Video game learning. Is it a serious form of teaching, or is it just a game? Is it worth the time and energy necessary to develop games that are fun and instructive? Many would argue that it is. Our resident programmer extraordinaire, Ryan Hutchcroft, is one of them. He wrote this story to illustrate the untapped potential of video games. Enjoy! (MP)

As I played video games with my son the other day, my mind flashed back to 4th grade math class.  I was pretty good at math when it held my attention, but most of the time I found it boring and I would spend most of class daydreaming.  I remember finding most math concepts interesting, but I think the way it was taught just didn’t suit my learning style. When math was applied to something, I enjoyed it.  When it was a sheet of equations, my eyes glazed over.

In my memory, I was looking out the window, daydreaming as usual, when my math teacher, Mrs. Hanna, announced that she was going to try something new in class that day. She left the room momentarily and came back in wheeling a big cart with a machine on it.

At first I thought we were going to watch a film. Films in school were the best, even if they were always supposed to teach us something.  But as Mrs. Hanna rolled the cart to the front of the room, I realized this was no film projector.  It looked more like a giant version of the Nintendo I got for Christmas.

Suddenly, the front of my desk made a weird noise and something started coming up and out of it. It was a TV. I looked around and all the other kids had TVs coming out of their desks too. Then I noticed that Mrs. Hanna had asked Sarah, the girl who sat in front of me, to hand something out to the class.  Sarah walked by my desk carrying a big box and handed me a gray and black controller with two red buttons.  It was a Nintendo!

“Now class,” Mrs. Hannah announced. “Today we will be trying a new method of learning.  I’m sure most of you are familiar with how to use a Nintendo, but if you have any questions, please raise your hand and I’ll come by and help.  You may begin your lessons now.”

My TV screen had a message on it.  “PRESS START TO BEGIN,” it read.  I pressed the start button and my game loaded. After a few intro screens I was playing a game that looked a lot like my favorite Nintendo game, The Legend of Zelda. I was controlling a little guy in green, moving him around from screen to screen, when I came upon one of those round, red, spiky guys who would shoot fire out of their noses. I went to slash him with my sword when suddenly the screen changed. I was in a mode of the game I had never seen before. My character was on one side of the screen, the red, spiky guy on the other, and a math equation was between them.

“SOLVE THE PROBLEM TO DEFEAT THE ENEMY” read the message above the math equation.  It was an easy multiplication problem, one that I remembered how to solve from the few times I had actually paid attention in math class. I solved the problem and easily defeated the enemy.  I was rewarded with a green gem.  “This is pretty fun,” I thought to myself.

My game changed back to the regular screen and there were other enemies to fight.  I challenged one of them, but this time the math problem was one I didn’t know how to solve.  I thought for a while and then guessed.  I got it wrong!  My game character made a noise and I saw one of the three hearts on my health meter disappear.  Then a message appeared on the screen.  “PRESS START TO VISIT THE WIZARD AND LEARN TO DEFEAT THIS ENEMY.”

I pressed start and was introduced to a bearded guy in a blue wizard hat.  He went through a lesson on how to solve the equation I had been confronted with in my last battle.  The wizard showed me the best way to attack different types of math problems and he even gave me a few problems for practice as I sparred with him.  After a while I was ready to go back and fight the enemy who had defeated me.

This went on for quite a while.  I fought and defeated many enemies until I didn’t know how to solve the math problems, then I would visit the wizard and learn more.  After a while I had earned enough experience points to go to the next level and gained another heart on my health meter.  I even found a treasure chest and opened it by solving one of the hardest equations I’d ever solved. Inside, I found a boomerang.

With my new boomerang, I opened a secret door that revealed a hidden dungeon.  I battled my way through the dungeon until I faced the final boss enemy at the end.  The equations I had to solve to defeat the boss were too difficult for me; I lost all of the hearts on my health meter and my character died.  “GAME OVER”.

At that point, I was presented with a menu to enter my name and found that I had the 2nd highest score.  I looked at the other names on the list and saw that they were all kids in my class.  My friend Tom had the high score and I knew he would be bragging about it, so I started a new game and went right back to the wizard to learn as much as I could and get that top score.

I was so focused on the video game that I didn’t notice someone was calling my name.  “Ryan, would please stop looking out the window and come up to the board and solve this equation?  Ryan!” Mrs. Hanna was talking to me.  Everyone was looking at me.  The class was back to normal.  There were no TVs on the front of the desks.  Instead of Nintendo controllers, the other kids had pencils and papers out, their books open on their desks.  There was no giant Nintendo in the front of the room. I had been daydreaming the whole time. I was back in the real world, learning math the boring way.

Looking back on that daydream I had in 4th grade math class, I can’t help but wonder what school could have been like if, instead of a boring lecture and a sheet full of equations to solve, I actually was allowed to play a video game in order to learn math.  Like the educational films I watched in school, video games could have been an alternative teaching method, one that might have held the attention of someone whose learning style didn’t fit the traditional classroom.  My hope is that with all the new technology being used in classrooms today, maybe this generation’s daydreamers will find technology that teaches to their learning style.

My family gatherings have always been a relaxing day of catching up with news and recalling the past, while eating as much as your stomach can handle. At our most recent gathering, I ate plenty and picked up more than just news about our local sports teams—I realized the impact of meaningful training.

A few weeks prior to our gathering, I received the exiting news that I became uncle to Kaden. (Yes, I feel I’m really getting old now.) Of course, one of the big topics of conversation was the new addition to the family. Unfortunately, Kaden’s family lives 1500 miles away, so we depend on e-mail for a lot of updates. My grandmother started asking questions about how to access e-mail, how to view pictures, how to write back; all basic tasks that most of us just take for granted. At first, I wondered if she was serious. Then I recalled a few CustomGuide customers who provide our training to the retirement communities they operate; and here the very same scenario had unfolded in my own family.

After a brief walk though of some of the tasks and step by step guides, my grandmother felt she had all the power she needed to compete with the iGeneration because she had acquired the knowledge and skills she had wanted so badly. I’m happy to report much more learning took place and she has become one savvy 80 year old. Even the geek squad would be impressed. Well, maybe that’s stretching it a little, but I’m proud of her progress.

It occurred to me that the positive impact of training would be the same in a corporate setting. For example, someone putting together a large corporate project would desperately need to know how to use pivot tables in order to present and analyze their data. I’m proud of the fact that we have the training to empower people to learn the skills they need, whether it’s a grandma wanting to see her grandchild, or an employee wanting to climb the corporate ladder.

Understanding the growing demand and need for new training programs is all very exciting to us here at CustomGuide as we build and grow for the future. Taking another look at baby Kaden is a priceless value for someone like my grandmother and it shows that new found skills whether large or small can make a significant impact, no matter who the user is!

Matt is a member of our sales team at CustomGuide. He also hosts our daily webinars; register for one today!

Xander’s training lasted only a few seconds; but I’m confident he learned an important skill that he won’t soon forget. My 5-year-old son learned you don’t tease a mother goose that is sitting on a nest of eggs.

Xander attends two schools: He just graduated from one – a formal learning institution called preschool – where he learned about space, countries, and even some basic math. Xander is also enrolled in an informal learning institution that has many names, but here I’ll just call it “The School of Life,” where Xander is learning not to provoke geese, not to lick metal poles in January (especially if you live in Minnesota), and not to wash Dad’s iPhone in the sink.

Formal Learning

Informal Learning

All of us are enrolled in this institution as well, but most of the time we aren’t aware of exactly when Informal Learning is taking place. It’s estimated however, that 56 to 70% of work-related learning occurs outside of formal contexts. Trainers struggle with Informal Learning mainly because it’s intangible and difficult to assess. Many of them feel they need to “own” informal training to “own” all training in their organization. I’ve read many articles about how trainers can assess Informal Learning through their LMS, etc.

I don’t get it. How can you measure learning objectives and outcomes (at least in the traditional sense) for something the Learners themselves aren’t aware of?

Informal Learning isn’t a new concept at all; it’s always been a part of the workplace. But suddenly it’s a buzzword and now some organizations want to “measure” it. Personally, I don’t think you can accurately assess Informal Learning using traditional eLearning metrics. I think you can and should measure Informal Learning but it requires a totally different way of thinking. Here are just a few ideas I can think of to assess Informal Learning at your organization:

Ask the Right People
Most of the managers I know don’t care about learning—they care about performance and if their people are meeting their job expectations. Go outside your L&D department and ask some managers and ordinary users—they’ll tell you if this is the case.

Find What You CAN Measure
Our blog articles never seem to get many comments. Initially Melissa Peterson, the blog manager, and I were disappointed by this. Then last week, we discovered our quiet little blog actually has several hundred daily readers!  Someone thought of something I hadn’t—a custom Google Analytics report to track our blog readers. Wow! I’m glad we found that report and that Melissa never threw in the towel. I’m also glad that apparently a lot of you do read our blog. Thanks!

Stop Worrying About What You Can’t
I subscribe to a number of great eLearning blogs: Clive on Learning, eLearning Learning, and Rapid eLearning to name a few. I’ve never seen an article that comes with an assessment, nor would I ever take one. But I learn something new every time I read these blogs. I think we can safely assume the reason we read blog articles is to learn something; we don’t have to worry about measuring that because we know that it happens.

Measure What Matters
We were depressed. Social Learning is the hot new buzzword so of course we added the standard Like and Tweet This icons to our blog. Months past, each of our blog articles were only receiving a handful of tweets or likes. I thought about “cheating”—why not have everyone I know tweet bogus things like “omg! check out this post! #customguide #ruulzzz!!!” and try to be a part of the cool crowd?

We did a little research and found that very few of clients seemed to tweet or even have a Twitter account. We decided not to let it bother us—and after seeing the blog’s Google results we don’t worry at all. Our Twitter following and Facebook Likes are ever so slowly climbing—but Melissa and I have decided to focus on the older definitions of the words “Follow” and “Like”.

Wrapping up
Once I’m finished with this article I’m going to:

1. Send it not only to CustomGuide’s Authors, but to everyone at CustomGuide to see if they liked it and if they learned something.
2. Post it to our blog. I know from our new Google Analytics report that our blog gets read—I don’t see why this post won’t be. I’ll be curious (and should be) about how many people read this article.
3. If the people I asked at CustomGuide learned something, I’m going to assume some of our readers will as well.

Thanks for reading!

Jon

Jon High is the co-founder and President of CustomGuide. Xander is as cute as he looks and is doing brilliantly in both schools, and, yes, the iPhone is ok.