Author Archives: theirishduck

Today I thought I would talk a little bit about this elusive concept of “fun.” Games, we are told, are supposed to be fun. The role of a eLearning designer is, in most cases, to take something and make it fun. I use the word “fun” a lot and I usually enclose the word “fun”Continue reading “Fun”

These days, stories are not just for parents with children or journalists with readers. Good teachers have always known the power of stories in the classroom. Stories often hold a strange and magical quality that can interest and engage learners in a way that few other materials and methods have. While the telling of storiesContinue reading “Storytelling”

As you may know, I wrote my honors thesis on Human Computer Interaction back in my university days, and since then have done a lot of UX and UI based work over the years. I thought I would share some insight into some common things that people mistake UX for UI and vice versa. SoContinue reading “UI Tips”

LeBlanc, Hunicke and Zabek defined a game in terms of its Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics, also known as the MDA Framework. Mechanics are basically the “rules” of the game. These are the constraints under which the game operates. How is the game set up? What actions can players take, and what effects do those actions have onContinue reading “MDA Framework Research”

I have been a member of various ‘meetups’ for years now, but it was only the last 3 months that I feel that I worked up enough courage to actually attend an event again. I had been looking around on the site one day and found a few groups for people here in Melbourne inContinue reading “Networking”

I remember the first time I heard the term SCORM in the days of university when I did the subject Learning and Instructional Design. I remember all these weird acronyms and names like AICC, CMI, SCO, XML, ECMAScript, manifest, packaging, and API. Just so happens I have to know most of that stuff for myContinue reading “SCORM 101”

Too often in eLearning, some instructional designers punish learners inadvertently by making the tasks or quizzes too hard. Obviously, there are cases where making the game hard is necessary (a challenge) or hard fun (such as in Lazzaro’s Four Keys to Fun), but what about the player who is trying hard to play but lacks theContinue reading “Be kind to your learners”

For those that know me, creativity is very important to me, both professional and personally. So though I know it is impossible to generalize, are you able to speak to what kind of value there is placed on creativity as a designer working at home and in working with companies or organizations? After rich collaborationContinue reading “Creativity”

From my experience and observation, a lot people lately (the last two/three years or so) have been throwing the whole “gamification” and “simulation” terms around in the eLearning community. As some of you know, I have been into this sort of stuff for a bit longer than this (5+ years) so I would like toContinue reading “Games vs Simulations”

A big part of my work as both a UX and an Instructional Designer is creating scenarios. Scenarios are awesome ways to engage people, promote their decision making skills, and to help them apply the acquired knowledge through practice. Scenarios, in the case of eLearning, (my forte) can help students get the idea of differentContinue reading “Scenarios”