Engaging Learning: Designing E-learning Simulation Games

By Clark N. Quinn and Marcia Conner

Learning is at its best when it is goal-oriented, contextual, interesting, challenging, and interactive. These same winning characteristics also define the best computer games, which suggests that the most effective learning experiences are also engaging. Learning can and should be hard fun The challenge is to get in touch with what it takes to design learning experiences that will excite your audience. Engaging Learning offers a much-needed guide for training professionals who want to create learning programs that are both effective and engaging. Clark N. Quinn Learning, a system designer, presents a unique framework for systematically aligning the key elements of learning and engagement with a proven design process for e-learning games. This nuts-and-bolts guide, which is both research-based and grounded in experience, offers the tools needed to transform learning experiences from humdrum to fun.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0787975222
• ISBN13: 9780787975227
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Pfeiffer & Co
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Hard Fun!

I will be brief. That's the way you feel when you're engaged in an eLearning Simulation Game. You get swept up in it. You're turned on. You block out life's static in order to reach your goal. Clark's book is like that. BUY THIS BOOK!

excellent

I've known and worked with Clark Quinn for several years. He's written a very good book. Like the e-learning it advocates, Engaging Learning is fun, accessible and, well, engaging. Working from a solid theoretical framework, Clark explains why learning should be "hard fun" and then shows how to create that kind of e-learning. He includes several detailed case studies. As someone who develops e-learning for a living, I appreciated his pragmatic approach and acknowledgement that e-learning can be developed at different levels of engagement, depending on budget, schedule, quality of source material, etc. What really shines through, though, is Clark's passion for incorporating simulations and gaming techniques into e-learning. If you read this book and some of that rubs off, you will develop better e-learning.