Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

I've blogged before about Clark Aldrich and his blog.

His recent post titled Serious Games: The Vision, The Hype forced me to think about the diffusion of educational games in higher ed. Most faculty are mot aware of the radical changes games have seem in the past decade. Games = Pong.

So, if you want to encourage faculty to use games for education, one approch is baby steps. Clark writes about this in his post, suggesting a series of design revisions, moving from the tried and true towards gamelike structures.

The problem I see with this approach is our current setup for the design and delivery of content. In higher ed, we have a product mentality. I think as long as most folks have a "product" mentality, where you conceptualize, design develop, and implement X - then off to the next project! - the idea of multiple design rounds is a hard sell.

If we can convince ourselves and others to think of continuous prototyping as a valid way to produce a "product" that is never finished, only stable for this version, then we might be able to use multiple design rounds.

I know where I work this will take a long time to sell to administrators and faculty.

What are the alternatives? Besides the "dive in head first" option - another hard sell, you might be able to take a small portion of a course and build a game around just it. Dive in head first, but just for this tiny portion. Give the faculty time to adjust to the idea and see some success. Then go for the bigger, more immersive games.

This sounds like the continuous prototyping model above, but it does have some differences. First, the threat of a new teaching method is minimized. Second, you can identify and work with the low-hanging fruit in the course, moving the probability of success up. Third, you help the course instructor chunk their content, assisting them to see a path from where they are to a possible future that includes games as an integral part of their course.

I guess what I'm think here is still baby steps, but abstracted out one level. Go for the game tiny content piece by tiny piece, using rapid prototyping as a way to transform the course over time, not a portion of a course into a game.