We (eLearning Designers) can learn a lot from game designers. Maybe you're sick of hearing that. But I'm obviously NOT getting to some of you 
Those people attending the DevLearn pre-conference certificate program by Brenda Brathwaite were treated to what I see as the future of Learning Design.
I'm guessing there were a few in that workshop that had no idea they were in the presence of greatness...seriously. Accomplished game designers are few and far between. In case you didn't know, you had the pleasure of spending an ENTIRE DAY with one of the GREATEST! Oh yeah, and that guy with the long hair that stopped by to say hi ... John Romero? Yea, he's sort of a big deal in the game world.
The next wave of change in eLearning is the acceptance of game design as learning design. We're close, but not quite there yet. Lots of stigma to overcome.
Just found this nice report - There is very little data currently available in this space so its nice to see people talking about it and recording their thoughts.
Social Game Studies: A Workshop Report
As social games represent a very new hybrid game genre, research on them is still few and far between. Therefore, the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research convened a one-day academic workshop with selected researchers at the 2010 Games Convention Online in Leipzig, Germany to build a solid overview of the current state of the field, and to identify promising areas and methodological approaches of future research.
Read more at socialgamestudies.org
2 comments:
One real concern in corporate elearning is cost. Specifically, the client will spend X. If gaming/sims can fit in that budget it gets done - in proportion to the budget.
More importantly is the mindset held by many in the corporate world that gaming is still...well, games. Since corporate leaders are laggards (not all) when it comes to accepting and paying for a technology that a)looks like fun, and b)is expensive and c)may not return its investment you have stasis.
Only as it becomes more accepted and expected will you see a big gaming boom in elearning.
As much as I want to believe corporations will take up gaming/sims as a mode of instruction, there just seems to be too much of a stigma right now in corporate (perhaps older) America. Some forward thinking conferences on elearning
begin to transcend this but I can only hope its just the start of a positive trend.
-Dan
Post a Comment