Pedagogy Inspired by Farmville

image: Andrew Stawarz from social games to the  classroom: educational design  inspired by Farmville seeds of engagement an ePaper by sidneyeve matrix

image: kcolwell In a year‐end presentation for the Social Games Seattle meeting, lead designer of  FarmVille Amitt Mahajan of Zynga discussed what's involved in building big social games 1 that millions of people will want to play.  A blockbuster game must be designed to have wide appeal and good retention— keeping players coming back and actively engaged. There are many insights from Mahajan’s talk that transfer neatly from the world of  game development to instructional design in higher ed.  2 In what follows we’ll highlight three of them. .2.

image: Thomas Hawk Don’t turn people off is the first rule of the day,  according to Mahajan. 1. select material with broad appeal Building for engagement requires using material that many people can relate to. Using  people’s common knowledge as a lever is about developing products and experiences  that they can connect to and understand instantly—no steep learning curve involved. For the FarmVille game developer, that might mean opting for a gameworld ﬁlled with  growing crops and tending to livestock—the same imaginary scenarios children have  grown up playing, with plastic toys from Fisher Price and Mattel. .3.

image: Pragmagrapher But what about the classroom—where creating learning curves, and often steep ones,  is our business?  To design lectures and lessons that are engaging, the point about building in commonly known,  quickly graspable, highly relatable concepts might mean: (1) using more case studies to humanize  the material, (2) incorporating news of the day from daily headlines (captured via newsfeeds and  delivered to your inbox), or (3) adding in some pop culture references, from celebrities to  television to YouTube. All of these research/lesson prep tasks could be delegated to an RA or TA, if available. If not, set up  some Google News Alerts with keywords to catch newsworthy stories in a trendwatching net. .4.

image: Rennett Stowe “Every time you play a game, you  build up relationships” ~ Mahajan 2. incorporate microsociality Addictive and highly engaging social games on Facebook are so compelling because  they leverage people’s social graphs. In fact, like it or not, social gaming and socnet  connections are increasingly seen as a viable alternative to oﬄine face‐to‐facetime.  Watering someone’s crops on FarmVille is quickly becoming a bona ﬁde and  acceptable mode of microsocializing, and “a replacement for having to go out of  your way to keep in touch with someone” observes Mahajan. .5.

image: smannion Back in the classroom, building educational experiences that are more  social means incorporating activities and assignments designed to encourage interactivity  and class cohesion. How? The key here is shareability. Designing opportunities for  students to give and take with their peers and enabling reciprocity. This allows students  to increase their value and contribution to a social network, by trading cultural capital. One way to use the web to accomplish this: build a free site (a Blogger blog, Ning social  network, Netvibes pagecast, or Facebook page) where students curate and share their  research (links to articles, news, videos, anything). If you ascribe to the view of millennial  students as eager for attention, recognition, a little microfame, and constant feedback,  it’s easy to see how this kind of public, socially‐networked instructional design is purpose‐ built to engage GenY. .6.

image: Brian Hathcock “Bright beautiful graphics in a  social game are tantamount to  3. add visual pleasure Engaging game design requires massive graphic  moments of joy”   appeal. The power of visual pleasure is not to  ~ Mahajan be underestimated when spectacular imagery  can keep gamers online and enraptured.  .7.

image: presta Back on campus, some time invested in designing truly great PowerPoint (or  Keynote, if you’re a Mac) slides can work magic and infuse the classroom with a  degree of that same pleasure, fascination, and joy that game designers speak of.  Need inspiration? Treat yourself to a copy of Garr Reynolds work Presentation Zen or one of the books  3 he recommends to increase the visual and emotional impact of your slide design. .8.

image: law_kevin Resources Cited 1. Here is a link to the slides from Amitt Mahajan’s presentation:  http://www.slideshare.net/amittmahajan 2. For even more helpful ideas and insights from this game  developer, visit his website: http://www.amitt.com 3. The most excellent resource on presentation design is Garr  Reynolds: http://www.presentationzen.com/ .9.

image: richpix  about the author Sidneyeve Matrix, PhD.  Queen's National Scholar, Film & Media, Queen's  University, Canada. Professor of digital culture, mass  communication & marketing, pop culture, television,  & film courses. Website: sidneyevematrix.net Attribution‐ Noncommercial‐Share  Alike 3.0 License.

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Pedagogy Inspired by Farmville

by Sidneyeve Matrix on Feb 09, 2010

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Pedagogy Inspired by Farmville — Presentation Transcript