom.  As a designer, I have squared this circle by ensuring that the rules and interface are simple. As such, the game is quick to get into but the model and gameplay strategies are designed to be complex enough to engage and challenge within educational timeframes (hours not months). Developers, who simply reuse entertainment games, beware.

Triggers
Without a Trigger, the target behaviour will not happen. By trigger, Fogg means: cue, prompt, call to action, request, and so on.

He states there are three types of triggers (facilitator, spark and signal) which can be judged in terms of both motivation and ability requirements:

• Facilitator (high motivation and low ability) such as trainer / walkthrough.
• Within the context of education the teacher has typically been responsible for triggering activity and behavioural change. Gamification can become another tool.
• Spark (high motivation and high ability) such as inspiration from a friend.
• Using devices such as league tables and ideas from social networking, it could be possible to inspire learners into activity and ultimately behavioural change.
• Signal (low motivation and high ability) – an instruction to act.
• Providing the gamification intervention has been well designed (it is simple), then it might be possible to make actions autonomous. This maybe a medium term goal.

In reality, a combination of all three triggers is likely to be required, dependent on the complexity of the intervention and the magnitude of the behavioural change.

And the story continues…
My next blog (Gamification and Behavioural Change) considers some ideas for nudging students (and teachers).

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Further Reading
New Economics Foundation – Behavioural Economics
Dan Ariely (2008), Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions,
Dan Ariely (2010), The Upside of Irrationality
B J Fogg, Behaviour Model
Jack Schofield, PC-PRO (2011) - The Gamification of Life
Richard H. Thaler and Sendhil Mullainathan, Library of Economics and Liberty, Behavioural Economics
Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein (2008),  Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Sugata Mitra – Four Implications for Games Based Learning

I recently listened to a talk by Sugata Mitra at the Education Technology Conference in Leeds.  I am sure you have all come across Sugata Mitra – he is widely known for his Hole in the Wall experiments carried out in India, which the inspired Vikas Swarup to write his debut novel Q & A, which later became the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

By the way Sugata’s talk followed a similar format to one given at TED (Ideas worth Spreading) – Child-driven education, which you can see below.

When listening to Sugata , I was struck by four implications for games based learning: 


1. Generating Interest: Sugata discussed his work with Arthur C. Clarke, who pointed out that “if there is interest, then education happens.” Games based learning can generate a lot of interest. And a lot has been written about games based learning and its ability to motivate and engage learners. I won’t repeat those points here, but what I will say is that games can suffer from being too interesting. Specifically, the design of the game needs to support the learning process – see blog post “Six Key Principles of Collaborative Games Based Learning”.

2. The role of the teacher: Again, quoting Arthur C. Clarke Sugata said that “A teacher that can be replaced by a machine; should be.” It is worth noting that Sugata doesn’t believe that teachers can be replaced (well not yet), but he does believe that teachers shouldn’t be the purveyors of mere information. He believes that is what Google is for. Instead, they should inspire and help pupils analyse what they have found. Teachers can provide scaffolding and expertise, this particularly true in collaborative games based learning products such as games-ED. As game decisions are input into the game (at a class level) the teacher can ask questions such as, “Why did you buy that?” Game reports can be analysed by the students and the teacher – “What worked, what didn’t and how are we going to improve things this round?”

3. The method of the grandmother: Inspiration can come from unusual quarters. Both in experiments in India and Gateshead, Sugata discovered that students could achieve dramatic results (20% increase in test scores) just by being encouraged by an adult – “wow that looks good can you show me again”.  Again, this isn’t to say that teachers aren’t required, but it shows how important inspiration is in the education process. Games based learning can motivate learners by presenting both an interesting narrative and a competitive challenge. The role of the teacher, as previously stated, is to provide scaffolding and expertise, but they should also simply nudge the players along rather like a grandmother. By moving away from rigid traditional instructional method, teachers allow the students to work together to construct their understanding. See blog “Learn by Doing”.

4. The power of collaboration: Key to Sugata’s learning ideas is the power of collaboration. In his experiments, he encourages the students to work in groups of four with one computer. He believes that the key to delivering improved education outcomes is generating conversations. I completely agree and as I written previously in a blog titled “The Art of Conversation”, collaborative games based learning anchors conversations and enables students to learn complex subjects quickly.

Innovate my School - Games Based Learning Expert.

Just written an article for Innovate my School. I have been asked to be one of their industry experts, not surprisingly in games based learning. Innovate my School's Expert Voice section can be found at http://www.innovatemyschool.com/industry-expert-articles.html.

My first article compares purpose built games based learning to commercial entertainment games in terms of their use in the classroom. The comparison is done using the five factors: design, delivery, technology & support, outcomes and cost. The five factors are drawn from my Games Based Learning and Analysis Tool, which I briefly blogged about in Getting Started with Games Based Learning. The tool can can be found on the games-ED website along with other musings on games based learning theory.

The full Innovate my School article can be found at http://www.innovatemyschool.com/industry-expert-articles/item/40-purpose-built-education-games-vs-commercial-entertainment-games.html

Anyway, my next article will be written for my blog and it is going to focus on games based learning and neuroscience - well sort of.

Best of Both Worlds

I recently wrote an article on games based learning for Headteacher Update.

The article looks at the debate around games based learning and considers what educators and developers need to think about to when using / creating games based learning products.

Anyways, before I blog a spoiler, why don't you have gander a page 36 of the digital edition of Headteacher Update.

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Edit: Headteacher Update have published a web page version of my games based learning article.

Developing Games with Young People: LAP Recycling Game

Introduction
Following on from a previous blog post (Proof of the Pudding) where I wrote about using games based learning in the classroom, I thought I would share some experience of developing games with young people. I have been fortunate to have led on two such projects / workshops:

• Local Area Partnership for Creative Learning: Recycling Game (described below).
• Climate Crew (described in this blog post).

While it is worth noting that the trainers from games-ED (pixelfountain) have years of designing and developing games plus are experienced workshop facilitators, this workshop could be replicated without technical know-how.

Over the next couple of weeks we will upload the resources necessary to run these lessons. The free resource section can be accessed by signing up to our news and blog update via mailchimp.

LAP Recycling Game - Description

Opening presentation and quiz

The workshop was run as part of the St. Helens Local Area Partnership Climate Change Project. The workshop was held on the 25th January 2011 and began the process of designing a recycling game. The workshop was facilitated by Paul Ladley (games-ED) and officers from St.Helens Council. The young people came from 6 primary schools in St. Helens, Merseyside UK and were aged 7 to 11.

The workshop was split into three parts:

1. An opening presentation and quiz.
2. Each school generated an initial idea.
3. Two ideas were chosen and more detail was added to them.  
• Two teams worked in three groups to look at game play, graphics for the characters, scenes and menus and finally ideas to keep up the game interesting.

LAP Recycling Game - Challenges
Realism: The larger project was young people led. This meant that the designs had to be what they wanted, even if this meant making them happen would be difficult. It was felt that a sense of realism had to be injected into the designs so young people could design with their eyes wide open. Therefore, the presentation with embedded quiz included a slide on the golden rules of design:

• Need - Think about what the player wants (educational, fun, challenge and information).
• Platform - What gaming device should the game work on (internet, console, computer or mobile phone)?
• Money - Consider the cost of developing the game.
• Time - How much time will the game take to develop?

Voting: As expected, when it came to the final two, the groups tended to vote for their own design.

LAP Recycling Game - Outputs and Outcomes
The five game ideas:

1. Polluto – Polluto and his army are trying to stop you from making the world a better place. You only have a certain amount of time in each level. Can you solve the problems and find the green portal in time?
2. Walk around the World – Your character visits different parts of the world to solve environmental problems. As you try to solve problems such as removing litter, people create more!
3. Eco Factory – This is a game of mini games such as eco Pac Man. When you successfully complete a mini game, you earn part of an eco factory. When your factory is complete it will create eco products such as recycled pencils.
4. Eco Busters – You move through rooms in houses with your pet Munchie solving eco problems. As you and Munch (who can eat rubbish) solve problems you earn credits that enable you to buy more items such as another Munchie.
5. Eco Party Planning – Every party creates a mess! But if you can clear up and recycle everything properly you earn money. With the extra money your next party can be even better, but if you don’t earn money then your next party is going to be rubbish.

Presenting the game design to the group

The initial winners were Polluto and Eco Busters. The latter became the ultimate winner when other schools who had not been able to attend voted.

The children enjoyed the session, learned a lot and worked well right through to the end.

Two technical specifications for the games were generated and can be found in the full report – see the Slideshare widget in the sidebar of this blog or visit http://www.games-ed.co.uk/games-design-workshop.html

Ultimately, to ensure that the game is developed the following will need to happen:

• Money to develop the game will need to be found.
• An individual / design team will need to create a more robust design for a developer to work with. This will make the development costs cheaper, but will mainly ensure the ideas from the workshop are not lost in translation. 

Developing Games with Young People: Climate Crew

Introduction
Following on from a previous blog post (Proof of the Pudding) where I wrote about using games based learning in the classroom, I thought I would share some experience of developing games with young people. I have been fortunate to have led on two such projects / workshops:

• Climate Crew (described below).
• Local Area Partnership for Creative Learning: Recycling Game (described in this blog post).

Avatar design

While it is worth noting that the trainers from games-ED (pixelfountain) have years of designing and developing games plus are experienced workshop facilitators, some of the ideas from these projects could be replicated without technical know-how, specifically:

• Logo theory, design and creation.
• Computer Games Design.

Over the next couple of weeks we will upload the resources necessary to run these lessons. The free resource section can be accessed by signing up to our news and blog update via mailchimp.

Climate Crew - Description

The project was made of over 40 young people from 2 schools and a Girl Guides group from St.Helens, Merseyside UK. The young people were aged between 14 and 18.

The young people led the project and they all agreed on all aspects of the content of the workshops and skills they were to learn. The project ran three types of media skills workshops that a dual purpose; to provide media skills for the young people and to feed into a design of a game.

Each workshop was held over the course of the morning with additional one to one work in the afternoons for Mill Green pupils. The workshops were repeated in the evenings with the Guides with some changes to expand on the work done by the schools.

• Workshop 1 - Creative Skills:
• Theory of logo design > design roughs on paper > designs crated in a vector drawing package.
• The guides developed a flier based on the logo.
• Workshop 2 - Computer Games Design:
• The Schools created initial designs: premise > story > game-play and Easter eggs (hidden features in the game).
• The Guides drew up the screen designs on huge sheets of paper.
• Workshop 3 - Computer Games Build (done using Adobe Flash):
• Game inner working and artificial intelligence 
• Interface, animation and navigation coding
• Avatar design and coding
• Real world interaction 
• Workshop 4 – Testing

Climate Crew - Challenges 

The young people in this project included those with learning disabilities and also young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. To ensure that the young people with learning difficulties could be involved as much as possible we ran follow-on session just for them – A tablet PC came to the fore in these sessions. 

Even though the project ran over a number of weeks and multiple sessions, there still wasn’t enough time to teach the young people the varied skills they would need to design and develop a game. The approach we took was to let the young experience the spectrum of roles in a games company, rather than trying to make them expert in any one area. . The game was completed by the facilitators and can be found at http://www.games-ed.co.uk/bespoke.html.

Climate Crew - Outcomes

Flier design

The young people learned a lot of skills through designing, leading and implementing the project and through the interactive workshops including creative marketing and facilitation, project management, community leadership, computer game design and development.

Before and after the workshops the young people were asked to judge their skills in key areas, the data is shown below.  The data shows that the young people gained skills in design and computer game development as well as communication skills. The workshops were ranked very highly by the young people, particularly the final workshop on game development where they saw all their previous work slot together as they built the game.

Workshop 1

• 47% improvement in understanding the use of logos for communicating ideas.
• 57% improvement in understanding climate change.
• 62% improvement of skills in logo design.
• 51% improvement of skills in graphic design (taking an idea to completed product).
• 31% improvement of skills in using a computer art/design package.
• 23% improvement in communication skills for the verbal presentation of ideas. 

They also ranked the workshop in four different areas:

• Skills Learnt = 7.6 out of 10.
• Enjoyment = 8 out of 10.
• Presenters  = 8.4 out of 10.
• Interacting with others = 8.4 out of 10.

The key learning messages they will take away include computer drawing skills, the benefit of sharing ideas and team work and taking an idea and developing it into a product.

“Computer drawing skills.”

“Sharing ideas is better than keeping it to yourself.”

“To work as a team and it will turn out good.”

“Taking ideas to full scale.”

Workshop 2

• 33 % improvement in understanding the use of games for learning and communication.
• 48% improvement in understanding games design.
• 46% improvement of skills in games design.
• 30% improvement in communication skills in the verbal presentation of ideas.

• Skills Learnt = 7.2 out of 10.
• Enjoyment = 7.2 out of 10. 
• Presenters  = 8 out of 10.
• Interacting with others = 8.4 out of 10.

The key messages the young people will take away include that all ideas are valuable, everyone can have a say, how to lower your carbon footprint and they key principles of game design.

“No idea is a bad one.”

“Bigger understanding of designing games.”

“That we should take our time to think of ideas instead of rushing.”

“That when designing a game it has to be simple but catchy.”

“How to lower my carbon footprint.”

Workshop 3:

• 25% improvement of their understanding the use of games for learning and communication.
• 58% improvement in their understanding of games development.
• 58% improvement of their skills in games development.
• 31% improvement of their communication skills in the verbal presentation of ideas.

• Skills learnt = 8 out of 10.
• Enjoyment = 8.8 out of 10.
• Presenters = 9.4 out of 10.
• Interacting with others = 8.8 out of 10.

When asked what they most liked about the workshop all of the students said the learning of the actual skills:

“Learning coding and algorithms.”

“We could do a lot of different aspects of game designing.”

“The animation of some objects.”

Climate Crew - Thoughts of the teachers/group leaders

Coding of the algorithm!

St. Aelreds Catholic Technology College:

“[I liked] when the pupils finally realised that they were in control.”

“Pupils enjoyed the experience, facilitators were fantastic with all pupils and were very patient with them. [The] highlight was last session.”

Mill Green:

 “The students enjoyed working at St Aelreds school, it was a fantastic opportunity for them to work as part of a team with mainstream students. A fantastic idea for our students to have some individual input in the afternoon session back a Mill Green.”

St. Lukes Guides:

 “Having sufficient leaders where the girls could work in individual peer groups worked well. This meant that we could get a good perspective from all ages ranging from 13 to 18. The final testing of the game was excellent – the girls had their own individual computer rather than sharing one between a group.”

10 Tips on Getting Buy-in for Games Based Learning

I was recently involved in a Linked-in discussion, debating how "How do you position games for learning within your organization?" I thought I would share my thoughts on my new blog. So here goes...

My ten tips:

1. What's in a name: We don't simply call them games, we use the term learning simulations or games based learning for our products. This was especially true in the early days (10 years ago), when we were scared to mention the "G" word. In recent years, though, we have started using serious games, but we still prefer learning simulations for the adult learning and games based learning for education.
2. An obvious point, but, selling gets easy over time as you have examples to show and you can reference sell using previous (happy) clients. Also, the more you sell / deliver, the more you gain confidence, and that shows in you pitch / delivery. Until then it’s a case of fake it till you make it.
3. Sell and do projects with the public sector. They were more innovative and had more cash. Note: this tip is somewhat useless these days :( But, it is worth noting, as it really can be thought of as, "you can only sell to someone who wants to buy".
4. Make the games authentic (think situated learning, which could well be my next blog). We simulate partnership working, budgeting and delivering outcomes. We set these in a resource management game.
5. Leading on from authenticity, use games appropriately. If a game is more than an ice-breaker then it should be fit for purpose. Specifically, we wouldn’t simulate wiring a plug (as it can be simply explained with a video / animation) but do simulate sustainable communities, because it can’t be explained in a linear fashion.
6. Complexity: If like ours your products are built around a complex algorithm, then the reaction from clients and potential users is more likely to be wow that’s impressive rather than the learning looking trivial.
7. Have a score. A key element to motivation is having a score. This works in delivery as the team wants to beat the other department / authority / company. And it works in selling as the client wants to benchmark themselves.
8. Make the games visual: A key element to motivation is having nice graphics - a town that improves and progress represented in visual reports. Again, though, they need to be fit for purpose rather than gimmicky. The visuals also provide a quick hook in a sales demo.
9. Sales and marketing: Get in front of people or put a demo on a website. Sell the benefits not the features. Get people to come to one of your workshops – seeing is believing. As stated, if possible, hook people in with a score, or find another hook.
10. Don't give up.

Hope that helps. Would you add anything else?