This document discusses many elements that should be considered when designing an instructional game, including goals, rules, objectives, stories, feedback, time, replayability, conflict/competition/cooperation, rewards, aesthetics, and uncertainty. Goals and rules define how the game is played, objectives provide motivation, stories provide context, and feedback, rewards, and leaderboards encourage learning and improvement. Additional elements like time, replayability, social aspects, and visual design help with engagement and enjoyment. Uncertainty can enhance the learning experience if implemented appropriately. The document recommends allowing failure, multiple attempts, and focusing on learning from mistakes.

1. Goals
-Game Goals
-Instructional Goals

2. Rules
-Operational Rules-Describe how the game is played.
-Foundational Rules- Underlying formal structures, like the mathematics involved with dice.
-Behavior Rules-How players are expected to act toward one another.
-Instructional Rules-What you want the learner to gain from playing the instructional game.

3. Objectives
-The introduction of an objective or a goal is what differentiates a game from play.
-It gives the players something to work toward.
-Objectives are either obtained or not obtained and that is a quantifiable outcome.

4. Story

5. Stories provide, context, meaning and purpose

7. 1.
Characters
Story Elements
5. Conclusion
2. Plot (something has to happen).
3. Tension
4. Resolution
Write a story to match your game.

8. Feedback

10. Games like The Sims provide feedback on many dimensions which provide opportunities to consider tradeoffs and higher level cognitive thinking.

11. The most helpful feedback provides specific comments about errors and suggestions for improvement. It also encourages learners to focus their attention thoughtfully on the task rather than on simply getting the right answer.
Shute, V. J., Ventura, M., Bauer, M. I., & Zapata-Rivera, D. (2009). Melding the power of serious games and embedded assessment to monitor and foster learning: Flow and grow. In U. Ritterfeld, M. J. Cody, & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects. Philadelphia, PA: Routledge/LEA. 295-321.

14. Leaderboards provide opportunities for players to receive feedback about their performance as compared to others.

15. Leaderboards provide opportunities for players to receive feedback about their performance as compared to others.

16. Recommendations
•
Provide authentic and realistic feedback.
•
Feedback should be continuous through out the learning.
•
Feedback should be instructional and provide knowledge of learner’s performance.
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Allow learners to create their own social “leaderboard” of friends.

17. Time
Motivator for player/learner activity and action.
As a resource allocated during the game-play.
A game can compress time to show consequences of actions more quickly than real-time.

18. Curve of Interest
Monitor within the instruction. Track player movement, time on task, level of activity.

19. Replayability
•
Replay provides learners with a chance to try a different approach, explore different hypothesizes and reduces the “sting of failure”

20. Replay and exploration can be placed in games by providing additional pathways through the content.
Achieving goals
Collecting Items
Exploring
Socializing
Easter Eggs

21. Conflict, Competition and Cooperation

22. Conflict
Conflict-inflicting damage on other players

23. Competition
Competition- competing against other players

24. Cooperation
Cooperation- working with other players to achieve a goal.

25. Rewards, Incentives and Points, Achievements

26. Primarily use expected achievements so players can establish goals for themselves and understand the purpose and progression of interactions.
Kapp, K. M. (2012) The Gamification of Learning and Instruction. New York: Pfeiffer. Chapter Ten. Pages 219-238.

27. Use coins, points and rewards to provide feedback on performance, updates on progress and level of correctness.
Kapp, K. M. (2012) The Gamification of Learning and Instruction. New York: Pfeiffer. Chapter Ten. Pages 219-238.

28. The value, or size, of an anticipated reward influences the motivational signal sent to the brain only within the contexts of the reward system.
Howard-Jones, P. A., & Demetriou, S. (2009) Uncertainty and engagement with learning games. Instructional Science. 37:519–536 DOI 10.1007/s11251-008-9073-6

29. Give players an opportunity to go over their earned achievements using some kind of visual stored list.
Kapp, K. M. (2012) The Gamification of Learning and Instruction. New York: Pfeiffer. Chapter Ten. Pages 219-238.

30. What can you do?
Use points, rewards and badges to convey meaning, achievement and progress.

31. http://www.coursehero.com/courses/

34. 2 weeks after launching Courses (powered by gamification), CourseHero received 350 suggested edits to existing courses and 122 requests for new courses.
Another 68 people offered to augment existing courses by creating their own course to be hosted on coursehero.com.

35. Since the implementation of gamification elements, time on site overall has increased around 5 percent.

36. For Gamified courses, the time on site for the Courses are nearly three times as long as time onsite for all of coursehero.com.
Social sharing of achievements increased nearly 400 percent in three months.

38. Aesthetics
•
A large element of any game is how the game looks and the overall congruency of the artwork, interface and activities.

39. Artwork and the “look and feel” of the game plays a major role in the overall design and enjoyment of a game.
Includes audio as well as visual.

40. Gaming uncertainty can transform the emotional experience of learning. This may improve engagement and improve encoding and later recall.
Howard-Jones, P. A., & Demetriou, S. (2009) Uncertainty and engagement with learning games. Instructional Science. 37:519–536 DOI 10.1007/s11251-008-9073-6

41. Experimental results reveal that uncertainty enhances learning and is positively associated with motivation.
As motivation increases, participants tend to spend more time answering questions and have higher accuracy.
Ozcelik, E., Cagiltay, N. E., & Ozcelik, N. S., (2013)The effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments. Computers & Education 67. 12–20

42. Uncertainty in a learning game can enhance players’ experience in several ways, including changes in brain chemistry and activity.
Robinson, S. (2012) Taking a chance: Introducing uncertainty into learning games. Proceedings of the Academy of Educational Leadership, Volume 17, Number 2, 2012

43. Chance or luck is a highly motivational element of games both of traditional games of chance but in other video games like finding hidden treasures.

44. What can you do?
Allow chance, risk-taking and uncertainty into gamification efforts. 50% appears to be an optimal number.

45. Freedom to Fail

47. Recommendations
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Allow failure.
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Provide for multiple attempts.
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Focus on learning from mistakes and failure.