Can designing a good lesson follow the same principles as game design?
When a video game creator designs a gaming experience, they keep in mind the concept of flow channel. You can do the same in the classroom with your students, getting the attention they give to a game of Call of Duty… or almost.
What is flow?
The term flow, in Italian flusso, was introduced in psychology in the mid-1970s by Polish researcher Mihály CsĂkszentmihályi to indicate that state of intense mental concentration reached by a person engaged in a task that gratifies them. It's that state where you don't notice the passage of time, you don't feel tired, and you're totally focused. It's also called "optimal experience" or "agonistic trance", and it happens in sports, reading a book, or in school listening to your lessons, right?
In game design, the flow channel is used
Video game designers apply the concept by realizing it in game design - the activity of designing a game. It starts with an idea… Read it's called flow channel. That is, the gaming experience is designed so that players are rewarded for the time and effort they dedicate to the game and possibly buy the second, third, and fourth versions. The numbers in the video game industry tell us that many of them succeed in this endeavor.
Any player can tell you that almost all games start with a first "tutorial" level where the basic interactions (such as using the mouse and headset) are presented and the game's requirements are minimal (moving around the game world), maybe with an interesting narrative. As you progress, the required skills increase in complexity and the challenges to overcome become more demanding. All this is proposed in a gradual and balanced way.
The text "The Art of Game Design" written by Jesse Schell explains the flow channel with the following graph:
If we represent the player's mental state using a pair of Cartesian axes, using the x-axis to indicate the level of skills and the y-axis to indicate the degree of difficulty of the task, we will identify three areas:
- the boredom zone, characterized by simple tasks that do not engage the player's skills;
- the anxiety zone, characterized by very complex tasks that far exceed the player's skills;
- the flow channel, that mental state where the challenges proposed to me correspond to the skills I possess.
By gradually stimulating the player's activity through the illustration of new skills and the proposal of new challenges, we can keep them in a state of optimal experience.
Keep your class in the flow channel
This technique can also be used in the classroom with students. It's not complicated.
To get practical, create a lesson based on Kahoot! and then proceed like this:
- if the group has never used the platform, prepare an initial simple survey that doesn't require specific knowledge;
- explain what will happen and give the first instructions for connecting to the quiz;
- as you proceed with the questions, you can delve into the platform's peculiarities;
- when the group is comfortable with the platform, administer the first quiz with a score.
During these steps, you will have to dose the administration of "anxiety" and "explanations" by taking the time to illustrate the details, but soliciting participation.
With a little practice, you will be able to launch any class from the usual sleepy attitude towards an active and jumping audience.
Don't forget, in the meantime, to give yourself some didactic objectives to achieve in the lesson.
Author of the text: prof. Marcello Bozzi from the site gamifica.re