The Digital Game-Based Learning(7)

Mulling on this problem, Paula, — a near-Londoner schooled in Wales whose academic and professional background includes communications, psychology, TV, film, and videodisc-based training — had an idea. In fact it was more than an idea it was a vision. “The light bulb went off,” she says. Paula’s vision was of computer games and movies, and of an engaged group of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) auditors learning for hours, pulled forward by the factors that make those two entertainment media so compelling — challenges, storytelling, characters, music, “something at stake”, and “inciting incidents” that you want to help resolve. In that moment of vision In$ider, PwC’s pioneering Digital Game-Based Learning project, was born.

Paula, now the excited evangelist, eagerly took her vision to the partners — to little effect. “I just had this idea in my head,” she says. “Nobody I talked to had a clue of what I was going on about at all.” Yet here’s the story’s ending: two years later, just as the new derivatives regulations were coming into effect, hundreds of PwC auditors a day were flying through Paula’s year 2030 3D world to go to work at Gyronortex, “an intergalactic mining company in the central zone,” and loving the experience. The Digital Game-Based Learning application In$ider was a worldwide success, with 20,000 copies in print, orders coming in daily from offices from Bejing to Bermuda, and other companies —including sellers of derivatives products — considering purchasing it. This to be trained on some of the driest, most boring subject matter imaginable.

How did it happen? How did Paula convince the 50ish partners in PwC to invest close to $3 million for “entertainment?” How did she combine the entertainment with the learning? And how did she get it done? Stay tuned… (see Chapter 9).

The Promise of Digital Game-Based Learning

Here, then, is the promise of Digital Game-Based Learning:

That motivation can finally be found for learning the subjects and content that are

the most difficult to teach or train — either because they are extremely dull and dry or extremely complicated, or both, and to get people to train themselves.

That small groups of trainers, teachers, content experts and game designers

working together can create experiences that will radically improve the learning, and ultimately the competence and behavior of thousands, and potentially millions of learners — not only whole companies, but whole industries, whole grade-levels, even whole countries and populations, and that this will ultimately affect the market value of companies, and perhaps even nations.

That the free market will create — through a user-evaluated process of marrying

the engagement-driven, experience-centered, “fun” approach of the interactive entertainment and games world with effective techniques for teaching the

增强现实 虚拟现实 人机交互

material, facts, concepts, skills, reasoning and behaviors that students and workers are required to learn — a phenomenon of highly effective learning “hits,” that move through target populations at the epidemic speeds of best-selling novels, movies or games, leaving a lasting educational impact.

That eventually any individual trainer, teacher or educator will have at his or her

disposal the tools and colleagues to work with to create such phenomena, and that “talent will out,” with successful, effective instruction no longer being confined to those a single fantastic teacher or trainer can reach in person, but to all the learners in his or her entire potential target market, worldwide. Such target markets could be all sales people, all managers, all third graders, all elementary school students, all math students, all college-level chemistry students etc.

That, consequently, there will be training and learning brands based not just on

publishers, but also on authors and designers, subjects and styles, as there are in books, movies, and games.

That this user-driven learning phenomenon will be not only move from company

to company and school to school nationally, but will be worldwide, like movies and videogames.

That the Web, the Internet and Intranets and its successors, will not just be the

conduit for boring education and training courses that people are forced to take or force themselves to suffer through, but a competitive forum — much like the games and movie businesses — where talent, creativity and the ability to hold the audience and deliver a compelling experience is what wins, where the best combination of game play, learning methodology and “eye candy” is what is being sought.

That we will have a learning world, like the games and movies worlds of today,

where there are both “classic” learning hits and exciting newcomers; where a plethora of magazines and reviewers cover what’s in development and help learners choose the very best; where makers create their experiences with the goal of holding their audience and being successful in learning, and thereby making money and attracting capital; and where learners look forward to the next release as eagerly as they wait for an upcoming game, console or movie.

All this is not only possible, but it is definitely coming. Some of it is already here.

The Key Messages

增强现实 虚拟现实 人机交互

To readers of this book, here are the messages you should leave this chapter thinking about:

money to bring people — adults or kids — to a higher level of learning, there is a newer, better way available. While it is neither a panacea nor the only way, it behooves you to consider it seriously and invest a significant portion of your resources …… 此处隐藏：4787字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……