Elearning and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Traditionally, a person’s intelligence was measured by a standardized IQ test which was heavy on questions addressing logical thinking, mathematical ability, pattern recognition, grammar competence, and deductive reasoning. This kind of testing is biased because it caters to a particular type of person while neglecting the skills and abilities of others.

In 1983, Dr. Howard Gardner introduced the idea of multiple intelligences in his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The idea is that individuals possess a blend of various intelligences, and should not be restricted to just one modality of learning. The types of intelligences included in the theory sometimes vary, but generally consist of the following: Logical-Mathematical, Musical, Linguistic, Interpersonal, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, and Intrapersonal.

Traditional education caters to a narrow spectrum of intelligence, often punishing or ostracising students who are unable to adapt. A more effective form of education might dynamically adapt to a student’s strengths, taking advantage of the types of intelligence they excel in to help them learn material in a fun and positive way.

The Advantage of Gaming
The gaming industry has already found ways to include activities that cater to multiple intelligences in many successful titles. MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars include events in which a group of players cooperate to achieve a common goal – to slay a dragon, for example. The group often consists of highly specialized characters with distinct roles and purposes, skill sets and abilities. Some characters known as “tanks” face the enemies head on, and are able to absorb a great deal of damage. Other characters act as healers, spell casters, trap finders or other various skill sets that are needed for the party to survive. These activities cater to the interpersonal type of intelligence.

Other games, especially ones that involve building (such as Minecraft) might cater to spatial intelligence, while game systems such as the Nintendo Wii involve the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence in many of their games. The multi-billion dollar gaming industry is expert at engaging the widest demographic of users in their products.

eLearning Revolution
If you ask most people for their opinion on educational games, you may find that the overall response is not very positive. Often, educational games are perceived as boring compared to games created purely for entertainment. However, this doesn’t have to be! With creative design and clever execution, educational games can be just as much fun as other games. The educational aspect must be presented to the user in a tactful and interesting manner, not in a forceful and mandatory way. The user must be coaxed to want to learn. One powerful tool to bring this about is to widen the spectrum of intelligences targeted by activities within the game or eLearning module.

One popular game style requires the player to complete various missions, earning rewards for being successful. These rewards can then be used to develop their game character, such as increasing their statistics, getting better equipment, and so on. Players feel a sense of achievement from completing missions.

Instead of the ordinary “go there – fetch this – kill that” type of mission, an educational game could involve missions that involve various activities catering to the different intelligences. For example, if the subject is chemistry and the goal is to familiarize the player with the Periodic Table of Elements, the missions could involve traveling to various parts of the game world to fetch different elements. To get each element, the player may need to overcome obstacles that target a particular type of intelligence. Good eye-to-hand coordination may be needed for one quest. Cooperation with other players may be needed for another. Throughout the mission, the player may learn interesting facts about the element, and in that way, learn in a fun and unobtrusive manner.

Gaming vs. Attention Deficit
It is remarkable that many students who suffer from ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) are able to focus and learn from games, even for long periods of time.

Some games such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering require players to memorize the effects of many cards, the effects of their combination with other cards, and develop complex winning strategies to beat opponents.

I have witnessed children who have problems with attention at school excel at these kind of games, although the games require a great deal of focus and attention. It is clear that there is something about the games that is successful at retaining attention and interest, which is lacking in formal education. If we can find a way to harness this ability, perhaps we can improve the quality of education that we provide to these students.

Putting it All Together
To create a successful and engaging educational game, we must learn from the success of the gaming industry and be clever and creative in presenting useful educational material to our target audience in a truly fun way. One powerful tool available to us is to take advantage of a wider spectrum of intelligences to engage the audience. Dr. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences can serve as a spring board for different types of activities which can be presented with the aid of modern technology to make learning enjoyable, fun, and perhaps even addictive!

If you would like to explore more about gamification and eLearning, take a peek at our company website: Pathways Training and eLearning, at http://www.pathwaystrainingandelearning.ca/ . We always look for fresh ways to engage the learner and to make the experience as fun as possible!

Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) – The Great Mystery

For many people the new Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) is a little bit of a mystery.
Can you still send newsletters to clients and how about emails that are sent to distributions lists? If you have an “opt out clause” at the bottom of the email does that mean you can send out mass emails and that you are in compliance with CASL? How about American firms – are they exempt from the CASL laws?

Many of us are watching U.S competitors spam ‘our’ Canadian clients – leaving us to believe that this law is creating an unfair competitive advantage. One thing that seems to be clear is that most Canadians do not understand CASL and how it applies to them.

To make things even more interesting, the first CASL penalty was handed down this week to a small training company in the amount of $1.1 million dollars (see the following articles for more details):

http://www.thestar.com/business/tech_news/2015/03/05/crtc-issues-11-million-anti-spam-fine.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/crtc-issuing-first-fine-under-anti-spam-law/article23305666/

So how can we help?

Pathways has partnered with Privatech to demystify what CASL means for Canadian organizations. We have created a short eLearning module that explains the most important and impactful aspects of this new law.

For more details, or to learn more about this course, please click here: 2015 PrivaTech Pathways CASL E-Learning Course Framework.

 

mLearning Is Not The Future, It’s The Here and Now

An amazing transformation has occurred over the past few decades… we’ve lost our ability to wait, to be patient, to be bored.

We no longer remember what to do, when there’s nothing to do.

Why?

I blame the Internet. More specifically, I blame the technologies that reside in the palm of our hands. Super computers really. Smart phones and tablets that are so powerful, they are akin to dragging around an entire set of encyclopaedias everywhere you go.

If you’re reading this and wondering what an encyclopaedia is… use Wikipedia and work backwards.

Now, to be clear, this blog is not a thinly veiled diatribe on how I’m longing for the world that ‘used to be’. Quite the contrary; as a company we’ve embraced the world as it exists today. We are content in our realization that we will not return (at least not soon) to a time of patience. In fact, patience has been replaced by pace. Meaning speed above all else, in virtually everything we do.

We do not wait. We Google, we YouTube, some may Bing or Yahoo… but we do not wait.

So why should learning be any different?

It isn’t. Except that learners are most often bound by the inability of their organizations or institutions to produce content quickly. They are also stymied by their environment’s (corporate, academic or otherwise) ability to provide that information in microbursts. Just like the ‘Internet’ can.

Training must be mobile and fast. That’s where we come in.

We have recognized as a company that micro learning is not the future, it’s the ‘here and now’. Our technology solutions have created ways for our client partners to push real learning out to their organizations with pace. mVideo, mLearning, mGaming, mEverything…

As a speaker, I hope there will always be a place for classroom learning and facilitator driven discussion, but the world has changed and Pathways Training and eLearning has changed with it.

Learning happens in classrooms, meeting rooms and living rooms – so the more readily available the content, the more likely the learning is to occur…

You’re looking at your phone anyway.

MLEARNING AND GAME CREATION

In earlier articles, I emphasize the subject of gamification and the importance of making learning fun. Today, it’s time to take a look at the process of developing an actual mLearning game, from the idea to execution.

The Game Plan
To realize your idea of making a game, you must have a plan – a clear vision of how to get from start to finish. For my game plan, I decided to break the process down into four stages:

1. Proposal/Game Design
2. Alpha/Game Functionality
3. Beta/Game Polish
4. Delivery/Distribution

The Proposal
If you are working for a client, your project must first be approved before you can count on funding it. The proposal is a game idea pitch, an opportunity for you to share your concept of the game with the clients and discuss any modifications to the look or function. Often, we present three ideas for games to a client, and let them select one.

Game Design Document and Storyboards
Once the game is selected, it must be documented in a Game Design Document. This is the game Bible, the script detailing every aspect of the game. It is the vehicle of communication for all team members working on the game.

There are free templates for game design documents on the internet. Some of the contents are specific to a particular game type, while others are more general. Some items that should be found in a game design document include:

• A game overview, answering questions like what is the game about, what do you control, what is the style of the game, and what is the objective/winning condition.
• A list of all screens, detailing all functions that can be performed on each screen.
• Description of features and game play.
• If appropriate, world layout, game characters, storyline.
• Guideline to UI (User Interface), art direction, sound/music direction.
• Appendices to character sketches, scenery/set design, monsters/villains, vehicles, architecture and objects found in the game.

Based on the Game Design Document, the next step is to create Storyboards for every screen in the game, providing a concrete visual guide to the 2D and 3D artists working on the game.

The Alpha Stage
During the Alpha stage, the focus is on game functionality. The appropriate IDE / programming language / development kit must be selected to code the game, depending on game type and target platform. If the game uses a 3D engine, the appropriate engine must be chosen.

The goal of the Alpha stage is to create a functional game, albeit some of the graphics and sound are not polished yet, and some of the functionality may need to be refined. However, all-in-all, by the end of the Alpha stage, the game should be playable. The deliverable at the end of the Alpha stage is a straw-man version of the game, which means the skeleton/back bone is there but still needs to be fleshed out.

At the end of the Alpha stage follows a period of Alpha testing and debugging. The Alpha testing can be done internally (by the people working on the game), and reporting should be coordinated by someone who will sort the bug reports by priority and eliminate duplicate reports.

On to Beta
During the Beta phase, the focus is on polishing the game. This is the time to focus on graphics, animation, sound and music, and really dazzle and jazz it up. The programming team must also work out all the problems encountered during Alpha testing.

It is not enough for the game to be playable. The game should be beautiful! For example, when the player gets points for some action, the points should not just appear. They should pop up with some visual and sound effect. The controls should be refined – when the character comes to a stop, there should be a slow-down or deceleration. The character should not go from a full run to a full stop with no transition.

There are more things to polish in a game than I can describe. If you are a careful observer, try to pay attention to all the little special effects and animations that occur when you’re playing a well-designed game. Often, you won’t even notice the little fading effects, or the movement of animated backgrounds, the mouse-over effects of buttons, and all the little intricacies that go into making a game polished.

The famous Beta Test
Beta testing is famous because this is usually the first chance the community has the opportunity to try out the game. By this point, the game should be polished. The reason to open the test up to people other than those working on the game is to get input from the experience of a user who has never played the game before. Is the game too hard? Too easy? Is it boring? Is it well balanced?

Beta testers should be encouraged to find every possible way to “break the game”, or any game mechanics. Again, reporting should be coordinated by someone who will prioritize the bugs and eliminate duplicate reports. After Beta testing and fixing of the problems found, the game is essentially ready for the market.

Delivery and Distribution
Often, the delivery requires multiple platforms (PC, Android, iOS, etc.) and porting the code must be taken care of. Other requirements may be translating the game into multiple languages. These considerations should be known from the onset, and appropriate planning put in place so that the porting and translations will occur smoothly.

Bringing eLearning into Gaming
The process I described above applies to creating any sort of game. At my company, we focus on creating games with an eLearning element. Sometimes it can be as simple as asking a multiple choice question at certain points during the game. Other times, the eLearning is much more integrated into the storyline and character advancement.

If you would like to explore more about gamification and eLearning, take a peek at our company website: Pathways Training and eLearning, at http://www.pathwaystrainingandelearning.ca/ . We always look for fresh ways to engage the learner and to make the experience as fun as possible!