XplanaZine

People hear me talk about learning experiences and gaming and they assume I mean complex, or high-tech solutions. The reality is that learning experience simply means learning through doing. It means that we I am more concerned about what a learner can “do” with a subject matter than I am about how much they “know about” a subject.

For those who don’t know, my background is in teaching foreign languages. And I still remember being a young graduate student, more than two decades ago, and being introduced to the teaching methodology called Total Physical Response (TPR). TPR holds that people learn language through a stimulus/response process and that both Children and adults learn language more naturally and rapidly when the experience the thrill of immediate understanding. In other words, people learn language by “using” it or by “doing.”

Flashback: I am standing in front of twenty-five young students at Texas Tech giving them interesting commands in Spanish such as, “Run to the chalk board,” or “Jump up and down and sing.” Watching those students manifest almost instantaneous learning and dramatic retention left an indelible impact on me. I moved on to try other teaching methodologies (although I still use elements of TPR and TPRS), I never forgot the vivid evidence I had been shown about learning through doing.

I think that is the driving principle that draws me to gaming and learning experiences in education. Simulations, scenarios, and games focus on what the user “does” and operates under the general assumption that users will get smarter and better with more hands-on experience.

What is not axiomatic, however, is that there is any relationship between different types of learning experiences (with or without technology) and complexity. In fact, there is good evidence that a significant percentage of people prefer simple, short, and iterative learning experiences and use them effectively to evolve in their understanding of or ability to use information.

I was reminded of this several days ago when I saw this great article by Stephen Totilo on the popularity of vintage games. Totilo points out the popularity of vintage games and writes accurately about the rise of retro as a cultural phenomenon. One of the other factors here, however, is that games like Pac-Man provide a learning experience very different than, say Halo or MMORPG games like Everquest. Vintage games provide users with simple, short and iterative steps that evolve gradually into a more complex experience (as opposed to being complex or abstract from the beginning.

Neither model is necessarily superior as a learning tool when it comes to experience, but they do appeal to different types of learners and are appropriate for distinct categories of information. And, just as important, they cost different amounts of money to create when it comes to using technology.

The bottom line is that learning experiences or games don’t necessarily need to be complex, and that complex learning experiences are necessarily preferable or better than simpler ones.