This presentation discusses the use of serious gaming as a practical learning tool, especially or the millennial generation. It informs viewers on what serious games look like and what characteristics successful serious games have. You can visit GSE Systems at gses.com and on Twitter @GSESystems

1. Are Your Employees Playing Games?
...Well, They Should Be!
info@gses.com

2. 2
Learning Today
Today’s generation has grown up interfacing with computers
and learning completely different than previous generations.

3. 3
Why Serious Gaming?
• Why should we even talk about serious gaming?
• How can it help?
• What does it look like?
• Elements of effective game-based learning?

4. 4
Why Talk Gaming?
The statistics are overwhelming:
• 59% of Americans play video games
• Average age = 31
• 47% Women
• 29% over 50 years old
• Millennials spend 3x more time gaming than exercise,
sports, volunteering, religious-creative-cultural activities
or reading. (via Entertainment Software Association)

5. 5
The Challenge
• Huge disparity between the commercial
games market and institutional learning
• The Digital Divide:
– Trainer and trainee differences in outlook,
style and expectation making it difficult to
communicate.

6. 6
10 Cogitative Style Changes of
Digital Natives
1. Twitch Speed over Conventional Speed
2. Parallel Process over Linear Processing
3. Graphics First vs. Text First
4. Random Access vs. Step-by-Step
5. Connected vs. Standalone
6. Active vs. Passive
7. Play vs. Work
8. Payoff vs. Patience
9. Fantasy vs. Reality
10. Tech-as-friend vs. Tech-as-foe
Mark Prensky – Digital Game Based Learning

7. 7
How Millennials See Games Helping
• 67% develop winning strategies
• 70% problem solving
• 63% work smoothly as a team
• 66% vital in understanding new
technologies

8. 8
Which Begs the Questions
• Can we leverage propensity to play games into a
meaningful knowledge transfer?
• Can serious games motivate users to learn?
• Can we make learning fun and actually habit
forming?

9. 9
What Do Serious Games Look Like?
• Combination of
– Scenario-based learning
– Experiential learning
– Active critical learning
– Engaging and entertaining environment
• A game itself will not train. It needs
integration with good instructional design.

10. 10
Characteristics of Successful Serious
Games
• Must be motivating
• Clear path w/ learning
objectives “guided discovery”
• Clear, immediate, intuitive and valuable feedback
• Hints/help (scaffolding) to support learning
• Tiers/levels so as not to frustrate user

11. 11
Why Are They Engaging?
• Four types of “fun” (emotion clusters)
– Easy fun: Exploration, adventure, curiosity
– Hard fun: Challenge and mastery
– Serious Fun: Purposeful, change thinking
feeling and behavior
– People Fun: Excuse to hang with friends
Nicole Lazzaro, CEO, XEODesign

12. 12
Effective Learning?
• Supports structured, sequential learning,
progressing from simple to complex
• Builds the ability to recognize prototypical events
from conceptual cues
• Similar to simulation in the ability to learn from
trial and error

13. 13
A Game-Based Learning Construct
S1 S2 S3 T1 S4 S5 T2
Instructor
Assist
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Instructor
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Instructor
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Instructor
Assist
CL-1
CL-2
CL-3
CL-4
CL-5
Trainee Start
Certification
Hybrid self-adaptive ladder with “adaptive” remediation

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Benefits
• Potential for self-directed learning
• Optimize instructor time
• Optimize instructor focus
• Proper sequencing of education and compression of
learning curve
• Can help eliminate bathtub effect of highest effectiveness
immediately after training, then precipitous decline

15. 15
Simple Example
Game constructs:
• Scenario based
• Guided discovery
• Scaffolding
• Decision making
• Immediate feedback
• Engaging
• Competition
• Exploration
• Purposeful

16. 16
Millennials Are Just the Start
US
Census
2012
US
Popula*on:

17. For more information:
Go to: www.GSES.com
Call: +1 800.638.7912
Email: info@gses.com
Follow us on:
Twitter @GSESystems
Facebook.com/GSESystems