Today’s knowledge workers are dealing with a world full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – the so-called “VUCA world”. Jens Hilgers, CEO of Turtle Entertainment GmbH and Geewa Games, Facebook’s top 10 game developer and publisher, spoke to the ONLINE EDUCA News Service about the challenges faced by knowledge workers and how games can support them in the lifelong learning process.

Hilgers himself started playing video games when he was ten or eleven years old – a pastime he later turned into his job, studying software engineering and becoming a serial entrepreneur by developing websites that were dealing with computer games. When he started his professional career, he strongly believed that computer games would replace the more traditional entertainment forms such as movies and TV. Although this has not yet fully happened, computer games are extremely popular with the younger generation – the workers of the future – and already influence how many knowledge workers operate.

Why? Because the virtual world ran ahead of the real world and, as Hilgers foresaw, he soon found that the experiences and skills applied in the gaming world also transfer well to the real world. For instance, in a multi-player game, you need to cooperate with people from different countries and backgrounds – just like in global companies with international teams. Whereas before it was difficult enough to get CEOs together for a conference call, it’s now standard procedure for many international companies to have regular virtual meetings. “In both worlds, the virtual and the real one, you need to be successful in a relatively short period of time,” says Hilgers. “Nowadays, ten-year-olds already learn through online games to collaborate with different people from different cultures in order to achieve a common goal, a skill extremely valuable in the 21^st century workday.”

But gaming is not just teaching our kids and us how to cooperate in a globalised work environment.  Online games are at the forefront of technological developments. At one point, Geewa Games, which interacts with 10 million gamers every month, was faced with such an influx of players from all over the world that scalability became the foremost technological challenge. The key to their success was cloud computing – something that was unthinkable five or six years ago. However, the second biggest challenge is as old as humanity itself: “Whenever it gets competitive, people try to cheat,” explains Hilgers. “They try to find out how far they can go in order to win”. Hence, protection against cheating is a major technological issue for anyone dealing with competitive online games, and the younger generation is quite ingenious when it comes to finding loopholes. It’s not always easy to stay ahead of them.

In a nutshell, the online, mobile world is constantly changing and requires agility and accessibility – features that large companies might find hard to implement due to their organisational structure. Additionally, in large companies, the workers’ differences in age can be a major issue, as on the one hand the older generations might be sceptical to change and be hesitant about adopting new tools such as social media, while the younger generation won’t work without them.

Before online games became a popular pastime, people didn’t expect instant feedback for every step they took. Nowadays, younger workers, who are used to being rewarded quickly and constantly, are more motivated to work when they are being “gamified”, meaning when gaming methods are applied to their non-gaming work contexts.

Originally  a popular marketing tool, gamification  soon became a useful tool in learning, too. When it is applied correctly, it makes technology more engaging, encourages people to perform tasks they would otherwise think boring and makes their educational experience much more effective. The fun in any good game is actually the built-in learning process[i], no matter whether the game is considered to be “entertainment” or “serious”. Thus, the same factors which make well-designed games highly motivational also make them ideal learning environments. Two important lessons for any company which wants keep their knowledge workers “flowing” in the VUCA world.

The huge advantage that younger workers have is that, having grown up with games, they’ve learnt to learn constantly. To get to the next level, an online gamer needs to acquire new skills to proceed. He or she needs to concentrate on several tasks simultaneously whilst also thinking about what’s round the next corner. But how can decision-makers who lack the generational experience of competing in online games implement the right strategy for their workers and thus keep up with the ever-changing challenges of today’s world?

The solution is simple: “Start playing,” is Jens Hilgers’ ultimate advice, “When you’re dealing with games, be it gamification or just understanding what kind of games your people play, don’t talk about things without experiencing them yourself. What’s most important in today’s environment is the need to be open and agile enough to try these services, to understand them and to get a feeling for what excites people, before you can make a good judgement.”

Jens Hilgers will be part of BUSINESS EDUCA’s plenary session entitled: Learning in a VUCA World, How Knowledge Workers Learn to Innovate, on Friday 29^th November from 09:30-11:00.

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The rationale behind game-based learning has instant appeal: interactive play that engages learners while simultaneously immersing them in the subject matter they must master. In designing and selecting suitable games for incorporation in the classroom routine, educators and innovators must be cognizant of the principles of effective game-based instruction. In session VIR05, The Best Kept Secrets of Game-Based Learning, distinguished speakers will offer insight into how virtual environments and game-based learning can be integrated into school curricula seamlessly in order to increase learner motivation and enhance collaborative learning. The  speakers give us a sneak peek into their top secrets on successful game-based learning.

Ben Betts is a research engineer at the International Digital Laboratory, University of Warwick, UK, and his presentation is entitled Creating Epic Engagement with Game-Based Learning. His top secret is:

“Fun! People sometimes get bogged down with the details of the rewards and points and how the games are structured. In order to make game-based learning work, you have to remember the ‘fun factor.’”

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, founder and CEO of Serious Games Interactive in Denmark, will present a paper entitled Important Lessons from the Last 10 Years with Game-Based-Learning. One secret he’ll share before the conference is:

“Align your games with your learning objectives.”

Petri Lounaskorpi of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland is a teacher and an ardent supporter of ICT use in education having spent many years developing web-based learning systems for students and trainee teachers. Lounaskorpi’s OEB presentation is entitled Involving Teachers in Games and Virtual Learning Environments. His top tip on game-based learning is:

“When you introduce games into the curriculum, you have to remove and replace a different element, so you must ensure that your new approach fulfils the curriculum objectives.”

Euan Mackenzie is the CEO of 3MRT, an Edinburgh-based international company that develops game-based e-learning software and visual mapping tools. He will be chairing this OEB session, and for now, he is keeping mum on his secrets!

OEB Session VIR05, The Best Kept Secrets of Game-Based Learning takes place on Thursday, December 1st at 11.45-13.00

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In the Future Classrooms session at OEB 2011, presenters will discuss current e-learning innovations that are forecast to play an important role in the didactic practices of years to come. Teacher and ICT trainer Bram van der Kruk of Het Amsterdams Lyceum in the Netherlands has devoted much time to analysing the reward and achievement systems of modern video games. He argues that these reward systems reveal much about player styles and strategies and thus have much value for academic learning.

Game studies

When he is not teaching students, Bram van der Kruk trains teachers to use IT for the classroom at his own Netherlands firm Meerdanhetbord. He has noticed the yawning gap between the wired world in which young people now live and the traditional classroom, where they are often confronted with the teaching materials of a past era and where a single instructor still directs affairs from the front of the room. He found that video games are a way of bridging this divide.

Young people are accustomed to seeing their performance and gaming activity tracked and stored electronically and van der Kruk thinks educators can borrow the concept of the highly effective data storage systems used in newer video games. He researched the reward and achievement strategies in various popular “COTS” (Commercially Available Off The Shelf) games including Starcraft 2, Battlefield 3 and the Grand Theft Auto series. These are games played on external consoles like Xbox 360 and PlayStation where gamers often battle against each other online. The gamers build online personal databases that can reveal their personal gaming strategy and style and demonstrate how they respond to in-game rewards, achievements, trophies and gaming points. Bram van der Kruk thinks these online achievement systems and gamer profiles are an untapped source of information about student learning strategies.

Double or nothing

Bram van der Kruk

Just as people today have their own “data double” in cyberspace, covering their financial, medical and social records, gamers usually develop a gaming data double which represents their accumulated gaming experiences, their rewards and their shortcomings. Digital natives who grew up in the wired world are already adept at interpreting these profiles. Bram van der Kruk says, “They’re already used to the internalising and visualisation that is a part and parcel of interpreting their own and other people’s data doubles. I want to argue that these online gaming achievement systems reveal an individual’s learning style, so this is something that can be applied to the educational setting.”

Despite the many inroads that ICTs have made in classrooms over the past decade, there is little material on how data doubles might be used for sound teaching and assessment. Van der Kruk argues that teachers ought to take a leaf from the gaming world. He expects the students of the future to have academic data doubles offering a comprehensive profile of their learning styles, shortcomings and achievements. He expects developers to modify the video game achievement systems for educators and students. “There is so much that could be captured in such profiles. You could look at a learner’s achievement across the curricula; absenteeism, personality, cooperation with others…the possibilities are limitless.” An academic data double is not simply a summary of what a student can and cannot do. The double allows for correcting, guiding, and disciplining measures. At OEB 2011, van der Kruk will explain how he derives meaningful information on a learner’s learning style by studying their video game profile. He will look at how parallels might be drawn for the future classroom. “Videogames are highly engaging fully operational teaching machines, and I expect a classroom of the future to be like that.”

Bram van der Kruk’s paper is entitled Achievement Unlocked! What Reward Systems in Videogames Can Teach Us About Learning. His presentation takes place on Thursday December 1st at 11.45 – 13.15 in  session FUT02 Future Classroom Technologies.

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Steering clear of lacklustre teaching methods and focusing on information technology tools for the modern classroom, the cMinds initiative is a way of applying visual programming concepts to the teaching of critical thinking skills to primary school learners. It’s a game-based approach, but through the exercises, young learners are presented with challenging yet fun activities. The development of this technique is a work in progress, but preliminary results indicate that this is an exciting and effective way to incorporate e-learning in the primary school classroom.

There can be no doubting the value of teaching our children to think critically and to think analytically. To solve a problem by identifying its parts, to question a previous assumption, to weigh and evaluate a solution before taking action, is an essential skill in our academic, professional and personal lives. Yet fostering of these skills in primary schools is overlooked, downplayed, or often merely restricted to the field of arithmetic, says Olivier Heidmann of the Centre for Research and Technology Thessaly in Volos, Greece. “Current teaching methods do not take full advantage of the link between critical thinking skills and creativity”. He suggests that European curricula often fail to develop those traversal competencies where gains in one area trigger progress in other subjects. This seems to be caused by emphasising mastery of content and neglecting critical reflection, evaluation and analysis. Heidmann says the curriculum and the formal teaching material in most schools leave little scope for integrating new ICT tools into traditional classrooms.

Heidmann and his collaborators have tackled the problem with their cMinds initiative, game-based computer technology matched to existing problem-solving didactical models. Worksheets and explanations of how to approach each activity are provided so “cMinds develops a virtual learning environment in which children solve logical puzzles through graphical programming.” Schools vary. “Learners may all be equipped with a computer or they may be grouped,” he explains. “Grouping of learners does not handicap the learning activities as cMinds promotes collaborative learning. In fact, learners may learn from each other and help each other during a lesson.”

The reactions of teachers and pupils in the current pilot study have been positive. The Graphic User Interface (GUI) is pleasing to the eye and the age-appropriate exercises are thrilling. Each lesson is a carefully constructed entity, guiding the learners towards identifying the parameters of a problem, challenging them to seek a workable solution by evaluating available options and urging them to explore the intricacies of causes and effects as they identify a solution to the problem at hand. The algorithmic thinking of the learners is developed through games that encourage analytical thinking. Although the use of digital applications may be new, the problems to be solved are often very familiar to teachers and learners. One game is the old puzzle of how to get a wolf, some grain and a chicken across a river safely, with only one raft.

Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of the cMinds approach is the fact that it is not bound to a single national curriculum or single language. Heidmann says, “It is based on universal logic that exists in all cultures. The deployment of an inherently logical tool that transcends language barriers, namely programming, makes this approach applicable at a European level.” The cMinds system has been piloted at selected primary schools in Greece, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Sweden, but it is aimed at a far wider market. Heidmann explains that formal approval for classroom use will be sought from various ministries of education. The project, partly funded by the Comenius Lifelong Learning Programme of the EU, runs between 2010-2012.

Olivier Heidmann’s OEB 2011 paper is entitled Teaching Programming towards the Development of Early Analytical Structural and Critical Minds. He will present his findings in the “Learning New Skills Through Technology” session on Thursday 1 December at 11.45-13.00

Further reading

European Commission, Comenius: Europe in the classroom

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Game-based learning and virtual worlds were hot topics at OEB 2010. Rooms were packed with conference visitors. It was standing room only. The programme section covered 3D virtual world simulations at multinational businesses like IBM and Volvo and virtual police force training in Germany. There were simulations for students of law, economics, literary history and even wine management as well as serious games for secondary schools or for the disadvantaged.

“Games? Should we be doing that at work?” asked Euan Mackenzie, CEO of the United Kingdom firm 3MRT. The answer was a definite yes, “because games can increase your profit”.

IBM showed how this works. The company now uses a new immersive 3D virtual social world to train 140,000 emerging leaders worldwide, without incurring travel expenses. Participants experience social challenges, whether as the female leader of an all-male team, a gay consultant in a global management job or a wheelchair-bound employee seeking a position as a sales rep.

Volvo presented their simulation of a car manufacturing plant to train production supervisors in “lean manufacturing”. Rudi van Sande from the Volvo Lean Learning Academy, Belgium, explained how the simulation of eight work stations enables participants to standardise, systematise and sustain the work process.

Police-force training in Southern Germany

Much attention was paid to Uwe Seidel’s presentation on virtual police force training in Southern Germany. In this project which has been going on for several years, 20,000 police officers have been trained as “avatars” in a sophisticated 3D environment. They practice co-ordinated actions by ground-based forces and police helicopters.

”Our virtual scenarios now provide 150 square kilometres of freely walkable or drivable terrain. We can use night cameras, realistic radio communications and many other authentic features,“ Seidel explained.

“This virtual solution enables instruction that would not otherwise be possible. Helicopter training is costly and noisy, especially when you are training to fly in a city at night.“

Simulations for Students of Law, Oil Trade and Wine Management

Game-based learning and virtual worlds are also becoming very popular in the academic sector.

At OEB, Sarah Frame from the University of East London highlighted immersive role playing in legal education. Law students directly apply their learning to resolving real life problems using scenario-based interaction.

The IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, presented ”Making Money on Oil“, an interactive simulator allowing undergraduates as well as postgraduate students to adopt the role of futures traders in the petroleum market. Up to fifteen groups of students compete to maximise their investment and top the leader board.

“This game has been developed exclusively by our Business School,” project manager Mathew James Constantine explained at OEB. “Over 2,500 participants have taken part, and they were very enthusiastic about it.”

The Bordeaux Management School (BEM) in France found out that students in their international Wine MBA programme prefer the play their business game offline rather than online. The Wine MBA is a part-time course combining online learning face-to-face sessions in Bordeaux, Hong Kong, Adelaide, London and Davos. In the business game known as “The French Paradox”, four student teams are asked to run four wineries as efficiently as possible.

“Our experiments showed that those students playing the game in the same room and with their professor present felt more comfortable than the groups of students dispersed in various parts of the world. Proximity supports their concentration and social skills,” Professor Pierre Mora explained at OEB.

“Global Conflicts Palestine” and “Zoo Tycoon” in Formal Education

Formal educationalists were sceptical for years about the use of digital games as pedagogical instruments, partly, thought Jonathan Cops of the Leuven Education College in Belgium, because of a lack of validated research.

He presented his own research on the game “Global Conflicts: Palestine” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how secondary teachers produce cognition and affective learning outcomes with the appropriate briefing and de-briefing for “learner readiness”.

Premiere of ENGAGE Quality Awards

The award-winning game EnerCities

The ENGAGE Quality team awarded their Best Practice Award to an Austrian secondary school, BG/BRG Zell am See, for their innovative inclusion of the business simulation “Zoo Tycoon 2” in English, German, biology and arts lessons.

Two other ENGAGE Quality Awards were announced. The Best Learning Game was “EnerCities”, a game about sustainability and modern energy supplies developed in the Netherlands, and the Best Inclusion Game was for the British “Choices and Voices”, which encourages young people to take a range of moral decisions.

ENGAGE is the European Network for Growing Activity in Game-based learning in Education.

Alternate Reality Games – and Others

Other creative and educational games featured at OEB 2010 included gaming on mobile phones, health gaming for the disadvantaged and games using virtual patients in medical education.

Can social games change behaviour? This was the question Natasha Boskic from the University of British Columbia, Canada, has been trying to answer.

She analysed the effects of the Alternate Reality Game “Evoke” on six participants from New Zealand, Serbia, Uganda and Rwanda. This ARG game was published in the spring of 2010 for ten weeks in the social media community Ning. Each week a quest and a mission were set for ”agents“ to complete. One mission announced: “Tokyo is without rice. What can we do?”.

Boskic concluded that AR games play a part in enabling personal and social development but that more research is needed.

Links

More information on the ENGAGE Quality Award Winners can be found here:
www.engagelearning.eu/?p=1043

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Lieutenant Tuck Pendleton, played heroically by Dennis Quaid in Joe Dante’s 1987 sci-fi blockbuster “Innerspace”, pilots a miniaturised team in an unforgettable adventure inside a human body. Two decades later, Jan Gejel of the Aarhus Social and Health Care College presents at OEB the BODYexplorer, a new web-based learning game for disadvantaged citizens that takes its players inside a human body to see for themselves the damage done by drug abuse, fast food, idleness and alcohol.

Jan Gejel says BODYexplorer will be the first learning game in Denmark to target disadvantaged citizens. During two years of development his team analysed the gaming market in Europe and discovered there was not a single game offered for lifelong learning by the disadvantaged, the unemployed, the migrants or the young and the ‘bewildered’ of our world.

The plan now is that BODYexplorer, a web-based game environment, will be used in Danish Social and Health Care Colleges, in basic health education, upper primary schools and in adult education by the end of 2011.

It aims to get non-academic young learners interested in the prevention of lifestyle diseases caused by alcohol, drug abuse, fast food and serious lack of physical exercise.

“Learners will be very motivated because they can directly experience the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle on the human body,” says Jan Gejel.

Blending a Web-Based Game with Real Life Activities

Details are still being developed. One option is to present the game as a web series, running for three or four months and adding new plot elements once a week. Alternatively, a more classic concept offering permanent access to the full game might be provided.

“We are very interested in a concept that involves real time and requires real life activities to progress in the game,” Jan Gejel says. “One of the most promising elements is that the game will be embedded in a collaborative web platform through which the learners can play the game as well as discuss its challenges and different solutions.”

Some of these features were used in the Climate Mystery game and in other recent learning games. A game developer in the first generation of learning games is a key partner in the BODYexplorer project.

Another important perspective for the developers of BODYexplorer is to encourage the education sector to give the learners the opportunity to produce, organise and present knowledge in the form of games themselves. Therefore the BODYexplorer project will focus on learners’ access to uncomplicated game tool software, which might be integrated in the collaborative web environment of BODYexplorer.

Linking Commercial Game Producers and the Education Sector

The BODYexplorer project is linked to the promotion of learning games and to a Danish campaign running in 2010 and 2011 called nCOUNTr which aims at bringing together commercial game producers and the education sector.

BODYexplorer will, in its first versions, be financed, produced, implemented and tested in Denmark. But the developing team intends to promote it through the European Lifelong Learning Programme. The final budget of the full game is expected to be around 1 million euro.

Links

The Climate Mystery Game: www.congin.com/eng/cases_climatemystery.htm

The BODYexplorer project has been inspired by the global “Computer Clubhouse Network”, initiated by the MIT Media Lab in Boston: www.computerclubhouse.org

Jan Gejel will present BODYexplorer – Exploiting Computer Gaming and Animation for Interactive Learning for Disadvantaged Learners as part of the session Advanced Technologies and E-Learning for Quality of Life in a Disadvantaged World on Thursday, December 2nd, from 11:45 – 13:00.

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Outstanding contributions by teachers, educational practitioners, game developers and producers to the quality of game-based learning will be recognised under the ENGAGE project at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2010.

During an official, live-streamed ceremony on December 3rd, 2010, the European Network for Growing Activity in Game-based learning in Education (ENGAGE) will reveal the nominees for its quality awards. An inspiring panel discussion with leading experts on game-based learning will preceed.

The ENGAGE quality awards are divided into three categories: Best Practice (for specific documented cases), Learning Games Quality (for outstanding methodological, didactical and technical standards) and Game Inclusion (digital games and GBL practices which successfully raise self-confidence or increase motivation to learn as well as encourage participation in a community or in society).

The jury comprises game-based learning experts from industry and research as well as teachers with a professional background in using games for teaching and education.

The ENGAGE project aims to further promote the use of GBL in education. It has been funded with support from the European Union.

Please visit the ENGAGE Portal to find out more about entry criteria and prizes for winners.

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By Angelika Eckert

“The immersive Internet is the logical extension of the web“, believes the virtual worlds expert Tony O´Driscoll. According to information-technology researcher Gartner, by the year 2011, eighty percent of users will be using avatars to engage in the next generation of the Internet – the 3D Immersive Internet.

Thanks to Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and options for tagging, people today are able to connect with each other easily through the web. This, in turn, leads to immense cross-linking: If Facebook and MySpace were thought of as digital nations, they would already be the fifth and sixth largest countries in the world.

Does a similar potential lie in avatars? Tens of millions of people are already connecting via an alter ego on a regular basis and play games like World of Warcraft or simulate an existence in Second Life. The power of immersion plus interactivity offered by the immersive internet (or “immernet” Tony O’Driscoll likes to call it) brings enriched engagement and increases the ability to co-create at a distance.

New Opportunities for Corporate Learning

Due to its inability to adapt and change as rapidly as the environment in which it operates, a modern-day organisation faces a lot of problems. As most technology has been applied to automate the classroom paradigm to date, there is a growing disconnect between the learning needs of the modern-day enterprise and the ability of the traditional learning function to address them. Stated simply, Virtual Worlds have too much potential for learning professionals to ignore.
Compared to this traditional learning scenario, the new technology allows learners to create contexts where they encounter teachable moments within the environment. So instead of learning before doing, they now have the ability to learn while doing. This represents a significant opportunity for learning.

Tony O’Driscoll is convinced: “Finally we have a set of technological affordances at our disposal that allow us to create meaningful experiential learning contexts that can significantly accelerate learning.” His book Learning in 3D: Bringing a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration cites ten specific business cases. They range from carefully crafted virtual experiences designed to have participants viscerally understand the consequences of diversity and inclusion issues to the staging of very large virtual conferences.

In each case, the business objective and the solution varies. Still, at the core of every case is the truism that there are certain “affordances” that virtual worlds offer that existing technologies could not. For the diversity and inclusion intervention, learners actually have to “walk in another person’s virtual shoes” to feel what it is like to be someone other than themselves. In the case of a virtual conference, the power of presence and the death of distance are two “affordances” that have come together, and this has allowed people from all around the world to convene in a third place – in cyberspace – to learn from and with each other.

Tony O'Driscoll

From his experience, Tony O´Driscoll knows about the key reasons usually cited for applying immersive internet technology to learning: besides a better learning experience and adherence to the green agenda of the firm, it is also a matter of cost avoidance for travel and lodging. Therefore, most of the cases outlined in his book provide a cost profile. Tony observes: “The expense is usually cast in terms of how long it would take to recoup the investment. In most cases, that return is achieved within twelve months.“

Learning to Change

As enterprises and learning professionals become more familiar with the technology, applications will mature and develop new forms of learning and collaboration, says O´Driscoll. During his half-day workshop at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN, he will show the audience what a 3D learning architecture that outlines decent 3D learning experience has to be like. He is certain that: “Afterwards, people will know more about the macrostructures, principles, archetypes and affordances that need to be aligned in order to have a 3D learning architecture that is optimised to address the business issue at hand.“

The workshop Learning in 3D: Bringing a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration will take place on December 2nd, 2009 from 14:00 – 18:00.

The book Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Training and Collaboration by Karl Kapp and Tony O’Driscoll will be available in January 2010 and will have an accompanying website and 3D space.

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Serious Problems Require Serious Gaming

The fight against illegal drugs is a high priority for governments and citizens of the EU. The frontline of this campaign involves officers of the EU Taxation and Customs Union (TAXUD), who use intelligence, analysis, investigative and legal skills in their efforts to prevent the traffic in illegal drugs from violating EU borders.

Key training requirements include increasing the national customs administrations’ awareness of drug precursors (chemical substances used in the manufacture of drugs) and teaching customs officers how to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of controls in each specific customs context – land, air and sea.

Drugs traffickers are extremely sophisticated, continually adapting their methods and utilise new technologies to achieve their goals. The skills demands on customs officers are high. To meet this challenge, TAXUD demanded a radical change in the delivery of EU training, and the decision was reached to deploy Serious Games to help develop the required skills. Serious Games are seen as producing intense engagement and learner motivation because they involve deep learning scenarios and problem solving in the context of realistic environments for real skills practice. In terms of evaluation, they also deliver precise performance measurement and feedback for learners.

Digital 3D Simulations Provide the Solution

Caspian Learning developed six unique training simulations for customs officers. In each, the learner controls an avatar within a highly realistic computer generated 3D environment. Each simulation provides the learner with a different scenario in which they must examine shipments entering the EU. The officer-gamers see the consequences of every decision they make – which is crucial because ultimately, each scenario could result in illegal drugs being released into EU cities.

Using their avatars, the learners are able to interact with the scenario – talking to colleagues, asking questions, examining shipments, accessing databases, searching cargo, and making decisions. Based upon the user’s actions and judgement, the scenario unfolds in non-linear ways, challenging the users’ skills in a wide variety of situations.

The scenarios engage the learners in deep learning that demand a mix of information gathering, problem solving and practical skills. The learners are able to make mistakes in a safe environment that enables them to review their work and to reflect upon their judgements.

Detailed scoring, diagnostics and feedback are built into the fabric of the game. The performance model measures decision making, knowledge, analysis, and expertise that are based upon the real actions, decisions and judgements made or not made by the user.

This was the first large scale project of its kind for the European Commission. The project was developed using Thinking Worlds, a rapid authoring tool for Serious Games and Immersive Simulations. Using Thinking Worlds, EU subject-matter experts worked directly with instructional designers, who – due to the sophistication of the software involved – required no programming skills to build and deliver the scenarios.

EU-wide Compatibility

The scenarios were translated into local languages for EU member states and packaged as SCORM objects for integration within any learning management system, which resulted in easy data reporting. Deep learning through Serious Games scenarios that are easily delivered through the web browser to learners appears to be part of the future of professional education and training in the EU.

Christopher Brannigan from Caspian Learning Ltd., UK, will present the case study on December 4th, 11:45 – 13:00, in session VAR49: EU 3D: STRG ALT DELETE.

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Game-based e-learning has reached a new level – this could be one conclusion drawn from this year’s OEB. Looked at as an ideal instrument to manage multifaceted tasks, games have spread even into emotionally and motivationally oriented fields like behavioural coaching and leadership training. Together, the presenters offered a broad perspective on gaming – highlighting well-established features as well as new trends.

This year’s OEB clearly showed that serious gaming goes much deeper than just coping with various “staged situations” or real-life simulations. Regarding the learning aspect, game developers and researchers are currently exploring how competencies, including various cognitive and psychological factors, can be developed by e-learning – developing financial capabilities, trading skills or human resources management, to name but a few.

The session “Serious Games for Competence and Expertise Building” for example, opened up with a presentation about the so-called FUGA project, which is about measuring emotions in the trading business. How do people cope with failures? What can they do to improve their emotional balance in order to be more successful? These were some of the questions raised that could help game developers better understand what psychological factors to bear in mind. Another project along the same line, xDelia, focuses on how people can become more aware of their financial activities and behavioural patterns.

E-Learning, which enhances learning on a personal and interpersonal level, was also a topic discussed in the “Gaming in Business and Management” session. Games not only have to offer a realistic setting but also a reliable theoretical background – this is what many people articulated in this session. A much-discussed example came from Brazil – a tool for leadership training that was designed to help leaders refine their leadership style.

A more classical example of e-learning in this session came from a Spanish business school, where students have the possibility to improve their management skills while organising a grand slam tournament, which also puts a strong emphasis on collaborative and interpersonal aspects.

The Behrloo game of the Dutch police academy or the CrisWare security training example, showed that game-based e-learning has the potential to become indispensable when subject-specific knowledge is addressed, e. g. in a security training setting. A strong focus on the specific training context and a high complexity make these kinds of games attractive and motivating for the users.

Finally, this year’s presenters also considered the “fun” aspect of game-based e-learning. The “Consumer Games as Learning Tools” session, for example, showed inspiring pictures from classes with pupils playing and learning enthusiastically with the help of game-based multimedia language courses. What these and other contributions showed was that games may soon become the norm in various training and educational settings. Game-based e-learning clearly has left the primary stage.

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