Sealund’s Serious Games Blog

Your role in getting the game your employees need
When you know that a serious game can motivate and engage your employees, and you’re ready to introduce games into existing courses, the question arises – Do I have to do anything differently to “get in the game,” or, really, to get the game in?

Many of the basics of your role are the same as for any new element of a course. You still have to know the workplace performance behaviors you want the course to effect overall, and those specific behaviors you want this new element to target. And you have to do some internal marketing to obtain funding for the project. Because of the technological newness of games in the workplace, you may need to make a compelling case for the CTO and the CFO. Let’s consider some of the elements of a compelling case, from its components to its presentation.

Components of the case for serious games
In addition to the usual elements in your training project proposal, these considerations support the introduction of serious games.

• Engagement (fun) is the necessary precursor to education that “sticks.” Serious games have been proven to have higher levels of engagement and retention than other modes of learning. Performance improvement is where the ROI is.
• Identify the behavioral outcomes desired, and prioritize the behaviors that bring the greatest profit if done right or run the highest risk if done wrong. Ask the designer for a prototype of a portion of the game or an excerpt from a similar game targeting one or more of the highest-value behaviors, that you can use when presenting your case.
• Emotional triggers support learning retention, even beyond the usually good job-transfer of skills learned in a realistic simulation. That’s why game-based simulations are more effective for engagement and retention than plain “rote” simulations. The game will model each aspect of the player’s experience realistically – in emotional essence at least, and in physical environment if possible.
• One more aspect of emotional as well as job-simulation realism is competition. Determine whether the game is used by individuals playing against their own previous personal best, against virtual adversaries, or against other real players in real-time. This decision is based in part on how the targeted behaviors “play out” on the job. Who are the competitors – individuals, teams, or one’s own achievement last month?
• The serious game will reflect the motivational profile of the targeted learners, and build those types of motivations into the game-play.
• Whether the game or simulation is part of a blended-media course, or a stand-alone course in itself, you can show how it complements or replaces existing course materials cost-effectively and takes the overall program or curriculum to a higher level.
• If decision-making is one of the behaviors targeted by the game, it will allow for creativity, exploration through several paths, and trial-and-error learning to stimulate good habits of decision-making.

Presentation of the case for serious games
Beyond the standard cost-benefit, ROI spreadsheet, you have one additional and very convincing means of persuasion – experience with the game itself. This is why you ask the designer for a prototype of the proposed game or a sample of a similar game. Give the funding decision-makers a chance to play the game. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but this experience is worth a thousand spreadsheets.

What do think? Please share your comments.

Serious Games = Serious Learning!™

 For more information about Sealund’s Serious Games, please visit our website at www.sealund.com.

Today’s top-performing corporations and organizations are maximizing the success and ROI of their employee training and assessment programs by deploying Serious Games technologies. Industry leaders such as PSCU Financial Services, Tech Data, Progress Energy, St. Petersburg College, USA Funds and The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation have all upgraded their training and eLearning programs by using Sealund’s Serious Games engines and customized Serious Games to improve employee engagement, comprehension and retention.

If you are looking for ways to get serious about serious games and you plan to attend the eLearning Guild Conference in Orlando, Florida this week, please join me (Barbara Sealund) and Bruce Ford, Manager Creative Media Services at PSCU Financial Services for “Preparing Corporate America for Serious Games.” During this session, we will discuss ways to help decision makers embrace the concept of Serious Games. We will also examine several case studies involving actual organizations that have successfully incorporated serious games into their training programs.

If you do attend the eLearning Guild Conference, please stop by our booth #216 and enter a drawing to win a Nintendo DS or iPod touch!

If you are unable to attend the eLearning Guild Conference, click the link below to view a list of my upcoming conference sessions and online presentations on Serious Games.

http://www.sealund.com/news.php

Serious Games = Serious Learning!™

For more information about Sealund’s Serious Games, please visit our website at www.sealund.com

Sealund’s Performance Improvement team has been researching the empirical evidence of the effectiveness of Serious Games, with which to assure our clients that Serious Games achieve serious performance. We know from experience that workplace performance, based on retention of knowledge and transfer of knowledge and skills directly to the job, depends on the learners’ depth of engagement in learning experiences. So it makes sense that learners’ intense engagement in Serious Games, such as simulation-based games, would enhance both retention and transference of newly learned abilities – and provide a valuable ROI, as well as ROE.

Little Empirical Corporate Research Published

Bottom line – our review of published research demonstrated the high level of Serious Games’ effectiveness when selected as the appropriate instructional medium.We also want to share with you some of the complexities we discovered in the research itself. As we investigated the empirical research, we found that some researchers found transference of soft skills to the workplace difficult to measure, and that some analysts’ statements about the implications of findings are ambiguous. These predicaments may result from the fact that the bulk of published research has occurred in academic environments, business schools whose students’ on-job effectiveness could not be measured. Corporations that analyze training’s transference to the job as a means of performance improvement rarely publish their findings publicly.

Serious Games make training a success

Statistical and Anecdotal Research Findings

Particularly interesting for its observations on the significance of instructional design in achieving optimal learning outcomes, one 2005 meta-study reviews “the outcomes claimed in journal articles that report empirical work, indicating the usefulness of the frameworks, and the necessity to consider the role of affective learning. The article ends with some comments on the relationship of instructional design to effective games and learning outcomes.” [Classification of Learning Outcomes: Evidence from the Computer Games Literature. Harold F. O’Neil, Richard Wainess, Eva L. Baker. Curriculum Journal, Volume 16, Issue 4, December 2005.]

In one specific (if very early) study, business school students who completed a series of business simulations modules commonly reported that the simulation was the first time they truly understood the financial modeling and analysis concepts they had studied theoretically. In the simulations, they could apply those theories, base decisions on them, and experience the consequences. [What’s in It for Me? Over, Under, and Around Using a Computerized Business Simulation. James Estes, University of South Carolina. Journal of Experiential Learning and Simulation, Volume 1, Number 1, 1979.]

Simulation and gaming give learners the chance to apply theories and techniques in business-oriented simulations. One study found that “especially [for simulations] involving quantitative techniques, it is often difficult to isolate the decision making process from the mechanics of the simulation.” The computer-based simulation designed for this study was meant to alleviate that problem. This study’s conclusions report that “students have always reacted with enthusiasm. IMS [Inventory Management Simulation] has exceeded our expectations as a teaching device.” Empirically, “two groups of students in an operations management course were given the identical exposure to inventory management except that one group ran IMS and the other did not. Both groups were given a multiple-choice exam, which included five basic knowledge questions on independent demand inventory systems. The group using IMS scored a mean of 4.23 (S=1.23) out of 5 correct and the group not using IMS scored a mean of 2.89 (S=1.37)out of 5 correct. The difference between the means is significant at the 0.0006 level.” [An Inventory Management Simulation. James A. Pope. Old Dominion University, Department of MIS/Decision Sciences. Journal of Experiential Learning and Simulation, Volume 3, Number 3 & 4, 1981.]

Another meta-review of research on Serious Games’ effectiveness, found: “Some games provide effective instruction for some tasks some of the time, but these results may not be generalizable to other games or instructional programs. No evidence indicates that games are the preferred instructional method in all situations. Instructional games are more effective if they are embedded in instructional programs that include debriefing and feedback. Instructional support during play increases the effectiveness of instructional games.” [The Effectiveness of Instructional Games: A Literature Review and Discussion. Robert T. Hays, Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division. 2005]

Dispute Over Research Results Interpretation

One analytical review of many studies gives a clear picture of what is unclear in the existing research. “Substantial disagreement exists in the literature regarding which educational technology results in the highest cognitive gain for learners. It was found that across people and situations, games and interactive simulations are more dominant for cognitive gain outcomes. …When students navigated through the programs themselves, there was a significant preference for games and interactive simulations. However, when teachers controlled the programs, no significant advantage was found. Further, when the computer dictated the sequence of the program, results favored those in the traditional teaching method over the games and interactive simulations.” [Computer Gaming And Interactive Simulations For Learning: A Meta-Analysis. Jennifer J. Vogel, David S. Vogel, Jan Cannon-Bowers, Clint A. Bowers, Kathryn Muse, Michelle Wright. Journal of Educational Computing Research. Volume 34, Number 3, 2006.]

In February, 2008, the Serious Games listserv (hosted by Digital Mill) saw a lengthy exchange about empirical research into Serous Games’ effectiveness. Many participants expressed dismay at the number of studies asserting that learning games are no more effective than other media, when their own experience contradicts that. One listserv member, himself an author of one of the studies cited in the previous section, explained those assumptions: “The reason you’re seeing all those negatives regarding games goes back to the 1983 article by Clark. His meta-analysis resulted in the often-misunderstood statement that you cannot learn from media. People often misinterpret that statement to mean that if you expect people to learn, you better not use media. What the statement really means is that media is simply the delivery vehicle, and it is the instructional methods and strategies built into the specific implementation of that medium that will determine whether learning will occur. [Richard Wainess, Ph.D., Senior Educational Researcher, CRESST/UCLA, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, University of California, Los Angeles]

Importance of Analysis & Instructional Design

The bold-print information in all citations above reinforces what instructional designers already know: people learn best when the training medium is appropriate to the subject matter and they’re in control of the learning process. Because learner-control is a key characteristic of Serious Games, proven instructional best practices support empirical and anecdotal findings that, for the types of subject matter appropriate to them, experiential Serious Games are more effective than other media. That’s why at Sealund, we begin every project with analysis of the client’s subject matter and required learning outcomes. We want to ensure that each learning solution uses the appropriate medium or blend of media for the project’s content and goals.You may find these resources useful for your own review of research:

• The Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning website contains a number of research papers on the effectiveness of simulation-style Serious Games in the Bernie Keys Library.
• The Education & Information Technology Library contains peer-reviewed and published articles.
• A Google Scholar search on “serious games effectiveness” (or “learning games effectiveness) returns a long list of articles.

What do think? Please share your comments.

Serious Games = Serious Learning!™

For more information about Sealund’s Serious Games, please visit our website at www.sealund.com