As stated in a recent blog post of mine, I was able to attend ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference in Colorado Springs March 10th through the 12th. Furthermore, I presented a session with a friend and client of ours, Bill Schankel, CAE from the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers and am excited to say the session was well received. Our session, “Game On! The Power of Online Games and Why Associations are Playing Along,” seemed to spark interest amongst participants in the possibility of using games and simulations to educate and motivate. Even better, after the conference, Bill found out that their Tech Tower Trivia game (created by Web Courseworks) won a Gold Circle Award for Innovative Communications that will be awarded at their Membership, Marketing and Communications conference this coming June.
Interestingly enough, Matt Riley of National Court Reporters Association was also in attendance at Great Ideas and raved about the 2000 or so members who have played the game “Courting Disaster,” which was also created by Web Courseworks for NCRA to simulate the unique challenges that court reporters may face in day-to-day interactions.
What’s the point? Gamification is sweeping the eLearning nation. Beyond our session at the conference, Marsha Rhea, talked about Gamification as one of her five big ideas on transitioning to a new learning culture for associations. She talks about learning through games as helping to provide more self-directed learning to an association’s members.
Some notes on Marsha’s ideas: While mLearning (mobile learning) goes without saying, it is a great idea to look at content as a positioning statement for your association. Tying your identity to your content and vice versa can serve numerous purposes within your association. Also, while everyone keeps talking about MOOCs and their impact on eLearning, I’m looking for the first association that requires the completion of a MOOC to satisfy a training course. I’ll keep you updated on this, though, as I have enrolled in a MOOC on Gamification myself, that starts this coming Monday!
Disclaimer: Web Courseworks develops and offers custom serious educational games and simulations, as well as our learning management system, CourseStage, and a hosted, development tool for creating and publishing courses, CourseCreate.
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson and Jillian Bichanich. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
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