Instructional designers tend to think content first and action second. Game designers tend to think action first. Simply changing your mindset from instructional designer to game designer will help you to create engaging and effective instruction. In this unique gamified webinar, Karl Kapp will help you make that shift.

1. Stop Thinking Like an Instructional Designer,
Start Thinking Like a Game Designer
Joe Caprio
Speaker:
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--OR--
Building Learner Engagement
Rob Jeppsen
Speaker:
Naba Ahmed
Moderator:
Karl Kapp
Speaker:

2. Designing Digitally analyzes your learning and development programs to
discover pain points and knowledge gaps, and then designs customized
strategies that will empower employees and allow you to meet set business
objectives. Whether you are looking for training to support a major initiative,
need general employee development courses, or just want to revamp your
existing efforts, they are here to help you succeed and become the
company you want to be.

3. 3
Building Learner
Engagement
Click on the Questions panel to
interact with the presenters
https://www.elearninglearning.com/webinar-series/building-learner-engagement/

4. About Rob Jeppsen
With 23 years of direct sales and sales leadership, Rob has successful experience in every part of the sales process.
Rob is the Founder and CEO of Xvoyant, a Sales Leadership Technology Platform committed to helping organizations
develop world-class sales leaders. Xvoyant’s technology drives transformation across sales teams by powering 1:1
meetings with sales leaders and salespeople. Xvoyant creates alignment between Sales Leaders and Salespeople to
create measurable improvement in revenue while reducing administrative burden. Xvoyant services thousands of
managers in 62 countries around the world and recently was recognized with the Gold Stevie® Award for Sales
Technology Partner of the Year.
About Joe Caprio
Joe is the VP Sales of Chorus.ai. Prior to joining Chorus, Joe was a Chorus customer while leading the
sales team at InsightSquared. His focus was on scaling and enabling rapid growth sales teams. His
experience with conversation intelligence and experience in sales enablement created a perfect match of a
tactical practitioner with executive experience and insights.
Joe’s background is in training and development. He has a passion for hiring and training customer facing
reps. He loves to share best practices, learn from his customers, and distill down really powerful programs
for his own team and his customers’ teams as well.
Stop Thinking Like an Instructional Designer,
Start Thinking Like a Game Designer
About Karl Kapp
Dr. Karl Kapp is a professor of instructional technology at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA. Karl has written
eight books on the convergence of learning, technology and business with a focus on games, gamification and
interactive learning including his latest co-authored with Robyn Defelice called “Microlearning:Short and Sweet.” He
works all over the world helping organizations deliver impactful, meaningful instruction using a game-thinking
approach with Fortune 500 companies as well as startup organizations. He has been a TEDx speaker, a keynote at
many industry events and is author of several LinkedIn Learning courses. Karl was named one of LinkedIn’s 2017 Top
Voices in Education, is an eLearning Guild Guildmaster and received the ATD Individual Contributor Award in 2019.
Karl leads a member-only consortium called L&D Mentor—contact him for more information on that exciting offering.
About Naba Ahmed
Naba went to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and majored in Journalism and minored in Integrated Marketing
Communications. After working as Editor in Chief at the campus newspaper, she became interested in
developing content across multiple platforms, and now works as a Content Marketing Specialist at
Aggregage, providing some of the most interesting thought leaders across a wide variety of industries with a
space to celebrate the diversity, depth, and experience of their professional cultures, personalities, and
passions.

5. Stop Thinking Like an Instructional Designer:
Start Thinking Like a Game Designer
Twitter:@kkapp By Karl M. Kapp
Bloomsburg University

6. How can you create engaging instruction using game elements
without creating a game?
How can you apply methods for thinking activity first,
content second?
How do game designers engage players and immerse them in the
game environment?
Questions to Consider
LinkedIn page: karlkapp/
Twitter ID: @kkapp
Email: karlkapp@gmail.com
Website: karlkapp.com

7. Design takeaway
challenge.

9. You are a game designer at SuperGame Corporation
which has hit some hard times lately.

10. It’s Friday 4:59 PM you and your
colleague have only one thing
on your mind.

11. Suddenly, your boss calls you
and your colleague into her office.
Ito and Jasmine come into my
office.

12. Yes?
Yes?

13. Look, someone
wants us to
create a game
about capturing dragons.

14. It appears to be a craze or
something.

15. Working name is…
“Dragónmon Go”

16. You are competing internally for the
project. Winning team earns the
right to work on the project.

17. Each team will be confronted with a
series of questions. The team that
correctly answers the most questions
wins the work.

18. What about the other team?

19. Losers are assigned to the game
“watching paint dry.”

20. Wow, I heard about that
project, its almost as fun
as… never mind. Dragon
Capturing is much better.

21. Get it together.
Now let’s hear about
the dragon capturing
game.

22. First we need to pick teams.

23. Pollev.com/karlkapp

24. Two Teams
Moxie Zest
Open Internet browser in separate
window or on mobile phone.
Pollev.com/karlkapp.

25. Our first decision about this dragon
capturing game is how to start the
game. What should the player’s first
in-game experience be?

26. You have two choices:
Tell the player three things they need to
know about capturing dragons.
or
Begin with by having the player start
capturing dragons right away.

27. Why does this answer make
sense?
Not Sure?

28. Good game designers know that games
are engaging because they require action
right away.
Action draws in the player and
encourages further engagement.
Start by capturing a dragon.

29. Too often instructional design is
about the content and not about
the actions that need to occur.
Game Design is about action.

30. Research indicates that learners who
used interactive games for learning
had greater cognitive gains over
learners provided with traditional
classroom training.
Vogel, J. J., Vogel D.S., Cannon-Bowers, J., Bowers, C.A., Muse, K., & Wright, M. (2006). Computer gaming and
Interactive simulations for learning: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 34(3), 229-243.

31. Solve a mystery.
Make the learners do something.
Answer a question.
Work a problem.
Make a decision.
Escape a room.
Play a game.
Take a quiz.

32. Here is a quizing example, half of a group
of students had to re-read content, half
had to answer quiz questions after only
seeing the content for 4 minutes.
Wiklund-Hörnqvist, C., Jonsson, B., & Nyberg, L. (2014). Strengthening concept learning by
repeated testing. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 55(1), 10–16. http://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12093

33. Participants who had been tested
(rather than re-reading the material)
outperformed the other students.
Wiklund-Hörnqvist, C., Jonsson, B., & Nyberg, L. (2014). Strengthening concept learning by
repeated testing. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 55(1), 10–16. http://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12093

34. Ok, next decision.
Provide a map with the location of all
the dragons.
or
Create a sense of mystery and
curiosity concerning the location of
dragons.

35. It is always a good idea to build curiosity and
mystery into a game. Reveal locations of dragons
throughout the course of the player’s journey.
Check out my notebook on this
subject.

38. A sense of suspense, mystery
and intrigue draws people into
games and can draw them into
learning as well.

39. OK, what do we decide next, should we:
Make the game easy so we don’t discourage the
players.
or
Make the game challenging, knowing some
players will fail the first few times.

40. Jones, B., Valdez, G., Norakowski, J., & Rasmussen, C. (1994). Designing learning and technology
for educational reform. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. [Online]. Available:
http://www.ncrtec.org/capacity/profile/profwww.htm and Schlechty, P. C. (1997). Inventing
better schools: An action plan for educational reform. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Chapter 2
“The Gamification of Learning and Instruction.”
It needs to be challenging.

41. Look! Good games give players a set of
challenging problems and let them solve those
problems until they can do it automatically.
Then those same games throw a new class of
problem at the players requiring them to re-
think, their now—taken for granted—mastery.
They must learn something new and integrate
into their old mastery.

42. Well said!

43. Actually, my good friend James Paul
Gee said those words, I’m quoting
him.

44. Always good to cite
sources!

45. Also, keep in mind things that are too easy or
too difficult will not pique a learner’s interest
because they lead to boredom or frustration.
Research has shown that challenge is
correlated with both intrinsic motivation
and motivation related to the desire to
seek competence and self confidence.
White, R.W. (1959) Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66, 297-333.

46. In fact, give them the
Kobayashi Maru of challenges.

47. Harsh!

48. Well, the next decision, should we:
Put the player at risk, they could die at
any moment.
or
Let the player safely explore the
environment.

49. Seriously, you are asking me
this question. The player needs
to be at risk.

50. No risk, or danger equal no skin in
the game.
Get the player emotionally involved
by putting him or her at “mock”
risk.

51. In games, failing is allowed, it’s
acceptable, and it’s part of the
process. Games accommodate
failure with multiple lives, second
chances and alternative methods of
success.

52. Research indicates that our brains
grow when we make a mistake
because it is a time of struggle.
Moser, J. Schroder, H.S., Heeter, C., C., Moran, T.P., & Lee, Y.H. (2011) Mind your errors: Evidence for a neural
mechanism linking growth mindset to adaptive post error adjustments. Psychological Science, 22, 1284-1489.
Our brains react with greater
electrical activity when we make a
mistake than when we are correct.

53. Do you punish failure in your
learning design or do you allow and
encourage the freedom to fail?

54. Lot of information, thanks. So
let me ask one more question.

55. Which team gets to design
“Dragónmon Go”? Which team won?

56. Well, they are all winners to me.

57. Ugh….

58. How about a
re-cap…

59. Here are five tips for thinking like a
game designer:
1) Begin with activity
2) Create curiosity, mystery, intrigue
3) Create a challenge for the learner
4) Put learners at “mock” risk—
encourage mistakes
5) Give learners meaningful choices

60. What game elements
were in this
presentation?

61. 1) Story
2) Character
3) Competition/teams
4) Real-time feedback
5) Meaningful Decision making
6) Uncertain ending
7) Allowing failure
8) Uncertainty

62. Another Example

63. You can use more
realistic settings for
storytelling.

64. Can I have a moment
of your time?

65. Well, I am busy…

66. A) It’s only a moment.
B) When is a good time for us to talk?
C) Ok, but let me ask you one question
before I go.

67. Questions?

68. 90 Days of Poll Everywhere Premium: Free
1. Create a free account
2. Email code: K_Kapp
to support@polleverywhere.com
Automatically downgrades to the standard free
plan after 90 days.
Resources
Engagement Guru Uses Segmented Polls (https://tinyurl.com/pollev101)
Articles:
Segmentation (https://tinyurl.com/pollev102)
Software:
https://www.polleverywhere.com/
Case of the Disengaged Learner (Example) https://tinyurl.com/CaseDisengagedLearner

69. Resources
LinkedIn Learning 30 Day Free Trial (https://tinyurl.com/LLFreeTrial)
Most universities, corporations, schools, libraries have subscriptions.
Gamification Books: (https://tinyurl.com/GamificationBooks101)
L&D Mentor Consortium
• Corporate Membership Program
• Four Self-Paced Courses Yearly
• Monthly, Virtual Mentoring
• Limited Number of Members
Email: karlkapp@gmail.com

70. Questions?
CEO of Xvoyant
Linkedin page: robjeppsen/
Twitter ID: @robjeppsen
Email: Rob@Xvoyant.com
Website: xvoyant.com
Rob Jeppsen
Speaker:
Professor of Instructional Technology, Bloomsburg
University
LinkedIn page: karlkapp/
Twitter ID: @kkapp
Email: karlkapp@gmail.com
Website: karlkapp.com
Karl Kapp