Playing games is one of the activities which most stimulates people. I believe this is because they are at a heightened level of activation. To play a game (well), participants must understand the rules and know how they can best achieve the end despite opponents or obstacles. Everyone likes achieving success and winning (Charlie Sheen more than most) so there is also the thrill of anticipation and excitement for a participant of a game. Whether the motivating factor for gamers is meeting a challenge, working with a collaborative group, or taking part in an exciting - dare I say "epic" to use Jane McGonigal's terminology from her Ted Talk - storyline there is something about games which doesn't always translate to life outside of the game.
I will return to McGonigal later in this post, but first I want to talk about a challenge I had given to my brother and I by my father. The game was Ping Pong. We had had a Ping Pong table in the basement, but it didn't get too much use after the initial excitement of getting a new "toy." Shortly after my father introduced the game and how to play to my brother and I, we degenerated into attacking each other and draining any fun out of the game. The two of us got so wrapped up in goofing off or attacking each other that the game was not fun at all for any of the three of us. Luckily Dad had a solution.
In a true game-based learning approach, he designed two challenges for us to complete. One challenge was an individual while the other was a cooperative challenge. The first challenge was to bounce the Ping Pong ball 100 times consecutively on a Ping Pong paddle. The explicit goal was five crisp dollars; the implicit goals however are more interesting to consider, and I haven't considered them until now. My Dad used this individual challenge as a way for us to have self-motivated discipline which were lacking and would need to harness to productively play the game. It was also a clearly defined goal (bounce ball 100 times) which could be met with perseverance and practice. My younger brother completed this before me which got me even more focused on finishing it. Finally, we both completed the challenge. Then, in true keeping with excellent teaching techniques (note: my father is not a teacher, he just does some things good teachers could learn from), he stepped up the challenge which now required us to bounce the ball on the paddle while flipping the paddle between each bounce for another 100 times. Scaffolding!!!! Quicker this time, we both met this challenge as well.
After completing the individual challenge, we were now ready for the cooperative challenge. The cooperative challenge was for my brother and I to hit the ping pong ball back and forth across the table ten times each (20 hits total). We played together getting one to three hits off, but not quite making it up too much past that point at first. We would either get excited by opportunities to beat each other, or got over-excited and hit the ball too hard. To keep the fun going, my brother and I wouldn't just hit back and forth on the table, we would play the ball off the wall. This fun helped push us over into the money zone. Finally, after a some hours of practice, we had it. We had a few more trial runs with at least 20 strokes before inviting dad in for the final assessment. We got it on the first try. After that, he joined in the game and we all played together.
The same principals my dad applied, were also applied by McGonigal. She and her team designed ways for players to work on real world problems using all the components of game-based learning. What she got were some very powerful results. What if this were applied to the education students receive in the classroom? What if this kind of learning was a direct pipeline from high school to the job market or more challenging projects in post-secondary study? The results could be epic.
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