Entertainment-based Learning

Entertainment-based Learning…old wine in new bottle or is it new wine in old bottle? Whichever way you put it, the fact is that the concept of imparting learning by entertaining the learner is antique, and like all antiques, it’s priceless…and like all antiques, it’s very rare!

Combining entertainment and learning is something that scares almost all educators. The reason behind this fear probably lies under many early and dusty educational theories that taught educators to create content within rigidly defined frameworks. These theories had their roots in the assumption that humans (children especially) learn linearly. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. With growth in experiences, the chasm between the characteristics, the personalities, and the learning styles of individuals, begins to grow.

This growing difference among individuals is random, and in no way we can serve the same learning to each of them and expect them to savor it.

As you must’ve guessed, there is a way (tried and tested) that is used to ensure that the learning being imparted reaches all equally…and the way is – “Make learning objective. Strip your lessons of everything that may give them interest or personality. Serve content as impersonally as you can.” Unfortunately, impersonal, indifferent lessons are seldom entertaining.

Let’s review this practice in more detail by dividing our audience in two broad groups – adults and children. We assume that adults consider anything other than pure content, a waste of time. Before we begin questioning this premise, let us see how we educate our children. We equip our children with uninteresting, boring, soporific diagrams and evaluate them in the same age-old manner. We assume that if content becomes entertaining, it will not remain educative.

These two assumptions sit at the back of our minds, reigning in our imaginations and stopping us from using entertainment as tool to educate better. We consciously deny the fact that we love to sit through trainings with role-plays, activities, and games; that we prefer to learn about Troy by watching the movie rather than reading a 10,000 word chapter from a history text; that even we, who are adults, prefer speakers who lighten the atmosphere with anecdotes to those who monotonously drone about their researches while mechanically clicking away a PowerPoint presentation! Yet, when we begin to develop courses, we decide to do away with all that is interesting and entertaining. Why?

I guess the answer to this question lies in our willingness to stick to traditions. Traditions ensure that there is no confrontation, and that we live in harmony. Unfortunately, traditions also curtail our growth as the human race. Faster and more effective learning leads to massive savings in money and time. Historically, humans have used stories and games as potent tools for imparting learning and improving analytical and tactical skills. Think of the travelers who stopped in villages and told stories of their travels; think of chess that helped develop the analytical skills of master strategists; all these are examples of entertainment being used for learning.

But then, somewhere during the last two thousand years or so, we lost the knack of using entertainment to educate.

Entertainment-based learning is making a comeback in form of Entertainment-based eLearning. eLearning requires that learning is interesting, so that the learner’s attention doesn’t waver. In a classroom, a teacher can keep a tab on the learner whose interest wavers, but in the virtual learning environment, the content needs to ensure learner’s interest. Another development that demands the inclusion of entertainment in learning is the pervasion of computer games in the last two decades. The generation that forms the young adults today is used to playing computer games, that include stories, themes, strategies, challenges, and rewards. Thus, they are used to more mental stimulation than their previous generation counter-parts.

There are a lot of things going for Entertainment-based eLearning. As Instructional Designers, we need to become more sensitive to including some amount of educative entertainment in our courses. Let’s review how we can use entertainment to ensure learner’s interest and educate more effectively.

Here are a few points that you should consider while deciding the amount, type, and manner of including entertainment into your course.

Audience:
Create an audience profile. Include not only the learning style, demographics, and other standard characteristics in it, but stretch a bit beyond to include lifestyle, popular culture (games, movies, restaurants) of the generation, access to learning and entertainment resources, favorite pastimes, and other such important yet often overlooked aspects of the audience’s life.

Content Delivery Mechanism:
Review your content delivery mechanism. While creating activities and assignments make sure your entertainment-based learning pieces will gel with it. Online deliveries may not be able to effectively deliver and evaluate “Watch “Troy” and analyze Brad Pitt’s performance on the five basic parameters of acting.” The same assignment could work exceptionally well in a classroom scenario. (The entertainment value here is in watching “Troy.”)

Technological and Economic Limitations:
It is a good idea to be aware of the technological limitations before you design games and activities for a course. What I mean here is that it will not be wise to visualize a strategy game that will comprise n scenarios and requires 3d simulations for a course that needs to be delivered online. Nor would it be wise to visualize this simulation for a course that has to be delivered on the CD but will fetch only about USD 10000 for the developer.

Education-Entertainment Balance:
Don’t let entertainment become more important than education. We exist to create educational material. Remember that we use entertainment only to facilitate learning. The idea is not to put entertainment in the limelight; rather it should be used to prop education by sustaining learner’s interest.

Entertain Naturally:
Let entertainment be seamlessly embedded in your course. Here are a couple of non-examples. A flippant joke pasted into a serious topic that explains pathological split-personality disorder, can erode the learner’s confidence in the course. A mathematical puzzle embedded in a course that teaches “Creating Characters for Role-playing Games,” can seriously puzzle your artist learner.

These were just a few tips to help you set on the course of making your content more interesting and entertaining for your audience. I know it is just a beginning, but a whirlwind revolution seldom works better than a sweet, comfortable evolution. The difference is clear – revolution makes Godzilla, evolution makes humans.

Author: Shafali R. Anand