I’ve seen a lot of game-playing recently (and not just the political sort within some of my client organisations).

There’s been a huge amount written by – and debated between – educational researchers about the many benefits of playing games. But two points have really jumped out at me over the last couple of weeks. Observing even intermittent gamers I’m struck by:

• Their goal-focussed effort; they realise that to get anywhere, you need to concentrate, think, work at things.
• Their acceptance of the need to make mistakes and learn from them. I watched one kid lose 13-0 in an online football (soccer) game without the slightest fuss; he knew that a few attempts later he’d beat the computer, which of course he did.

Looking at a lot of corporate e-learning, I ‘m struck by how so little of it is based on the assumption that either of these behaviours are necessary. Much e-learning appears to be based on the assumption that we need to “make it easy for” the e-learner; that they should barely notice they’re working; that serious concentration and effort aren't required. And I long ago lost count of the number of times I’ve been told that we can’t cultivate mistake-making amongst e-learners because they’ll be put off; they’ll abandon ship and won’t come back. The poor petals. To make it worse, the corporate obsession with measurement has often made it too unsafe for e-learners to try things out, make errors, and learn from them. They know they’re being “watched”; that the dreaded LMS will detect their ignorance (but not their learning, of course).

Once again, we have a gap between what real people do (i.e. gamers – soon, if not already the majority of the population), and what many of those responsible for e-learning expect them to do. But surely, goal-focussed effort and learning from mistakes are exactly what organisations want from their people.

A slight tangent. Of course, not all learning needs to be effortful. I’m particularly intrigued by accidental, effortless learning. It seems to me that amongst the current buzz about informal learning, we’re not paying enough attention to the stuff we just pick up without meaning to; the stuff we don’t reflect on consciously, that we don’t debate (with ourselves or others, online or off). I like Vavoula’s typology that picks out quite nicely the difference between intentional and unintentional learning (see also Eraut’s work). If you’re interested in other things Vavoula’s done, have a look at her FutureLab publication on mobile learning.

Anyway, presumably what organisations really want is for people to learn effortlessly, fluently – accidentally, as part of their second-by-second activity. Or maybe they’re so concerned with measurement that they don’t care about it.