August 2020: the beginning of my pursuit of a Master’s degree in Instructional Design. I was so excited because while I had been a trainer for a while, I realized that I had not had much formal training in the art and science of developing curriculum. If I was going to continue to be tasked with designing training programs, I might as well do it right, I figured.
First session: Learning theory. New stuff like Scaffolding. My brain was buzzing. THIS IS WHAT I CAME FOR. Second Session: Intro to instructional design and a lab course that taught me how to use all kinds of educational technology. MY LIFE IS COMPLETE. I made videos. Created educational podcasts. Hooked up a cool PowerPoint and an infographic or two. I went into winter break feeling like I was invincible.
And then….second semester, and its focus on game design. I did vaguely remember the program’s marketing materials mentioning something about a certificate in game design, but the details were fuzzy. First game class: learning how to apply ID models to proposed games we were designing. Eh, ok. It taught me to apply what I learned to create an educational product. Cool, I’ll roll with it. And then….there was the next class. The class where I had to learn (insert dramatic dread music) C#. The horror. The agony. The imminent doom of getting less than an A because quite frankly, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing any more. On and on the game classes went as I found myself spinning in a cesspool of game design articles, game design documents, 2D space shooter prototypes, and this guy’s principles of good games. It was James Gee. To be honest, I was done with games. The games I liked—I now hated. Down with games for good. I will never graduate if I have to listen to any more game talk, I thought.
Then, something clicked. I’m clear that my role in life hence now and forevermore is Trainer/Instructional Designer Extraordinaire. After this program is over, I’ll never design another game again! Or will I? Upon viewing Gee’s extended YouTube video detailing his game design principles, I realized that instead of dreading the game talk and classes, I can use the principles. I noticed that a few of his principles work well when designing the hands-on portion of the current curriculum that I’m tasked to train. Brief description: I’m teaching newly-hired call center agents how to simultaneously use their call handling guide and ticketing system to document calls they take from the general public. To learn this, they use the guide and the system to do role play scenarios to practice their skills. Gee’s principles I used to design the role-play portion of my class are:
1. Identity—as trainees take on this new role, they are adopting a new identity.
2. Agency—trainees can choose the scenarios they would like to role play. They are literally free to make up any fictional reason they can imagine a caller can be calling in to the call center.
3. Well-Ordered Problems—I start the trainees out by mastering one sub-task at a time then increase difficulty by combining sub-tasks until they are practicing the full task.
4. Performance Before Competence—I allow the trainees to practice as they are learning new concepts instead of making them wait until they are proficient to perform.
I not only tricked myself somehow to use that game stuff for good (accomplishing my goal—and having 47 of my 48 recent trainees successfully complete the class), but, in a small way, I made my training game-like. Sneaky, sneaky trainer I am, having people play games and they don’t even know it. Muaahaahaa. I’m sure somewhere one of my game course professors is laughing sneakily at how I’m actually using what I’ve learned despite my complaints. They got me. I’ve been hoodwinked. In a good way. I guess.