Headmastery

Monday’s post, on computer games and learning, got me thinking; how would I design a game to teach people the things I've been talking about in my blog? I think something that can't be assumed is a love of computer games, or even a familiarity with them. A game would need to be simple and intuitive enough for anyone in the target audience to pick it up. The second issue would be trying to create a game that would make the person want to play it. I found myself looking at casual games for two reasons: 1) Casual games are aimed at appealing to a wide audience, including people who don't usually play games. 2) Many casual games contain ‘compulsive gameplay’ elements that keep people coming back for more.

I can think of a few examples off the top of my head: Farmville, Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies, and for those who can appreciate the classics we have Tetris, Solitaire, and Minesweeper. I’m pretty sure that if you’ve ever owned a computer (which, considering you’re reading my blog, I think I can safely assume you have) you will have played at least one of these games. In fact, considering that Farmville’s Facebook page currently shows around 57 million active users, I’d feel fairly confident in saying that if you don’t play the game yourself, you at least know someone who does. Looking at the page now I can see there are 10 people on my own friend list who play Farmville, and I will be un-friending them as soon as I finish writing this post. I think it would be fair to say that casual games might solve the two issues I mentioned in the first paragraph.

So, how do we recreate the appeal of a good casual game whilst providing a useful learning experience? That’s the multimillion dollar question. Zynga (developers of Farmville) claim the secret to their success is metrics, where the game developer analyses a user’s interactions with a game to decide what improvements to make. This would be a useful fringe benefit of using fully interactive learning software, as it would give teachers the opportunity to asses where the software was more or less successful. Zynga also build their games on a three pillar system of -play, express and invest- meaning that the user first plays the game,  then express themselves through the content, and ultimately feel committed to the game due to the time they have already invested. I should remind you at this point that we’re looking to create useful games that will teach new ideas and processes, not a highly addictive time sink, so we’ll be taking all this information and formulating our own methods. The first of these three pillars is the easiest for us because we don't have to encourage the person to play the game initially, as they should understand that it is relevant to their job, and designed to help them improve their performance. The third pillar can be pretty much ignored since we are not looking to make the user committed to the training software, just the processes it teaches. Our problem then, is finding how to keep a person engaged in the learning experience.

Perhaps the most important element required to keep a person's interest in a game or activity is the reward element. The reason for people doing anything can often be reduced to the rewards gained from doing that action. Generally, we go to work because we get paid or because we get pleasure from our job. There are monetary rewards; and there are the emotional or (at the risk of sounding all new age here) spiritual rewards. At this point, I’m reminded of a talk by Dan Pink at the RSA which can be heard here, accompanied by pretty illustrations. This led me to look at another talk by Dan, from TED, in which he elaborates on these ideas. In his talk, Dan mentions studies that have been carried out to assess the effect of monetary rewards on performance. The experiments showed that, by and large, monetary rewards had either no effect on performance, or impacted performance negatively. These are not new experiments or new findings, but one interesting aspect of this was the actual effect monetary rewards had. As Dan puts it, the rewards had the effect of focusing subjects on a task which, in our case, would be a desirable effect. As he states in his TED talk: When there are a clear set of rules and a clear outcome, incentives work exactly as they're supposed to. So in this instance we can assume that offering a greater reward for a greater performance will increase performance. If monkey climbs tree to get a coconut, monkey gets banana. In the context of a game you could compare this somewhat to what Farmville does. It is about following the rules and going through the motions to gain credits and then using those credits to improve your farm so you can get more credits with which to improve your farm. This particular process would work great for learning fixed processes, but isn't much good if you want people to be able to operate with any level of autonomy.

So, lets take a look at the other side, what I would refer to as the 'spiritual' rewards. Dan Pink refers to three elements of what motivates people: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Of these three motivators, I'd like to look at Mastery. The idea behind Mastery is that people want to get good at things. Take, for example, my learning to play the piano (mentioned in my earlier post); I didn't need to learn the piano, I wanted to. I learned to play the piano because I enjoyed the challenge and felt rewarded by my achievement at the end. Many people, myself included, will play games for this very reason. To take another couple of examples from this blog: My girlfriend learning to play Sodoku or adventure games; being driven by the feeling of achievement for getting the right answer, and wanting to improve those skills. Suddenly I'm hit by a solution. People play Tetris and Bejeweled for hours on end because it is skilled game play, and their skill level is indicated by how high their score is. People continue to play these games out of a desire to achieve the highest score. Surely we can use this to maintain the user's interest long enough to teach them something useful.

Taking this information into consideration, how could we create a game to teach a process? I'm going to use 5S as an example here. Say we have a problem in our car manufacturing plant where employees aren't sticking to the rules of 5S, or rather the rules of 5S aren't sticking with our employees. It would be possible to build an interactive computer generated model or diagram of a workstation (which should be standardised according to 5S). The employee is then asked to use workstation and produce one unit of whatever it is designed to produce. This task is timed allowing the user to track their performance. It should be made clear to the user that these scores are for their own self evaluation and will not be used by the company to evaluate them. This is a self-improvement exercise. The next stage would then allow the user to alter the layout of the workstation in an attempt to improve efficiency, and ultimately their time score. This adds a layer of autonomy for the user. At this point the user will find that they are unable to move the actual tools, but can only move the markers that indicate where the tools should go (if the tools are in their place, they will move with their 'home'). Now the employee is tasked with constructing the same item as before. If the user failed to place objects back in their proper place during the previous production cycle, they may find it very messy and confusing during this production cycle. They are now learning, from experience, the detrimental effect that not putting tools away can have. This process is repeated. Each time, the user is timed during the production of the item and only allowed to move tools during production. After each production cycle, the user is allowed to streamline their workstation in an effort to improve their performance. The replacing of tools could also be emphasised by adding a second layer of scoring where the user is awarded points for returning tools to their correct home. This seems, to me, like a potential way of turning a learning experience into an engaging game/simulation.

This is only one simple example and may not be perfect, but I think it is the beginning of an idea/understanding and a potential way forward for training software.

As a side note: Whilst looking at Dan Pink's talk on the TED website I came across a very interesting talk in which someone suggests re-engaging boys in learning through the use of computer games. I think it's quite relevant to what I've been talking about and recommend checking it out, if you're interested. You can find it here.