Sneak Peak: My Book on Gamification of Learning and Instruction

For a while I have been stealthy working on a book titled “The Gamification of Learning and Instruction”

Here is some leaked info about the book…look for it in Spring 2012

The first chapter introduces terminology. What is a game? What is gamification and what does that mean to faculty members, college instructors, instructional designers and other learning and development practitioners. The chapter provides some examples of gamification and parses the term into its component elements.

Chapter Two examines the individual elements that make up a game from the rules to the aesthetics and describes how they contribute to game play. It is important to note that it takes more than just one game element to make a game, it is the combination of many of these elements that make playing a game engaging.

Chapter Three presents theories behind the elements of gamification. The chapter covers operant conditioning and the reinforcement schedules as only one of many elements that make games engaging. Also explored are the concepts of distributed practice, social learning theory, achieving the flow state, scaffolding and game levels, and the power of episodic memory.

Chapter Four reviews research studies describing the effectiveness of games as well as the effectiveness of specific game elements such as the use of avatars and third person vs. first person view point. The goal of the chapter is to provide support to the argument that game-based learning and gamification are effective for changing behavior and creating positive learning outcomes.

The fifth chapter looks at how gamification can be used for learning and problem-solving. The chapter explores how games help with hand-eye coordination, how they are good for young and old learners and how they have been used to encourage and promote pro-social behavior. The chapter also explores how game interfaces and mechanics are being used to solve difficult scientific and geo-political problems.

Chapter Six is a discussion of both the different types of game players and the different types of games that exist. Cooperation, competitive and the self-expression aspects of games are addressed as are the different needs of novice, expert and master level players.

Chapter seven, presents a framework for developing games that teach higher order thinking skills from predicting outcomes, to synthesizing content to ultimately problem solving. The chapter also presents suggestions to help with the process of developing a game to solve a specific problem.

In Chapter Eight, methods are presented for creating game-based learning in the cognitive domains of declarative, conceptual and procedural knowledge as well as rules-based learning. Also covered are the affective or emotional domain, the psychomotor domain and the teaching of soft skills like negotiating and leadership.

How does one manage the process of designing and building a game, Chapter Nine addresses those issues by contrasting two project management methods, the ADDIE method and the scrum method. The chapter also provides an outline that can be used for the creation of a game-design document.

The first guest contributor appears in Chapter Ten, Lucas Blair, a game designer at MAYA Design and PhD. candidate in Modeling and Simulation at the University of Central Florida. Lucas carefully outlines taxonomy for building game reward structures.

The next guest contributor is Nathan Kapp (my gifted son) who wrote Chapter Eleven. Nathan has been playing video games his entire life. He provides an insider’s perspective on what games mean to the upcoming generation, the games he has played and what he has learned from games that he can apply to other areas of his life. The chapter nicely “validates” what all the theory states about game-based learning. He provides living proof of the impact.

The third guest contributor, providing chapter Twelve, is the Alicia Sanchez, the Games Czar of Defense Acquisition University, where she oversees the use of games and simulations in their curriculum. She describes how they have established a games common designed to reinforce concepts that should be known throughout the organization and not aimed at one particular task.

Koreen Olbrish is the final guest and she writes Chapter Thirteen. In the chapter she outlines how alternative reality games are moving game concepts into the field and out of classrooms. She provides basic definitions and describes how they can augment traditional instruction and learning.

Chapter Fourteen provides a final review of the previous chapters and explains how gamification is not a fad but rather a trend toward more interactive and meaningful learning.

What do you think of the outline? What might be missing?