Fundamentally play (and serious play) is about making sense: Making sense of the world, making sense of learning, making sense about decisions in a complex landscape. Children play to make sense of their world, to experiment, to try things out. Adults need to play to make sense of their work environments, their organizations or their lives. Play is also about learning and making sense of learning, constructing learning into knowledge for the individual.[i]

The Playing Generation: Education & Digital Gaming

The humble “Pong” arcade game at the corner store have started a fundamental culture shift in the 1970’s that is gathering more and more momentum. A generation of gamers is already permeating organizations.

Games are sneaking into every part of our lives — at home, school, and work. Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and even the Army depend on games and pretty soon, you’ll be a part of one. We guarantee it.[ii]  

According to Richard van Eck, games embody well-established principles and models of learning[iii] .

Some of the most successful commercial game franchises such as Civilization, SimCity and Railroad Tycoon—have demonstrated how games can model very complex social, scientific, and economic processes. [iv]

Jim Gee, a leading scholar on the phenomenon of digital gaming, states:

In my view, in the twenty-first century we need the following—and we need them fast and all at once together: embodied empathy for complex systems; “grit” (passion + persistence); playfulness that leads to innovation; design thinking; collaborations in which groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group; and real understanding that leads to problem solving and not just test passing. These are, to my mind, the true twenty-first century skills.[v]

If educational leaders can successfully utilize tools such as gamification and game-based learning, this may increase their returns on talent development investments.  It may also enable educational leaders to leave a lasting legacy by sculpting new generations of learners that are ready and able to face the future. 

As with any educational tool, circumspection in application is required for utilization of game-based learning. The dynamics of introducing these tools in the educational environment is not without a great amount of inherent complexity. Leverage points need to be identified so that change initiatives can be introduced with minimum operational risk, while simultaneously maximizing outcomes.

By the same token though, various case studies and relevant research exist that can assist practitioners. There is also an increasing international body of scholars actively pursuing these challenges.

A critical starting point though is that educational leaders need to become more cognizant of the Playing generation.

Video games, as a fast emerging and increasingly dominant media form, can potentially produce meaningful learning outcomes. A growing base of research and case studies are providing evidence that that games are in fact powerful tools for learning.

The application possibilities within the South African and broader African context have not yet been realised. There is also a lack of local research into the potential, application and impact of digital games as instructional method within the context of our multi-cultural, dynamic and highly fragmented educational system.

Educational games, as well as other digital media tools, certainly have a role in this broader shift towards more creative, personalized methods for instructional delivery.

The intersecting trends of Ubiquitous Computing, Ubiquitous Social Networks and Ubiquitous Gaming are creating this new generation of uniquely empowered learners.

Why we need to Play at Work and Work at Play

Within a Post-Post Modernist epoch the utilisation of ICT supported leadership development technology need to take into account the changing in the nature of learning itself, as well as the expectations of learners. [vi]

Many educational leaders are asking themselves how they could leverage the intersection point of the three trends of ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous gaming and the explosive growth of social networking.  The three trends highlighted here are already colliding daily in schools, colleges, cafeterias, meeting rooms and boardrooms. 

Leveraging these trends to the benefit or organisational strategy is the challenge faced by many educational leaders at present.

Some distinctive features of multi-player, on-line games such as team collaboration, problem solving, and group decision-making have caused a lot of interest from practitioners in education, business, government and the military. The engaging and fun nature of games can also have piqued the interests of academics and practitioners alike.

One of the primary learning benefits of gaming is that it can teach players effectively about complex systems through cause-and-effect realizations. The workplace can potentially benefit from the application of two game-based techniques, namely “gamification” and “serious games”.

Brian Burke, an analyst at Gartner defines gamification as follows: [vii]

Gamification describes the broad trend of employing game mechanics to non-game environments such as innovation, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change.

“Serious games” such as simulations, also have a long track record within business applications. Immersive Learning Simulations can be defined as a system that combines simulation, pedagogy, and “hard fun” to create a truly engaging and behavior-changing form of learning.[viii]

Kriz and Nöbauer [ix] stressed that learners should be stimulated to take on joint responsibility and to be proactive in shaping their own learning processes:

The approach of problem-oriented learning requires the following:

a)      complex and authentic contexts, encouragement toward experience-oriented learning;

b)      multiple contexts, variety of perspectives and methods;

c)      social contexts, team learning, and teamwork; and

d)      instructional contexts, appropriate support from the teacher or trainer via debriefing by paying attention to experiences such as problem-solving strategies, cooperation, conflict, resolution, and so on.

Because gaming simulation propels these principles into action, it is an extremely useful learning methodology. Gaming simulation is an interactive-learning environment that makes it possible to cope with authentic situations that closely mimic reality.”

Talented game designer Eric Zimmerman at MIT even argues that there is an emergent need for gaming literacy to be recognized as a new form of literacy: [x]

Literacy and even media literacy are necessary but not sufficient for one to be fully literate in our world today. There are emerging needs for new kinds  of  literacy  that  are  simply  not  being  addressed,  needs  that  arise  in part from a growing use of computer and communication networks (more about  that  below).  Gaming literacy is one approach to addressing these new sorts of literacies that will become increasingly crucial for work, play, education, and citizenship in the coming century.

Csikszentmihalyi, in his seminal 1990 work Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience, discusses Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the influential phenomenological sociologists. They have stated that our sense of the universe in which we live is held together by conversation.[xi]  The ability of gaming to present an engaging two-way conversation between participant and learning content is a powerful learning mechanism.

One of the most important benefits of games, and especially simulation games, is the manner in which productive failure and creative adaptability is encouraged. Fear of punishment, either formally or socially, is typically low in social games, encouraging experimentation and creative workarounds to reach mutual goals. Game designer, Jane McGonical  refers to this prosocial emotion being encouraged and experienced by gamers as “happy embarrassment.”[xii]  .  

The information economy requires leaders with more and more advanced levels of information management skills and knowledge, as well as appropriate attitudes towards technology and the optimal usage thereof [xiii]. Experiential learning is a potentially effective tool to develop the competencies required within the knowledge economy. [xiv]

In contrast with the almost bleak picture that executives are often presented with regarding the unruly and “disobedient” nature of Generation X and Y, Jane McGonical argues very passionately that gaming has created in this generation a group of “Super Empowered Hopeful Individuals.”

Raph Koster, former Chief Creative Officer at Sony Entertainment, view game design as a tool by which the “possibility space” is always increasing, by means of the self-refreshing puzzles a game provides to its players. [xv]

The challenge

“It takes all of these disciplines – engineering disciplines, the educators, the media and psychology people and the people who are in the learning sciences – to really work out what it is we need to know, and what we need to do with this powerful technology in the digital world, and how it can help our kids gain access and achieve.”

- Mary Brabeck, Dean of The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, NYU

It is relatively easy to formulate business strategy that aims to exploit the opportunities potentially offered by information technology [xvi]. In this same vain, it is also easy to spend money on perceived information technology opportunities. It is however, in between these two factors that the real challenge lay. Ensuring that information technology adds value though in terms of strategy realisation implies a myriad of challenges: [xvii]

The problem lies in the space between these two, in the uncertain world of project management, systems implementation, business change management, benefits delivery, and performance management.

It is therefore clear that successful utilization of gaming in educational programs may be more than just a game. It requires circumspection, analysis of leverage points and inclusive project implementation strategies.

Endnotes