What we can learn from games.

Dec 09, 2014

Joshua Roberts
By Joshua Roberts

Hello all!

I've recently launched a blog looking at what we can learn from games as Instructional Designers.

This week I'm focusing on a game called Prison Architect and the design elements we can take from their introduction/tutorial level. These are generally key to giving the player the information and skills needed to play the game hence my initial focus on them.

If anyone takes a look or comments that would be much appreciated. I'll be covering several games on the blog and it would be great to have this wonderful community input.

Hopefully we can all learn something together!

The link to Gaming in Training is here - Gaming in Training Blog.

84 Replies
Joshua Roberts
almost 8 years ago06/09/15 at 7:19 am (UTC)

Been a long time since my last post but I've just released my latest! This time I'm looking at how we can use Turn Based Combat in E-Learning and some of the simple design options we can look at using.

I'm looking to change the way we view traditional multiple choice questions to really bring them to life.

The full post is available here: Gaming in Training

Tristan Hunt
almost 8 years ago06/09/15 at 7:23 am (UTC)

Great post as always! Any chance of a small demo of your mathinator game?

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Phil Mayor
almost 8 years ago07/03/15 at 12:28 pm (UTC)

Hi Joshua  thank you for posting another interesting and engaging post.  I do think these blog posts would be enhanced by showing examples you have built to demonstrate this in action, it would be good to see how you have applied these principles.  They don't need to be full blown courses but some demos I think would really add to these posts.

Tristan Hunt
almost 8 years ago07/05/15 at 11:57 pm (UTC)

Hi Joshua,

Any thoughts on the difference between showing all tasks and marking off the completed ones versus just showing just the incomplete tasks? 

I have used the task list method In a series of recent modules I built where the tasks were ticked off as the learning completed the required tasks. So this has got me thinking about weather just showing unfinished would be a better approach but also how that would be able to be shown cleanly. 

 

 

Joshua Roberts
almost 8 years ago07/28/15 at 9:37 am (UTC)

Hello Tristan,

I would tend to clear them from the users display once they have been completed though. Have you considered creating an area where learners can check completed tasks - usually a journal or quest log in RPGs!

Keep incomplete tasks on the screen to give the learner motivation but if you would like to display completed tasks as well simply minimise the requirements needed for that task and replace them with a strong visual cue it has been completed (usually green ticks suffice!)

In truth you can do both, but games tend to always take away your completed tasks to continue to drive the Zeigarnik effect. The logic is that if the player sees a list of tasks has been completed they may be more likely to stop playing as it's an indicator of time spent/challenges completed rather than "oh, collecting 5 more apples? Sure I've got enough time for that!"

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