Monthly Archives: January 2011

Why don’t they teach Instructional Designers this stuff?

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Update: Extra Credits has moved – all the episodes can now be found here:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits

So, I write about games a lot on this blog, but it isn’t really supposed to be an educational gaming blog specifically.

I think the reason it keeps being about game design is because that’s where I keep seeing interesting specific design recommendations.  So much of the stuff written about instructional design recommendations is good, but frequently vague or too general (with a few exceptions like Tom Kuhlman and Cathy Moore), while in the mean time I keep finding really great experience design information in the game design blogs that addresses very specific problems.

The other day, I showed this video about the distinction between choices and calculations to a friend of mine who is a very good and experienced instructional designer (sadly, I can’t get the damn thing to embed, but you can watch it here http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2590-Choice-and-Conflict).  Go watch it NOW (seriously, it’s worth it).

My friend was blown away, and his reaction was more or less “Why didn’t I know this?”  He and I both have written hundreds of learning scenarios over the years, and the distinction of creating choices vs calculations is probably the single most useful piece of design advice that either of us have encountered (and definitely clarifies some of the things I was thinking about in the post Computers are Dumb — Make Smarter e-Learning) .

About a year ago, I did a post called Best e-Learning Blog that isn’t an e-Learning Blog which was about how much I’ve been learning about instructional design from the game design site http://www.gamasutra.com/.

The Extra Credits series of game design tutorials on the escapist site is definitely my nomination for the Best Instructional Design Videos that Aren’t Instructional Design Videos. There are many that are about the gaming industry that aren’t applicable to instructional design, but in addition to the one above, there are some other gems that are also well worth watching:

The Learner’s Journey

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So I just bumped into Amy Jo Kim’s Gamification Workshop 2010 slides (via Sebastian Deterding).  Amy Jo Kim is another of my professional crushes (she’s awesome), and there’s loads of goodness in the slides, but my favorite bit was based on this image about the Player’s Journey:

(Image from Amy Jo Kim’s book ”Community Building on the Web“).

She talks about how each of the different levels has different needs from a gaming system:

  • Novices need onboarding – welcome, goals and process
  • Experts need fresh content, activities and people
  • Masters need exclusive activities, access and unlocks

This is possibly the most useful thing I’ve ever seen about social media for learning. E-Learning tends to be a one-off experience.  Little time or money goes to the progression of the experience because the experience begins and ends in one chunk.

Hoping they don’t hate us

In my experience, most e-Learning also tends to be aimed at novices, and we sort of just hope that experts don’t hate us too much as they are compelled through the material. That’s about as much fun as being the experienced flyer standing in the TSA security line with your laptop out, liquids in a bag, shoes off and carry-on ready to go, trapped behind what appears to be a Grandma who hasn’t flown since 1972 and an entire daycare of small children with all the associated paraphenalia*.

But as (hopefully) we are slowing wrenching ourselves out of that model, and moving towards more integrated learning resource systems, we’ll have to take into account the differing needs of our learners, and how to engage them and meet their needs.

I’m in the process of thinking through ways to steer away from one-size-fits-all-ism for learning applications (yes, scenario-based learning is *great*, but it’s not the answer to all learning needs).  I read another post this morning on why Gagne’s 9 Rules of Instruction are dead, which describes why those rules are entirely inappropriate for just-in-time learning.  The writer is absolutely correct in those circumstances (Gagne’s 9 Events still have their uses for other things, but that’s another blog post).

So what have you seen?

What kinds of resources / systems / models are you aware of that give specific recommendations based on the circumstances or learner charactistics?  I’m on a hunt and would be eternally grateful for anything you could point me to.

A few resources:

  • Simon Bostock reminded me the other day of the Cynefin Framework for looking at different systems.

Here are the complete slides for Amy Jo Kim’s presentation:

*I’m not hating on parents who travel with small children.  I think they are the bravest people I know.