Lecture: Similarities between game design and instructional design

On July 10th 2012, I gave a lecture about the similarities between designing a game and designing a lesson in classroom, at one of the biggest educational conferences in Israel: IUCEL Meital.

the lecture strove to show that educational and instructional design could learn from game design at how to tangle the users into the web of curiosity, challenge and fun.
I talked about 9 main design principals in the game design theory that can be used also in instructional design:

1. the player as the Messiah. let the user feel that without him the session cannot be over. if the user will not make the right move, nothing will happen. make sure you put it all into a good story.
2. rules. setup rules for the game/ lesson. only when you have rules, the users will try and break them. without rules, they will try and break the teacher... 
3. feeling of control. let the user feel they are in control, but actually you should control all the possible routes and choices they could make.
4. immediate feedback. give feedback as fast as you can, as precise as possible.
5. goals. setup big goals and smaller goals to keep the users on track.
6. balance the amount of content. no content is boring. too much content confuse.
7. balance the challenge and the ability. don't be afraid to challenge your users, just make sure they feel competent to the task. 
8. develop the feeling of success. make sure your users succeed. after a hard task, give an easy one.
9. reflection. always assist the user to reflect their performance.

my presentation for download (hebrew).
all other lectures' from the conference can be downloaded as well (hebrew). 

Green-Fields, Instructional Short Movie

concept: short, funny & instructive movie that explains how to use the new free fitness facilities scattered all over Israel by Green-Fields.
the script, filming, editing and lighting was made by Sarit Hayat, Ori Grundshtein, hila Amit and Myself. Green-Fields company has no hand in the making of the movie.

created at: January, 2007

Data Representation of survey's results

concept: a visual representation of a survey's results which checked the differences between three academic departments in HIT academic institute in Israel. The survey's subject was of web and computer usage goals and habits among the students.

created at: may 2007

Learning with games : costumized search engine

idea: create a dynamic and interactive resource environment based on Lib2.0 and Learning2.0 concepts.

we have chosen the field area of learning with games and how to combine these two fields.

result: an iGoogle group environment, which included unique RSS collection, a couple of customized search engines, and more apps and gadgets.
this search engine has been developed since. you are most invited to use it. its free of course.



created at: September 2007

created with: Yuval Shafriri, Ori Grundshtein, Ofir Rosenberg, Yuval Alis

how to create multiple choice question in Adobe Flash- guiding movie

concept: there are many guide movies about Flash in english but a few in hebrew. this movie takes the user, hand-in-hand, through all the steps they need to make in order to have a multiple choice question. it is ment to remind an instructional technology developers this issue.

created at: March 2008

program: viewlet builder

Harnessing the power of games into education: Article presentation

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concept: presents the main concepts in the article of Squire and Jenkins about "Harnessing the power of games into education".

created at: March 2008

Voice Over IP - what is it?

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concept: Presents the main concepts in Voice Over IP technology and its future implications.

created at: January 2007

created with: Miri Hay, Sarit Hayat, Adi Hen

interactive environments for the special needs - research

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concept: research on the interactive environments exist to assist special needs society: physical disabilities, rehabilitation and learning disabilities.

created at: february 2007

created with: Yaniv Aroch, Gadi Yosef, Orly Edry

why water group to drops? surface tension of the water

concept: originally made for 9th grade siences class (with some background in molecules). the goal was to explain about the surface tension of the water and how it is created. additional educational value: the way water molecules arrange themselves.

created at: May 2007

in english:

in hebrew:

De Click Game: learn spelling

concept: the main goal is to teach young kids (ages 3-6) how to spell. it tries to use a simple menus and fun gameplay in order to attract players and motivate them. the player has to click the letters in the name of the animal presented to him and reach a specific number of total clicks. reaching that number will stop the score from dropping, and setting it to the player's score. 

the gameplay was inspired by the "click the spacebar game".  

created at: January 2008

Teaching the visual literacy in the digital age

this website was developed from zero as a presentation of a new concept in teaching and learning the visual literacy for Dr. Shlomo Lee Abrahamov, teacher in many schools and universities in israel.
Dr. Abrahamov teaches the visual literacy in a unique way in israel: he is using the web tools, such as forums and other collaborative tools, to enhance the learning process.

the website had 3 earlier versions and in total of 300 man-hours of work. 3-4 people were involved in the process for about one year.

Simon Says: lets play

Goal

learn musical notes by playing a Simon Says type of game.
while playing the game, the child sees the musical notes written down and learns the connection between the note to the sound. this is not an explicit learning but rather a "side-effect" of the game. the learning is not the main event of the game.
there are three gameplays and several levels of difficulty.

the game inspired by the original Simon Say game.

Team

Miri Hay
Adi Hen