Engaging Learning
Chapter One
Games? Really?
IN 1982, John Carroll noticed people playing what was probably the first
computer adventure game, "Colossal Cave." He observed then what we
see now, people hunched over a computer spending hours figuring out how
to get further in the game. He compared that observation to people who were
giving up on something considerably more valuable to them, learning to use
a word processor.
At that time, I had a job creating educational computer games for the Apple
II and other, similar, machines. It was my first job out of college, and I'd already
been bitten by the computers-and-learning bug badly enough that I'd designed
my own major in it (back then, they didn't have such degrees). And, as a professional
obligation mind you, I was playing computer games, including the
"Colossal Cave" adventure. I was captured by the possibility of embedding
important decisions in adventure games and creating learning environments.
And that is really what this book is about, the results of a twenty-plus-year
journey from that point, driven by a belief that learning can be fun. My
understanding has been refined through research and trial-by-fire, and also
buttressed with evidence. I heard the phrase "har ... read full excerpt from Engaging Learning: Designing e-Learning Simulation Games ebook
