Thought it’d be a good time to share the 7 most interesting links I’ve looked at in the last month or so.

• Learning From Game Design: 11 Gambits For Influencing User Behaviour
  Dan Lockton about 11 ways to increase engagement using ‘gamey’ ways.
• Thoughts On Learning In Games And Designing Educational Computer Games
  Again an older but comprehensive article that gives great ideas on where to use learning games. Note the references.
• An excellent article on Creating Flow, Motivation and Fun in Learning Games.
  Was printed as a chapter in The Design of Learning Games Springer-Verlag, 2011
• Educational Game Design Model (NMSU Learning Games Lab)
  Barbara Chamberlin, with the NMSU Learning Games Lab, shares the Educational Game Design Model developed at NMSU. Addresses various aspects of the process of game development.
• Improving The Way We Design Games For Learning By Examining How Popular Video Games Teach
  This paper from UCLA focuses on how to effectively integrate teaching “how to play a game” with teaching an “instructional domain” within a game for learning. Has many interesting details relevant to game design, recommended reading.
• ‘Narrative’ in Serious or Learning Game Design Research
  This is a great article on the use of narrative in learning games. Describes narrative approaches, some of which are appropriate to learning.
• Learning Game Design: Lessons From The Trenches
  An interesting presentation from Sharon Boller, great advice from the trenches of gamification.

The post 7 Great Learning Game Design Links first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

While the post addresses issues pertaining to game design, I realized that a lot of what Dave says applies to Learning Design and Interaction Design as well. Here’s a brief summary of what I learnt.

• As learning designers, we often fail to engage the learners due to some very basic assumptions that we make about the audience versus the actual thought processes of that audience.
• We tend to take it for granted that a cursor appearing and disappearing is sufficient to let the learner know when they can or should interact with the content.
• Sometimes, learners want us to tell them what they should try.
• Most learners will investigate on-screen objects if they can think of a specific reason to do so, ignoring anything that is not obviously relevant to the problem at hand. The fact that clickable objects on the screen attempt to portray themselves as interesting by displaying text whenever you mouse over them probably won’t work as a lure.
• It is not uncommon in learning design to assume that the player will eventually explore all of the clickable items in an environment. Clearly, this is not a safe assumption. It is also not uncommon to attach vital information to these explorations. We do this at our own risk.

All the reasons above make it all the more important for us to communicate very clearly to the learner about what is it that the learner can do within the learning environment, and also what he should do. The clearer our instructions, the better learning experience we create. After all, we want the learners who take our courses to feel comfortable about exploring the learning environment that we present them with.

Most importantly, “Assume nothing. Nothing!”

The post Assume Nothing. Nothing! first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

As a learning designer my primary responsibility is viewed as creating learning content and systems that meet instructional outcomes. I’ve started to take a different view – what’s more important for me as a designer is to deliver an ‘experience’. Today one aspect of offering a contemporary experience means leveraging media and metaphors from popular culture. Games have started to permeate popular culture, and this results in the need to include ‘gaminess’ in learning interactions to offer an engaging learning experience.

Playing video games is one obvious way to imbibe the essential philosophy of digital games and the varied game-play mechanics. The other is to look at other’s experiences, and there are many who’ve documented their game design experiences in various blogs. I’m listing (in no particular order) some of the ones we follow at Upside, perhaps you’ll find some good reading.

1. Philomath Games – A constantly updated blog that includes posts that discuss a variety of game design and development issues.  I’m an immediate fan of anyone who proclaims “I believe that game development is inherently about learning. I believe that interactivity itself, as an art and a science, is fundamentally closer than all previous human media to the thought processes integral to human identity. What we engage in when we play has fundamental similarities to the scientific method, and the means by which we explore and understand the world….”
2. Game Design Blog – Another frequently updated blog that contains a wealth of information about game design and development. The posts are categorized differently from most other blogs – ’21 Behaviours of a Great Designer’; an interesting angle.
3. A Games Design Blog – Rob Hale’s blog is another that covers the entire gamut of game design and development activities. He particularly offers a great first person view on what’s happening in the game design world, gives examples and provides some very useful insights.
4. TooMuchImagination – A blog that hasn’t been updated in the recent months, but it still contains some very telling posts about game design and development.
5. Applied Game Design – Wonderful posts on game and interaction design; definitely recommended. I especially like the post on creating a game design document; you might want to check it out.
6. Casual Game Design – An old site, now dysfunctional, it remains one of my personal favorites, this blog gives great insights into casual games. That’s especially interesting because most learning games need to be casual in nature – easy to learn, quick to play with, and containing simple game mechanisms and reward structures.
7. Fine Game Design – Writes about game interface design; there also tends to be interesting news from academia about the world of game design.
8. Costik – An old blog that ran out of steam, but still contains fascinating posts on games. The author moved on to Play This Thing!
9. Game Musings – Often talks about games for the iPhone and Facebook; which aligns really well with our interests in those areas – mobile gaming and social gaming. Eventually, I believe there is significant potential
10. _BlackBored – Alright, this isn’t quite a blog, however it hosts some of the liveliest discussions, best articles and quite literally a ton of other stuff about games; a truly amazing place to learn.
11. Screen Play – Great blog about various aspects of game design and development. I especially like the articles that give perspectives about driving projects creatively, yet being able to manage the development process well enough to deliver a refined product on time and within budget. These are constraints we see commonly in the learning industry.

The post Our Favorite Game Design Blogs first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.