Some of the problems with traditional training, education and learning environments, both in the public and in particular the corporate sector include:
- Face to face training settings are expensive, in terms of time commitment, travel fees, and the associated environmental cost
- Real life meetings are too often passive, lecture-style experiences
- Learning processes are changing - younger generations "live" in games like World of Warcraft, where actually they accomplish complex team and collaboration tasks, without ever attending a real life class or reading a manual
- Physical presence and appearance, while of course necessary and desirable, also have downsides, such as dominating certain "loud" types, the inevitableness of prejudices based on physical characteristics
Increasingly, corporations, the public sector, and - in particular - the military, are experimenting with and piloting the application of immersive environments, such as games or less structured "social worlds", often with multiple participants, represented through their "avatars" or "characters", all present and together in a virtual space. These environments include games with clear goals, missions, levels, and fixed environments for teaching or simulating everything from sales training to preparing soldiers for missions in unfamiliar surroundings to treating traumatic stress syndrome by "reliving" situations. They include semi-realistic environments to simulate medical triage (with accurate modeling of psychological behavior) or emergency operations training. Others, for example the recent work we did for Cigna vielife in the healthcare education sector, are less structured and include seminars, interactive objects for teaching or re-enforcing educational messages, and related educational games. Immersive environments also facilitate large-scale conferences that allow global attendance and efficient use of multi-media like slides, video, and audio, as well as unlimited space for smaller group discussions. None of this would surprise a twelve year old who learns how to use World of Warcraft by what I would call "context sensitive peer-to-peer" learning, i.e. by asking the people you encounter in an immersive environment or game how to get to the next step or level.
Corporations (as well as schools) have too long shunned games as something that by definition can't be learning tools. It's only recently that a movement around "serious gaming" started to apply what used to be fun consumer entertainment to serious didactic purposes. Educational gaming is increasingly proving successful - and increasingly expected by a generation that grows up with games.
