The Digital Game-Based Learning(2)

增强现实 虚拟现实 人机交互

so-called “shelfware” (unused CD-ROMs) with “forget-it-ware” (uncompleted online training)!

But don’t worry, learners, it will not always be thus. For as the need for learning that people actually want to do becomes more and more crucial in the blur of the quickly changing business world, and as business finally confronts the fact that the generations who are the customers of E3 and love to play computer and videogames to the tune of $6 billion annually 6 are also the workers who need to be trained, the training and learning process — in companies, homes, and last but not least schools — stands at the beginning of a huge revolution.

We have heard this before. But in my view the training and learning revolution is not — despite what many preach — the shift in training delivery to the Internet, although that is important and transformational. And it’s not “distance learning,” although that, too, is an important part of the process. It’s not just more, faster, smaller computers in corporate classrooms on desks and in laps. It’s not wireless, or broadband, or just-in-time, or learning management systems, and it’s certainly not computer-based training (CBT).

The true 21st century learning revolution is that learning — training and schooling — is finally throwing off the shackles of pain and suffering which have accompanied it for so long. Within most of our lifetimes pretty much all learning will become truly learner-centered and fun — fun for students, fun for trainers and teachers, fun for parents, supervisors administrators and executives. The huge wall which has separated learning and fun, work and play for the last few hundred years is finally beginning to tremble and will soon come tumbling down, to everyone’s benefit. And while it will continue to resist for a while yet, like the Berlin Wall in the political world when it finally falls there will be a stampede to freedom.

The reason this will happen, and happen soon, is that learners will demand it, to the point that management, teachers and administrators can no longer resist. The workers of the games generations will no longer accept, attend, or do training that is boring. So we will have to, as businesses, schools and the military are already beginning to do in places, inject fun and games into training.

And the really good news is that when we do it we will find — to the amazement of many (although certainly not the trainees) — that adding fun into the process will not only make learning and training much more enjoyable and compelling, but far more effective as well.

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This book is about the coming together of two seemingly diametrically opposed worlds: serious learning in schools and in businesses, and interactive entertainment — computer games, videogames, and, to a lesser extent, the movies.

增强现实 虚拟现实 人机交互

On the “serious” learning side today there is an enormous, multi-tens of billion dollar training budget focused on the most “serious” kinds of adult learning — how to run businesses and improve processes, how to manage people and organizations, how to wage war and maintain peace, how to manage and avoid dangers and risks, how not to violate the law. This is what is usually called “training,” in both business and the military, and is a particular subset of adult learning. Training is very big business these days, usually estimated at over $100 billion in the US (counting the government) 7, part of a worldwide learning market of over $1 trillion 8. Its computer-based elements, mainly online and distance learning, are growing at well over 100 percent a year. 9

On the other side is the world of entertainment — music, television, films, and, increasingly, computer and video games, now equal to or bigger than the movies. Much of this entertainment is aimed at what Sony calls the “digital dream kids,” but it also includes all adult entertainment from sports, to bridge and chess, to gambling. 10Entertainment is also a huge enterprise, also estimated in the trillions.

The forces bringing these two worlds inexorably together, in Oglevy’s words “like tributaries of a river” are first, technological change and generational discontinuity — causing learners today to be different than in the past; and second, the need for training and education to catch up to be efficient and effective.

While, as we will see, there is no consensus on exactly how people or adults learn, almost all theories recognize that it is key to have learners engaged in the process. And while it is sometimes possible for learning for it’s own sake to be an engaging motivator, much of what people need to learn, particularly in a business setting, is not intrinsically motivating to most of the population. But this doesn’t mean learning it can’t be fun — on the contrary. Digital Game-Based Learning. is precisely about fun and engagement, and the coming together of and serious learning and interactive entertainment into a newly emerging and highly exciting medium — Digital Learning Games.

Digital Game-Based Learning is already sprouting, and in some case taking firm root, in a wide variety of business and other places — in several of the world’s most prestigious consulting firms, in industry leaders; in smaller firms; in service and manufacturing industries, in orientation, product training, soft skills, hard skills, marketing and strategy; in many branches and levels of the public sector, and especially in the U.S. military.

But despite some early successes, Digital Game-Based Learning is still a radical idea. It is based on two key premises that are still not fully accepted in the training and adult learning community. The first is that the learners have c …… 此处隐藏：5899字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……