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Showing posts with label Whats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Whats. Show all posts
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Monday, 31 March 2014
“Learning should be fun!” But what’s “fun?”
We hear it all the time: “Learning should be fun!” Here’s how it’s often interpreted:
“Let’s use a Jeopardy-style game for the quiz.”“Let’s have them explore a haunted museum, clicking on silly things to learn about data privacy.”“We should have a funny-looking wizard explain how the inventory control system works, and he could use his wand to make the data appear on the screen.”“How about a talking frog to explain the supply chain?”
All of the above are examples of smearing “fun” lipstick on the pig of an information presentation. We’re not challenging the learners in any meaningful way, and we’re probably not motivating them, either.
Then why do we do it? Many people will say that exploring the museum to reveal all the bullet points about data privacy is gamelike and therefore “fun.” However, according to this well-researched post by game researcher Ben Lewis-Evans, it’s not that simple.
The post looks at how games (and in my opinion elearning) might affect dopamine, often presented as the “I like it!” hormone.
The upshot of the research Lewis-Evans examined “is that it appears that dopamine is not directly about pleasure (or learning) but rather it is about motivation or, if you want to be more sinister, compulsion.”
What’s really motivating?
Motivation doesn’t come from clicking a spider web to reveal a couple of sentences and move the progress bar one millimeter. According to Lewis-Evans’ review of the research, many other elements are better at motivating us. Here are the ones that caught my eye:
“Rewards should be meaningful.”“Learning to get and want a certain reward is enhanced by immediate feedback about what behavioral response produced that reward.”“People tend to dislike rewards that are delivered in a way that is perceived to be controlling.”“Feelings of mastery, self-achievement, and effortless high performance appear to be quite rewarding.”Feelings of mastery should be our goal. Clicking a messy desk to reveal preachy warnings about filing forms builds zero mastery. Successfully making increasingly difficult choices in a realistic scenario is far more likely to build a sense of mastery.
If a stakeholder wants you to add alien spacecraft, treasure hunts, or talking animals, they mean well. However, you might respond that building mastery provides the real fun. So rather than spending time drawing the spacecraft, we should use that time to design challenging, realistic activities that give people a sense of accomplishment.
Have you had to talk someone out of a “fun” way to present information? Let us know how it went in the comments.
Workshops workshops workshops!
More workshops have been confirmed for my November trip to Australia, and I’m creating an online scenario design course for this fall. Check it all out on my new workshops page.
Sunday, 21 July 2013
What's Your Annoying Communication Habit?
Rebecca Morgan, CSP, CMC Apr 8 | Comments (2)
After a day in Cambodia, my American travel companions and I found ourselves modifying our language when speaking to those with limited English skills. We'd traveled abroad enough to know to speak slowly, enunciate every syllable, avoid contractions, use simple words and basic sentence structure. But in our quest for clear communication, we soon matched the syntax of the local shopkeepers we encountered.
This meant we eliminated most articles of speech (the, a, an) and even some verbs. So when talking to a local with limited English, instead of "We will go with Tov to the restaurant" we'd say, "We go with Tov to restaurant." And nearly all communication was accompanied by simple charade-like gestures illustrating, as best we could, the concept we were wanting to communicate. When requesting a foot massage at a downtown establishment, we'd say, "One-hour (holding up one finger) foot massage (pointing to one's feet). How much?" The practitioner would respond nodding, often writing the amount on paper or a calculator.
We got so used to this that without thinking we began talking to others of our group members this way. One day I said to a travel companion, "Jana want lunch?" She looked at me bewildered, "You know I speak English, right?" We both laughed hard. I'd become so engrained in the rhythm of "speaking local," I forgot to turn it off!
It made me wonder what other communication habits we get into without noticing. Sometimes a friend or colleague will help us see we annoyingly end every contribution with "Sooooooo" when really there was nothing more coming. Or we repeat ourselves -- within the same sentence: "She said, 'I know' she said, 'I really have to try harder." Or we interrupt while someone's finishing a thought. The list can go on and on. We all have communication habits that could be pruned. But most of us aren't aware of them.
If you have a friend brave enough to speak up, as Jana did when I was being unconscious, thank him/her for pointing out your habit. Better yet, invite him/her to help you clean up your communication and be the best communicator you can be. Then make sure not to get mad when s/he does!
Her most recent books are:
Remarkable Customer Service ... and Disservice: Case Studies and Discussions to Increase Your Customers' Delight
Grow Your Key Talent: Thought-Provoking Essays for Business Owners, Executives and Managers on Developing Star Staff
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