Artefact #3: The Gamification Project

An upcoming work project required me to develop an online course that strictly adhered to a given curriculum.  The material was technical and dry, so my administrator asked me to apply gamification techniques to make the course more engaging.  I was shown a sample course that had the “wow” factor my administrator was looking for.  I found the course highly engaging, but found it was also distracting from the learning goals: students were more focussed on earning points than understanding the curricular outcomes.  I did not feel our upcoming project was an appropriate application for overly gamified course design (1.1).  At the time, I did not have evidence to back up my position until I completed this project.

While this assignment was a creative way to demonstrate my learning in the course, the presentation was also used to sway my administration towards my view regarding the use of gamification in our courses.  I chose to use the same course authoring software I use at work everyday (3.5), but applying it to a course allowed me to bridge my work and learning to create something I was proud of.  The paper and presentation showed my development as a learner in the program, as well as an instructional design professional. 

Learning 1: Critically analyze the perspectives of industry colleagues

This project allowed me to put together my stance on an instructional design strategy using peer-reviewed articles to defend my position.  As a relatively new instructional designer, I was following my predecessor’s work processes in course development.  Since our online training department was relatively new as well, I had little to go on, and relied on the guidance of one individual with no formal training in adult education and little knowledge of the instructional design process.  With nothing more than solid computer skills and a confident demeanor, he led me to believe that his methods were the industry standard.  He flat-out discouraged me to apply the methods I used in my M.Ed. (DE) courses.  After he left the company I realized that I needed to look critically at the approaches used in our training (1.1) and ensure the programs created at my workplace reflect a research-based approach (2.1).

At the time, my administrator had some reservations regarding my decision to change our course development process.  Her personal opinions and experience with the design process did not align with my own.  This project was my first attempt at using research to present my position on an instructional design method at work (5.7).  By analyzing the research, I was able to outline a more balanced view on the use of gamification in our online courses and somewhat remove personal opinions from decision-making.  I was successfully able to defend my approach of the course design to my administrator and ended up creating a solid computer-based training program for our company.

Learning 2: Apply theory in practice

Before researching the use of games in learning, I understood at the practitioner level that teaching a concept in the form of a game enhanced student engagement.  At the same time, I also knew that overly complicated games required the learner to spend too much time learning how to play the game.  I needed to come up with a unit of learning that could show these ideas by having the learner complete a mini unit of learning comparing both types of games in learning. (1.2).  To complete the project, I needed to synthesize theory learned in this course, as well as others.

In this assignment I was able to relate Skinner’s behaviourism to a real-life application of computer-based training (2.3). I was able to add peer-reviewed articles on best practices in computer-based training and how learner-centred game elements can support these practices (1.4).  I had to knit together these articles to answer the question: do game elements in e-learning contribute to the desired changes to behaviour and attitudes (1.3, 5.1)? 

There were many moving parts to the assignment which at times felt overwhelming.  I wondered at the time if my research question was too broad and attempted to incorporate too many different types of articles on gamification to back up my premise.  Upon reflection, while I feel my premise was good, I was missing some additional theories that would have supported my research, such as cognitive load (5.2).  With further exploration into this topic, I feel my argument would have been more concise and had more traction, but considering my intended audience, perhaps a brief overview of the research was all that was needed. 

Learning 3: Demonstrate skills in instructional design

As well as applying learning theories, I was also able to demonstrate design principles in my presentation (2.5).  I designed the learning unit for an audience of administrators who may have little experience in instructional design theory.  They may have heard of gamification, but not understand its appropriate application in an online training context.  I created an interactive demonstration that compared different ways of delivering online training.  Since my personal design process was still developing, I relied on the template from MDDE 604 to map out my design plan (2.7).

Though I was a year into my instructional design position, I still found this simple presentation incredibly time consuming.  I had not yet fully mastered the iterative design process or the presentation software.  I would often have a creative idea and run with it without thinking it through, then undo my work when I hit a wall.  I quickly realized this is not the appropriate application of “iterative” and I needed to work on slowing down: following my ideas through all steps, assessing the results, and only then would I add it to my design plan.

Though the scope of this project was small, I found the energy spent here greatly contributed to my professional practice.  Not only have I incorporated design plan formats and processes learned here into my daily practice, but also attitudes on how I approach my work.