Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Games = Incentives for Learning

Was forwarded to eLearning Brothers this morning. A quick browse around, and one can see that these guys are on the right path.

Knowledge checks are an essential part of reviewing material, and putting a game 'shell' around simple question types will help keep the learner engaged. The elearning brothers have come up with some really creative game types.

I think the next step for the brothers, and they are probably already going this way, is to change their target end user from a flash developer to a SME or ID. Once they have their templates ironed out, they should spend time developing an authorware environment (or maybe partner with someone already in this field) so that knowledge of flash development is not always necessary.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for checking out our site.

    It's interesting that you mention changing our target user. We've gone back and forth on this topic. On one side we like keeping all of the templates in a flash format and offering the raw .fla file. We think that it's pretty easy for a novice user to put text in a movie clip. However we like the idea of offering more advanced users the option to customize the template however they'd like.

    On the other hand, if we create an authoring interface it would no longer require flash to edit and it might appeal to those that might be scare of flash. However I feel that at time this method starts to limit what you can do with the template.

    So...the jury is still out. I'm not sure which way we'll go. (hope all of that made some sense. It's a bit late)

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  2. I definitely agree that it limits the templates.

    It is no surprise that when creating a flash based game you will need a flash developer. What you are doing however is trying to make it as easy as possible for that developer to rapidly make engaging ganes, which is fantastic!

    We can make 'templates' or 'authorware' to help but most likely there will always a be specific requirement to have a certain graphic or animation or sound that is not covered by the library.

    Thanks for your comment Andrew.

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