I have the honor to “speak” (which is a word I dislike, btw) at the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn conference (Nov 16-18, Las Vegas, NV). My session is Busting the Myths Around Gamification. We’ll discuss questions like these.
Start with Game Thinking in mind. An action-driven, learner-centered systematic approach using engagement and motivation. But ONLY AFTER you have your learner persona and action mapping. You may end up with gamification or game-based learning or neither. We’ll use this framework to explain why.
Either case, you must understand, and by that, I mean experience, game mechanics. So, for the session, I’m planning to bring you some game mechanics. The goal is to make this interactive because talking ABOUT game mechanics is like watching someone eating in a restaurant. Here’s how the experiment looks like (work in progress):
SELECT YOUR TRIBE HERE! YOU WILL INFLUENCE THE SESSION EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT THERE!
Your distant relative, Uncle Tomsday, has passed away and you inherited a hexagon on the main island in the middle of the Great Sea of Myth. You travel on the island and bust or trust myths floating in the area while constantly battling the enemy: Mr. Rob@.
While I control the main character’s actions some of the participants will join through their smartphones or tablets. The main character’s actions depends on the individual participants’ decisions. When we face a myth, each individual participant will decide if it’s a BUST or a TRUST, and how much confidence they have in their answers. The aggregated data determines our fate.
The aggregated data will show on the main screen. For example, the main screen will show how many participants picked BUST vs. TRUST for a myth, and what is the average confidence level. We, as a group, make decisions about where to move and what to bust or trust. However, each individual will receive their own score based on their own choices. Just like it should be in real life 🙂
All this communication is done through xAPI. The clients (participants) will send and receive xAPI statements as they play the game. I will also send and receive statements to and from the LRS (learning record store). Think xAPI as a language, where you can make up statements about the WORLD (who did what, where, with what and how), and the LRS (learning record store) as the library that keeps record of everything said. And just like in a good library, you can ask the librarian all kinds of questions about authors and what being said. Like what items have we all recovered as a group? Who has the best score? Which is the most popular move among participants? What was the most confusing myth?
This is how the game flow looks like in the LRS. Statements should be read from bottom to the top. This is a work in progress, so you see some of the descriptions should be cleaned up but it gives you an idea what’s happening behind the scenes. This is a snapshot of the “WORL&D,” where the main player (Zsolt) and the participants (nick) can communicate. There are treasure/coins that can be picked up, missing items from Uncle Tomsday’s ship (Mythtical Globe). Myths to be busted or trusted. And directions to move.
Here’s a quick rundown of technology being used in the experiment:
Should. We’re discussing the following questions (either through a myth or as a take away item):
A conference is a three day event. A session is an hour. Your attention span is 7 seconds. That’s nothing. I believe no learning event makes a dramatic change in people’s life. It’s the reflection and application that matter. So, my goal is CEMI learning.
More to come about the tribes living in the Great Sea of Myth soon…
Come and see it yourself at DevLearn! Session 310 on Wednesday.