The Process of Play

I went to a seminar this week at Microsoft about Sharepoint, and curiously there was a presentation included from a company called Playgroup, which introduced me to Scott Eberle's Process of Play.

A lot of this overlaps with the work I've been doing with my Educational Games research group on motivation.

I haven't processed all this yet, but it's making me think about designing playful behaviour into online learning materials. I'm starting with 'anticipation' and 'surprise'.

I think the typical model of telling students what the learning outcomes are going to be at the beginning could be easily shaped into 'anticipation' (step 1) if you think carefully about how this is shaped and presented. From there in order to achieve 'surprise' (step 2) we need to not present them with exactly what they would expect next. Perhaps something as simple as an online mini activity rather than a page of text, indirectly related to the topic, perhaps analogous. Completing this gives 'pleasure' (step 3) and while they're pleased we can explain what the point of it was leading to 'understanding' (step 4). Now we have to look to achieve 'strength' (step 5) by reinforcing what they've learned - perhaps another mini-activity which of course seems easy now, and then with this under their belt they have achieved 'poise' (step 6).

That all seems simple enough, and of course matches what a lot of people do instinctively anyway, but I'm hoping that by consciously building in these steps the whole experience might become more engaging.

I'd like to find some keen lecturers and try restructuring materials they already have to fit this model and see what the students think.