Emerging Learning and Development Models: Part Two
- 2. The second emerging learning technology we are going to cover in this series is in the field of coupled completion and fantasy learning (CCFL). Let’s break down this sentence into bite-sized pieces and take a look at this tool. The definition of this technology is the use of fantasy in order to have players, our learners, complete tasks as part of a narrative journey. The term “coupled” refers to the fact that what they do in the game must be similar, if not identical, to what we want them to do in real life. Imagine a game about cyber security, where players must select real options in the game to deal with a virtual attack on their mainframe. Now, put this game into a James Bond storyline, where an evil hacker is attacking your headquarters, and voila, we have a CCFL technology! We coupled learning to the game mechanics, we used a fantasy theme and had the player complete tasks to advance in the game.
- 3. As the above summary shows, the best selling games in the entertainment industry, for 2015, just choosing some arbitrary fiscal year, are all about some kind of fantasy. Grand Theft Auto is an open world design in which you can do anything you want without consequence. Next is Fallout 4, a shooter game which again, is open world adventure. As we progress down the list we see that most game design is about fantasy and completion, it is hard to find a title that is about playing the stock market or learning about fishing. Clearly, the entire thrust of the gamification industry began in the entertainment industry, where we crave fantasy. For gamification designers to ignore this fact is the height of folly. But again and again we see gamification not based on fantasy, but either based on mini games or simulations without key components of fantasy:
- 4. 1. A Magic System: A set of rules which do not exist in the real world. 2. A Well-Developed Setting: The game must take place in the world you have created. 3. A Cast of Complex Characters: There are several main characters with multiple points of view. 4. A Central Conflict: There is inner conflict, small scale between-character conflict and large scale conflict. 5. A Power Structure or System of Government: Who holds power in this fictional world?
- 5. These elements, when designed properly, provide an alternate reality for players/learners to engage in. Imagine building a fashion empire, where you hire Karl Lagerfeld or can travel back in time to hire Coco Chanel. Imagine building a sales empire, but instead of using reality, depict it as part of a fantasy where you control certain parts of a map as you expand your kingdom as a Mogul! Imagine a game of medical diagnosis and treatment, and turn it into a game about magical healers. Imagine a game to learn microbiology where you can fight certain bacteria with the powers of the immune system, portrayed as warriors. This is using our core entertainment values and importing them into learning, so that all the excitement of that fantasy world comes into play.
- 6. In real life, things are hard. We have less control than we wish we had, things cost a lot, things go wrong and correcting them is often difficult. In our fantasy world, things can be easy (we build something by clicking a mouse), we have control (the game gives us powers), things are affordable (the game assets, or items, are symbols and easily obtained with learning) and things can be fixed (we can defeat the evil demon lord if we collect enough power ups from training). Now, in the old days, pre-2016, gamification did not really address this much. It kind of pulled bits and pieces out of motivational literature and used them to complement training. You get a badge when you read the book. Gamification, as a term, is not very helpful here because, again, it means too many different things to different people. But when we design a fantasy-completion game, we are making it very clear to learners that this will be a journey in which they have “god-like” power to shape their own learning. It is not for everyone, but it has high appeal in studies of gamers. There is no reason to avoid this type of learning other than lack of awareness of its power in training.
- 7. It does not have to be a sophisticated story line, the little character above could be something you get to build and use it to have pet battles with other players, like robot wars. The training could be about physics or engineering, as you learn specific content by solving problems or simulations, you gain various “parts”. This is precisely what we do at Game and Train with some of our coaching games and other learning systems to make them compelling. Build a rocket ship by mastering various challenges, then train your crew, then explore nearby planets with your ship, where each planet holds new content and challenges. There is a story, exploration, there is conflict (things to be solved), there is completion as your space ship gets better equipment. There is a reason to play. And every activity is coupled to the real intent of training. Imagine having to teach anatomy, like the hand above. Instead of lecturing on it, you might have to construct your own hand by gaining awards, such as earning each muscle, tendon, ligament, blood vessel and bone by identifying them. You could build the game by having players construct a living body, part by part, as they master the functions and structure of each part. This way, we build a living human, like playing Frankenstein, but we must “purchase” each component through knowing the relevant science. We did not need to create an entire universe to do this, but we made sure that each of the 5 core elements of fantasy were incorporated.
- 8. The above picture identifies a fantasy game about fashion. You could lecture new employees on the various products in your store and have them job shadow to figure it out, or you could have them run their own clothing boutique and purchase items and try to sell them to virtual customers. They could build a successful business this way; the more they know about their products, the higher they could set their prices and the more customers would enter the virtual store.
- 9. Our demonstration platform, Coffee Shop, does precisely this. It creates a fantasy world about selling coffee. As you learn more about being a barista, you advance in the game. So running a fantasy coffee shop teaches you how to do it in real life, but in the virtual world, you can make the shop look any way you like or provide any service you want to add. You can create simple fantasy games like poker where you accumulate chips as you master knowledge about running a business. You can use your chips to bet on various outcomes and generate quasi-random choices, so that players can bid on resources. Or you can use the chips as action points to create a bidding game. Imagine a game about building a new development. You start the game with 10 chips and then provide items, like a park, town hall or museum, up for auction. Players can earn chips by more training activities. Now, when a new item comes up for auction, like a museum, the players who have the most chips can enter furious bidding wars to gain that resource. If that resource has a value in the game, like points or gold earnings, then owning that museum would put you ahead in the score and improve your community. Players interact through bidding on assets and might even be able to form alliances to pool chips to beat other players.
- 10. That way, the more you know about building developments (zoning laws, land taxes, construction costs), stuff which is ordinarily kind of dull, the more you can bid on key assets in the game. We do not have to build an entire world to do this. It can be something simple like building a small village. The game can be about athletic competition, as depicted above. You can have players enter a type of “learning Olympics” with various mini games, receiving a score on each event. Imagine one of those events is a time trial, to see who can answer all the questions about food safety regulation in the shortest time.
- 11. That is the food safety jump event! Suppose you earn 2nd place, doing it in 3 minutes, and the winner did it in 1 minute! Now you have a score that reflects how quickly you can identify knowledge about food safety. There can be another event, the high jump, which measures how many questions a player can answer in 60 seconds about food storage safety. On comes the timer, the lead player answers 18 questions in a minute, and you only get through 15 questions. Now you have a composite score that reflects each event. Want to teach ecology, biology, evolution? Why not design your own organism, building it upon what you know about living creatures? Invent a flying system, a burrowing system, improved lungs, better movement, you name it. Do we really have to teach science using a lecture, or can we have learners create their own living beings using readings about biology to do so?
- 12. As seen, Coupled Completion and Fantasy systems are very powerful ways to import what we have learned in the game design world and make it work for us in training. The word “gamification” denotes this, but only in a peripheral way. For this you need a design team with a lot of imagination and a love for game mechanics. We like to think we do this well, and we know the potential is out there to make this new emergent field really shine. We just need to get “unstuck” from our view of learning as ponderous and one-sided. It actually can become fun. For real. Until our next post where we will examine Simulation-Game Systems, the cutting edge of medical education and so much more….keep on looking up!