Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

I'd like your opinions about motivation, especially as regards Evoke. I've seen some posts about the gameplay aspect of this site, and some posts about teaching, but not seen the two groups talking very much.

I used to work in sales, now I'm a teacher, and I'm participating in Evoke after seeing Jane's TED speech about using games to teach people. I use stuff like Third World Farmer to stimulate conversation quite often. (Be careful, this one can be addictive.)

Sales is a science. It's a process of understanding your customer, helping them to understand their own problems more clearly, directing them to define a solution, then presenting them with something that solves the problem as they define it, and finally making it affordable/attainable. Sometimes, you have to mislead people in order to influence their understanding and decision-making, and I was never very good at it. But teaching is basically the same thing.

I just saw a brilliant speech about math education in the USA, in which the speaker says: I sell a product to a market that doesn't want it, but is forced by law to buy it.... it's just a losing proposition. (It's 11 minutes, and well worth the investment in time.)

Clearly he gets it, teaching is all about presenting information in a way that motivates people, which is where Jane comes in. Evoke is presented as a game, with points and runes to chase after. It's also time-limited, which in my case meant trying to do everything in just six weeks.

I'm trying to figure out:
  • does the points system detract from the learning objectives?
  • does the time limit motivate people or make them feel that the goal in unattainable?
  • what else should I be considering that I haven't thought about this early in the morning?
Games are all about commitment.

The key thing in sales is to obtain a commitment at each step of the process. The customer should have said "yes, I believe in you and your reasons for talking to me, and I have defined my problem as X and I really do want to solve that problem because the benefits are Y, and my ideal solution will be Z. I would really love to have Z, and if you can show me something that can do that and it's affordable then I will buy it."

If they haven't 'bought' you then nothing that happens after that point means anything. If they haven't bought you then they won't buy your vision. Even if they bought you, if they didn't buy your vision then your solution isn't going to solve their problm, no matter how cheap it is. And so on.

Sometimes people will nod their heads and go along with you, just to make you happy, but they're not committed. They just comply with your wishes until it comes to closing the sale, and then they make objections. (I don't like the colour.) A poor salesperson responds to the objections, a good salesman rewinds the process until they find the point where they stopped getting commitment and started getting compliance.

As a teacher, my students will comply in order to get the grades that keep their parents happy. Or, if I do my job properly, they will become emotionally committed to doing what I want because they see some benefit to themselves in extracting knowledge from me that is useful for them. Teaching is all about motivation, not facts. But the facts have to made available in bite-sized packages so that the students can digest them. In other words, we make the learning attainable, affordable in terms of effort required. Jane talked in her speech about games presenting goals that are achievable at each level. Same same, but different1

Similarly, Evoke has tried to use the 'game' format with points and runes to motivate people, to get commitment. I'm very interested in this concept and would like to hear other people's insights as to the successfulness or otherwise. The final task, Imagine10, was accepted by 146 people out of 19,348. Learn1 was accepted by 4,399 people out of a smaller original group. What's going on? What can be learned?

NOTE: THIS IS A RESEARCH POST AHEAD OF MY EVOKATION, PLEASE BE CONSTRUCTIVE, IT'S NOT INTENDED TO BE A PLACE TO B**** ABOUT STUFF YOU JUST DON'T LKE. GIVE REASONS FOR YOUR OPINIONS.

Thanks
Chris

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I looked up some related topics, please add others that you know of.

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/how-to-win
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/constraints-are-vital-and...
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/evoke-politics-points
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/evoke-is-boring-and-garbage
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/this-is-an-excellently-cr...
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/how-to-actually-make-this-a
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/our-game-evoke-points-and

And finally: http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/the-wired-interview-with-...

Views: 97

Comment by Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys on May 18, 2010 at 2:40am
Great comments everyone!!! I find it a challenge to balance between encouraging players to do stuff with a point system and at the same time keeping people collaborating. Perhaps points should get multiplied if you collaborate with other players. As an individual you add points, as a group you multiply your points.

Points should also be translated into tangible rewards . . .
Comment by Simon Brookes on May 18, 2010 at 9:53am
This is extremely interesting to me as last week my students have just completed a new unit I designed which is based around some of the principles of Alternate Reality Game design. The students participated in a 12 week long enhanced simulation which in involved problem based learning and lots of self-directed learning (much like happened here). Part of my design involved a leaderboard (interestingly much like the sort of thing a sales team might use as incentive). The students received scores for replying to questions which were emailed by some of the "characters" in the game (a slight variation on the traditional, short test really!). I marked each of these, provided emailed feedback and then added the scores to the leaderboard. Students also received scores for their teamwork contribution (they worked in small groups of 3/4). This was achieved through anonymous peer a****sment every 2 weeks whereby students marked their peer's against 10 different teamwork criteria. Finally, they could also get bonus scores for showing fabulous initiative or doing something creative, innovative or unexpectedly positive (at my discretion).

The leaderboard scores are also tied into unit a****sment, contributing 20% towards the overall mark for the unit. There is a prize for the best individual score (a digital camera) and the best group score (some Game vouchers).

"Winning" and unit success are linked to an extent although those students who do not do well on the leaderboard can still get a good grade in the unit.

Although I have not completed my detailed evaluation yet I have made some interesting observations which I need to consider further.

1. Some students were clearly motivated by the leaderboard. Comment "I have to win this digital camera or my girlfriend will kill me". Interestingly, this student's effort to get points started to lapse after 7 weeks of the unit. He ended up in 4th position! The individual winner provided consistently high-quality answers to questions and scored 100% for his teamwork score from his peers.

2. A small group of students never really participated and so were clearly not motivated by leaderbaord glory or prizes.

Clearly I need to delve deeper into the motivations here. I am about to run a focus group with this cohort. If any of you can think of anything interesting I might ask the students I'd love to hear from you. Also, any comments would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Simon
Comment by Turil Cronburg on May 18, 2010 at 11:22am
The main problem with arbitrary, external, subjective points is that they over value some not-so-important things and miss out on other very important things. Which is why using personalized, internally-generated, objective points to help people track their progress, and feel motivated to keep working. And, of course, when things aren't moving forward for people, that's the time to brainstorm with them to find out what more resources, either physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, they believe will help them be more successful, and then help them get those resources.
Comment by Chris Ke Sihai on May 18, 2010 at 1:57pm
Simon, how did you organise the groups?

It's easy to imagine a given percentage of individuals not being interested in a specific activity, but odd that they should all be in the same team.

Is this the NFI team, the guys who clubbed together because they wanted to keep company with fellow apathists? Or did you allocate the teams and something happened to make this one fall by the wayside?

Dynamics within teams are always a problem. How does one person manage to bring a team down, while another team manages to carry or occasionally 'activate' their weakest link and compete successfully?

Similarly, the interaction between agents may have contributed to the success of some but may have discourage others. I made a point (most of the time) of not responding to negative or inflammatory comments and just leaving encouraging message for people. But I've seen a lot of complaining about this or that person or discussion, which suggests that the social component is a lot more important for those people.

I've had emails about "hysteria" and things "blowing up" but wasn't really aware of what was going on. Obviously some people thought they were the end of the world. It would be interesting to get a wider sample and compare the importance people attach to points, prizes vs chat.

Maybe the best practise in future will be to have very tight moderation actively intervening in anything that might upset anyone? Or maybe this social filter will weed out the people who are unlikely to reach certain desired goals due to their delicate personalities.

I have no idea which is better, but I guess it depends on the purpose of the site.

I'm thinking in terms of seperate sites for students (focused on teaching about issues and processes) and 'adults' (more focused on inciting people to action in the real world) because I don't think you can serve different constituencies effectively in one site.

I wouldn't take my teen students to a biker pub, and wouldn't play my Deep Purple collection in class, but both communities are worth preserving and nurturing.

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