Playing with Media-Savvy Learners

Tony DiRomualdo's article on Wisconsin Technology Network makes some really insightful comments, connecting game-based learning and "media-savvy workers," who turn out to be not only the young, but also people like us! Let's face, you don't have to be a Gen X'er to be bored by traditional eLearning.

And it's not just eLearning, I'm seeing this trend in the corporate workplace, as well as academia, where I teach online Humanities courses to a lot of media-savvy students. Basically, they're connected big time. They're posting to MySpace, they're blogging, they're hooked wirelessly, and yet when they come to work or school, they're feeling inhibited. I even had one of my student volunteer to digitize some History channel documentaries and host the streaming video. Why? Not because he was a techno-geek, but because he wanted an engaging learning experience that included more resources than I, his teacher, could provide. Learning becomes a collaborative experience, which media savvy people demand.

In the last 15 years of doing eLearning development, I've seen the growing fear of technology from those who are afraid to relinquish their control -- whether it's control of information or control of the classroom. But the media savvy natives want the ability to free-form their way through work or school. They want to collaborate and contribute.

So what does all this have to do with game-based learning, or eLearning in general? We need to stop following the paradigm of the classroom -- forcing learners into the "click next to continue" model -- which is basically saying: "I know what and how you need to learn this content, so l sit back and watch." That model is dead, or at least it should be.

Unfortunately, too often eLearning management systems are helping to keep this model alive. With early SCORM conformance standards often dictating a simplisitic linear approach, learners aren't finding engagement. True, the latest versions of SCORM are allowing some non-linear approaches to eLearning development, but you have to be a rocket scientist to figure them out.

Game-based eLearning Approaches

So what does this trend mean? Sure, we need to adhere to eLearning standards, but designers need the ability to push themselves to create more engaging eLearning, using game strategies to increase collaboration, competition and self-directed learning.

What should eLearning look like? To find out, we need to stop exerting total control over the learning process and stop using standards issues as an excuse to produce linear learning. It's time to get as creative as those media-savvy workers and give them what they want -- engagement.