7-3 Game Elements

Engaging Elements

Clark Quinn‘s 2005 book on Engaging Learning indicates these essential characteristics for creating effective games:

• Thematic Coherence – Every game has a particular context, or is part of particular genre (or blends several), and the action within the game should be consistent with the theme or model world we develop
• Clear Goal – The player should be presented with or discover the goal s/he is trying to achieve within the theme.
• Balanced Challenge – An experience that’s too simple is not fun, and one that is too difficult is frustrating. As the player improves, the challenge needs to increase accordingly. Then tension should \wax and wane while maintaining a steady increase.
• Relevance: Action to Domain – The dilemmas and consequent decisions that the player makes must be meaningful in the model world.
• Relevance: Problem to Learner – The genre of the game and the story line must be of interest to the player.
• Choices of Action – There needs to be (at least a perception of) a variety of choices the player can make at any time.
• Direct Manipulation – The player should act directly on the model world through the interface.
• Action Coupling – Input-output interreferentiality: the action in the world should cause actions that are represented back to the player by consequences in that world. Instead of just getting a message that says, “Incorrect,” there should be a certain set of results
• Novel Information or Events – The play should include elements of chance that make the play non-deterministic.

Gaming Elements

The eLearning Guild published a report in 2013 on Gamification, Games, and Learning: What Managers and Practitioners Need to Know.  Keep in mind, gamification means using game elements in a non-game context. Think about how you can use some of these elements in your next eLearning project: