From a technical and pedagogical point of view, creating engaging eLearning games can be complicated. You will find in this article your blueprint to successful eLearning games, as well as an easy-to-use and affordable authoring tool to reach your goals.
How To Create Meaningful And Engaging eLearning Games With ITyStudio
How can you create engaging eLearning games? Well, when it comes to serious game development, there are often 2 main hassles faced by training managers:
- Instructional Design.
How to create the learning material that will be published to the learners. - Technical stuff.
Setting up the graphical environment, inserting feedback, creating branching scenarios…
Concerning the first element, we are going to cover the basics of instruction in this article. About the second one, you will discover the process that we use with ITyStudio, in order to create compelling and engaging eLearning games that drive results and high engagement rates.
With this article, you are on your way to be educated and ready to create your first serious games for free.
Happy reading!
1. Start With Your “Why”.
When trying to create eLearning games, or even training modules in general, there is one basic but important question you need to ask yourself: Why are you creating this learning content?
And trust me, if you cannot clearly answer this question, you should better not go any further.
Whether it is to increase the ROI of your company, to develop the skills of your employees, to conduct a change, to introduce a new product or process… There must be a solid reason why you are putting efforts toward your eLearning games.
By starting with a clear reason why in mind, you are on your way to create successful serious games.
2. Setup Your Graphical Environment.
Now, it is time to setup the graphical environment of your eLearning games. This step is really crucial if you want your module to feel realistic and compelling to your learners.
The graphical part is the first component of engagement. Consequently, if you offer poor characters and settings in your training simulations, chances are yourengagement rate will be lower than it should be.
Do not freak out: You do not need to have specific skills in graphic design, or to hire a team of designers. At least, not with ITyStudio.
This serious game authoring tool offers a lot of ready-made content, in 2D and 3D, whether it is characters of environments. While you can have a look at its whole content here, you will find below some examples of what is has to offer:
3. Think About Your Pedagogical Goals.
Great, we took care of the graphical part. Which is often the most feared aspect of Instructional Designers by the way. Now, we will have a closer look to pedagogical goals. These are a really important ingredient of well-rounded, engaging eLearning games. And they will be your best allies when assessing your learners’ performance.
To make it simple, this part is all about breaking down your “reason why” into several pedagogical objectives. For instance, if you created eLearning games in order to learn to your sales force how to sell better, your pedagogical goals could be the following:
- Empathy.
- Product knowledge.
- Active listening.
To come up with great and relevant objectives, there are some questions that can help you. For instance:
- Where are my learners now, and where do I want them to be after the training?
- What are my learners’ strengths?
- What are my learners’ weaknesses?
- What skills could help my organization to go to the next level?
Once you get your objectives, you can insert them into ITyStudio very easily.
4. Insert Feedback In Your eLearning Games.
You now have your pedagogical goals up and running. But what about adding some feedback? Indeed, as earners, it is really nice to know what we have done well or bad during eLearning games. However, without precise feedback based on our performance, how can we know the next steps to make in order to improve ourselves?
Well, this is precisely what feedback is all about: Providing insights to learners about the next steps they have to take, in order to go to the next level.
Fortunately, ITyStudio has a built-in feedback feature, which will enable you togive customized comments to your learners, based on their performance and their score on a given pedagogical objective of your eLearning games.
5. Add Some Context To Warm Your Learners.
Once you are there, you are ready to start thinking about the greatest part of eLearning games: Storytelling and scenario creation.
But before diving into the real scenario, and actually the online training itself, it is a best practice to give a little bit of context to your learners before starting.
This will enable them to warm up, and to fully enter into the simulation. We call this stage the “pre-simulation steps”.
It can take several forms:
- Text.
- Quiz.
- ITy’coach.
- Video.
For this article, we chose to show you how a pre-simulation text could look like:
6. Most Important Part Of Engaging eLearning Games: The Scenario.
Here we are: Scenario creation. This is the last, but certainly not least, step to create engaging eLearning games with ITyStudio. Actually, this stage will make or break yourlearning simulations. This is where you have to create an engaging scenario, and addstorytelling to your module.
Be really careful with the sentences that you use, as well as the different paths proposed to your learners. Above all, when it comes to behavioral learning, addingconditional paths and precise dialogues and answers is key.
If you design your scenario properly, the training should start to feel real. Like in real life, learners will be put in front of challenging situations, in which they have to make the right decision with the right timing, otherwise the scenario might lead to failure, just like in real life when their decision making process has been wrong.
Learners will feel like the hero of their own story, by being able to have impact on their environment, to interact with objects, with maps, with characters. The sum of all these elements make eLearning games so fun and so effective.
Once again, concerning the technical aspects, ITyStudio is really making the task easy.
With its built-in scenario tree, you can start creating serious games quickly and easily,without having any specific skills about coding or whatever. Everything is working with right clicks, and drag and drop systems at most.
Ready To Create Your First Engaging eLearning Games? Take Action!
In this article, we covered how to create meaningful and engaging eLearning games from scratch with ITyStudio.
If you feel concerned and see a potential in this training method, you should definitelygive ITyStudio a try!
This eLearning games authoring tool contains all the features needed to implement the steps listed previously.
It is easy to use, it is engaging, and, best of all: You can try it for free!
Ready to go to the next level? Claim your 30-day free trial here!
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