There's been a fascinating conversation going on at the Serious Games listserv. I asked a question along the lines of: "what do designers of Serious Games need to know? What skills do they need?". This links in to my work in the e-learning mainstream, which attempts to answer these questions for e-learning designers.

The replies have been really useful. I'm going to do a full summary in a few days, but briefy so far it's things like:

• Storytelling skills (including dialogue writing)
• Knowledge of gaming patterns
• Creative thinking skills
• Knowledge of scoring devices and mechanisms

What's come up in the conversation is that the role of e-learning ID/LDs in the design of SGs should, fairly obviously, be to input "learning expertise" into the process; to ensure that the "interleaving" of learning and gaming is effective.

But here's the problem: I'm not convinced that most ID/LDs - I'm talking about the foot-soldiers in the large agencies and the writer/producer/trainers in large organisations, not the bloggers and gurus - really know enough about learning to help much. The skills that the e-learning industry, as currently constituted, has taught these people, centre around client management and content processing, not learning experience design. These people are very highly skilled - don't get me wrong. But they don't know much about learning, because the endless swathes of systems training, product knowledge, procedure and compliance courses don't need learning expertise. Most IDs/LDs can squeeze a manual into a set of powerpoint slides, drag 'n drops and MCQs...but has their work taught them how to change people and improve performance? I don't think so. 

I'll push my point further. Firstly, many types of SG demand that designers shift from a content processing mindset towards one based around experience design. But tools and methodologies in the e-learning mainstream have very widely militated against experience design, in favour of ever more efficient content processing. Most rapid tools, as I've written elsewhere, are aimed at allowing monkeys to write dull rubbish. Again, don't get me wrong: you can use rapid tools to produce fantastically creative stuff, but that's not what they're aimed at. They're efficiency tools, and they've tended to push our already inappropriately skilled IDs/LDs further down the efficiency (as opposed to effectiveness) dead end.

Secondly, a critical problem is that, at least until the last few months, the e-learning industry have been commercially successful. So the feedback that e-learning designers are receiving from clients is "we like you...more of the same please". This is a little different from what many learners are saying, but in the great majority of cases, e-learners are not consulted on their views. A consequence of this dubious success is that I have sometimes observed, when trying to train e-learning designers in sophisticated (i.e. change oriented) learning methods, they are resistant; "our clients don't need this". (OK - but your learners do, and if you just bothered to measure effectiveness, I think your clients' minds would change pretty sharpish). This contrasts strongly with games designers, ad agency "creatives" and other non-e-learning design professionals, who I love working with, not just because of their creativity, but because of their open approach to learning about learning. I was once forced by a senior ad executive to stay behind after a workshop until 2am (no booze involved!) just talking about problem-based learning...

So I think the Serious Games community has to answer some "serious" questions:

• who's going to design the convincing, commercially-viable, performance-oriented SG's of the future? Is it the current generation of e-learning designers?
• how are we going to cultivate these designers? 
• are the e-learning agencies the gateway into SGs? Or are marketing/advertising/design agencies, who tend to be more customer/solution oriented, likely to be more responsive? Or specialist SG agencies, which is the current model? We shall see...

Cammy Bean's typically thorough summary of a session by Brett Schlenker has lots in it that's useful. 

Given my focus on learner engagement, I was particularly taken by this list:

• Keep it quick
• Make it short
• Be really creative
• Make something that actually affects behavior (marketers want people to change their behavior – drink pepsi not coke, drink coke not pepsi)
• Make it truly memorable

Don’t just need IDs on your staff – get some creatives in there who look at things a bit differently.

Understand gaming theory and gaming design. 

Put the customer/consumer/learner first.  We say we do…but we don’t often do it.

I reckon the really tough one here is "be really creative". I'm not convinced that a lot of people in e-learning are particularly interested in creativity. Indeed I reckon many (most?) are fearful that the conditions necessary to stimulate creativity (lack of structure, "not knowing", playing not planning etc. etc.) will lead to loss of business. Indeed, the phrase "Don't just need IDs on your staff - get some creatives..." is particularly damning - isn't it!?

For me - and for many long-term learning designers - the act of designing a learning experience is deeply creative. It's why I do what I do.

As I focus more and more on e-learning innovations designed to engage learners, I'm directing readers over to my other blog, Innovate2Engage.

Today there are entries about the effectiveness of serious gaming, and alternatives to conventional 2D page-turning methods for e-learning courses.

This blog will continue to rant occasionally on other themes....

I stumbled across this from Tom Gram, about ADDIE (oh no, not again). It's a really pretty good explanation of the relevance of ADDIE in today's environment, including some excellent diagrams including this one from Cyber Media Creations.

I started making a reply to it, but it turned into a blog entry, so briefly, a few quick points:

1. A study I did in 2005 showed that outside of the military/police and similar, anything like rigorous application of ADDIE is almost wholly absent in the UK/Europe. ISD/ADDIE was and is a North American phenomenon. It's still taught in US/Canadian educational institutions; in UK/European institutions it's widely regarded as an historical anomaly. This isn't because we're "ahead" or "behind" North America; it's because much of the rest of the world is different from North America. The really interesting questions are around why, in what ways, the implications etc.
   
   
2. I've heard many times that expert ADDIE/ISD users treat it loosely, which is fine (that's the nature of developing expertise; see any model of expertise e.g. Dreyfus and Dreyfus). That's kind of, very roughly what I do. Where we need to get to, in training new professionals is a point where we get people to the truth - that ADDIE is an interesting concept and a means of design support - very early on in their development. This is absolutely not the case in the military and similar, where hundreds (probably thousands) are still taught ADDIE/ISD as an immovable and inflexible truth. Indeed, I hear that the UK MoD has just produced another e-learning program about it (which, I suspect, didn't use ISD when it was being designed/produced because the honest truth is that nobody does...).
   
   
3. Why are we so engaged in still talking about it? Because I think we (instructional/learning design, learning technology etc.) have a sense of insecurity about what we do. We used to have a process (ADDIE), and....eeeek....now we don't.
   
   
4. I often hear, when I'm pouring scorn on traditional applications of ISD, that we don't have an alternative: I disagree. We don't have another huge, comprehensive methodology, but then we wouldn't these days because life isn't like that any more. What we have is a messy, evolving, confusing mass of heuristics and half-digested processes, which kind of reflects the reality of day to day design.
   
   
5. A mischievous point: with the kind of rapid authoring tools we have at our disposal now, I could probably have written a course in the time it took to read Tom's posting and make this response.