Rethinking Learning: Game design thinking

So often we attend engaging, interesting sessions at conferences but don't have time to process and put these innovations into action. Inspired by the game concierge we met at a board game cafe in Larisa, Greece, I'm going to share some insights I gained from professional learning this summer.
At the Play, Make, Learn Conference in Madison in August, I heard Jesse Schell, educational game designer, speak.
What is your goal?
Jesse said that the goal of educational games, which he, more appropriately, calls "transformational games," is to change a player.
He shared the three elements game designers use. They were great fodder for imagining transformation in our classrooms:
1. Describe the change desired in the player
2. Decide the action that will make that change happen. (Because humans only change through action)
3. Determine how you will engage the user in the experience

Change beyond "growth:" In planning our curriculum we should consider which changes we care most about: 

• Physiological: How students "are"
• Emotional: How they feel about things
• Knowledge-based: What students know
• Skill-based: What they can do
• Behavioral: How they act

Transformative Actions: In deciding on the activities that will drive this change, educators should consider the seven actions that Jesse said change a human being.

1. Receiving information by: 

• watching, reading, listening
• experiencing
• measuring and monitoring
• noticing so we can take info in differently
• understanding how something fits into the big picture

So much of our curriculum and pedagogy live in this space.
2. Remembering:

• repetition
• first thing we heard it and the last thing

We have to ask how long this kind of change will last and how meaningful it will be.
3. Surprise

• positive and negative outcomes
• emotional impact
• Play creates ownership (discoveries)

When do your students play in your content area or in your weekly plan?
4. Application

• connect, bridge, combine, synthesize
• relate and personalize

How do your students connect their thinking to the world beyond the classroom walls?
5. Reflect and think

• analyze and interpret
• prioritize
• reconsider

How do you cultivate curious, confident learners who think critically?
6. Imagine

• visualize
• plan
• predicting
• design

How do your projects help students visualize, plan and design? How do experiments or arguments help them to predict?
7. Communicate your ideas to others

Engagement through a gaming lens: Jesse describes six ways that games engage players. Can you rotate through these engagement strategies regularly? Reflect on ways that you've included these strategies and which kind of engagement is lacking?

• Sensory experience
• Exploration to find out something new
• Challenge
• Story
• Social 
• Creative

Learning is a game that we want all students to win. We want to support them as they change who they are, how they feel & act, and what they know & can do. Before you feel overwhelmed by initiatives and new requirements ask Jesse's three questions:

• How do I want to students to change as a result of this learning?
• How will plan for and facilitate that change in my pedagogy?
• How will students engage in our classroom learning space?

We fell in love with this game-themed coffee shop in Larissa, Greece.