During the content creation for your course, whether it is for a traditional classroom learning or virtual classroom, one of the most important goals that you have is to keep your students engaged in the lesson. When the student is interested in learning, they can absorb the concepts being taught more easily. That is because there is a certain level of willingness to acquire the knowledge.
When you ask children to choose between studying in a classroom or playing video games, what do you think they will pick? Games, right? While there are remarkable kids who love to learn, there are those who are just too bored with it. Do you know why they are bored? It’s because they are not engaged properly.
This is what you may want to think about as you are planning your content creation. You want to make sure that the children are engaged in the lesson by incorporating certain concepts from the gaming industry. Here are some of them.
- The willingness to learn is driven by the need to gain something they want. In games, there is a set of rules that will guide the gamers on how to play the game. This learning process is just like learning theories in the classroom right? But you will notice that gamers are more encouraged to learn these set of rules because there is something to gain from it – the knowledge on how to win the game – or at least be good at playing it. For the longest time, the only gain that students look forward to are good grades. Apparently, this is not enticing enough.
- Gamers voluntarily deepen their knowledge of the mechanics. These gamers understand that the more they study the mechanics, the more they will succeed in the game. This is a helpful concept that should encourage your students to explore on their own. Since they know that the key to reach their goal or win in the game is to know the mechanics, they will deepen their knowledge of it even without external prompting.
- Games allow players to make mistakes. This is one of the faults of our academic system. Nobody is allowed to make mistakes. A mistake is equivalent to failure. In a game, when you make a mistake, you get another life. You are allowed to restart the game to start where you left off because of these lifelines. But even if the lifeline is there, players will always work hard to keep from losing another life again. Sometimes, when students associate mistakes with failure, they are discouraged from trying anything at all. The interest in learning wanes because of the consequences of failing. But if your content creation incorporates the idea of lifelines, you can teach students that making a mistake is alright – as long as you learn how to progress from it.
What makes games more interesting than learning is the journey to win the goal of the game. Make your course as engaging as a game. Put yourself in the shoes of a game programmer and think about how you can turn the whole course into one big game. Do not limit the learning capabilities of students. Make it as fun as you can. The results of learning absorption may surprise you.
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