Game Based Lifelong Learning - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 342

in a full-time job ideally combine their lifelong
learning activities with recreational activities,
which is in line with the notion of informal learn-
ing (Coffield, 2000; Foreman 2004).
On the other side of the coin, especially in times
of world economic crisis people lose jobs and
often have to start over, trying to get qualified in
different areas, or getting back to school to get the
degree they never completed. This is how lifelong
learning and formal education encounter and create
a potentially painful combination. Especially for
people who already have been in a workplace and
gathered professional experience, getting “back to
school” may be perceived as big throwback. Under
these circumstances, but also in a more general
context, learning tends to reside down at the lower
end of the scale, while games and other frivolous
activities are ranked higher. A reason for this could
be that learning is usually understood by authori-
ties, and experienced by people as the passive act
of “receiving” knowledge from a speaker, text or
video in a formal setting (of a school or institu-
tion). Enjoyable side-activities happening within
this context, such as socializing or even playing
games, are usually discouraged or forbidden- a
state which increases their scarcity, and thus their
value. However, the pleasurable value of learning
is greatly decreased by the stark contrast to the
individually more valuable, discouraged activities
happening in between lessons or classes (Schank
& Cleary, 1995).
Due to these very reasons, many researchers in
the field of pedagogy have struggled for years to
show that what is happening within the classroom
is not “really” learning (Illich, 2000). It is simply
a structured way of delivering information, in the
hope that through a process of content delivery, and
repeated exercises, with their respective mistakes
and successes, the participants will get a proper
understanding of the topic at hand. This system,
which roots back in the introduction of factories
during industrialization (Keegan, 1994), remains
in use, although nowadays many educators believe
that a more flexible approach, harnessing the

power of the Internet and computers, for example,
clearly offers better alternatives.
We acknowledge and build upon the fact that
formal education is perceived by most as an un-
pleasant activity and many learners spend most of
their cognitive power “playing the system”. This
is a problem we refer to as Naeve's knowledge
emulation problem (Peña-López & Naeve, 2007)
and seems to be centred on the testing aspect of
formal education. Tests, usually few of which
will have an actual impact on a learner's grad-
ing, are spaced out far enough from each other,
to give the teacher ample opportunity to design
them, as well as to review the student's scores.
The possibility of repeating an exam or a test of
the same nature is rarely offered, causing many
learners to struggle finding ways of emulating
the knowledge at all costs, since failure is not an
option. According to Naeve and Peña-López this
behaviour unfortunately means that many learners
avoid reflective thinking or contemplation on their
subjects, as they are more concerned with passing
these “rare” tests, thus avoiding any delays in their
career, rather than mastering their subjects. This
presents one of the major challenges for modern
educators, to break free of the factory-mentality of
formal education, and restore fun and discovery to
the learning process. One way to accomplish that
is to add gaming elements to an existing learning
activity; how to do so with some of the more ef-
fective generic game patterns is explained below.
Games by their very nature are often simula-
tions of real world activities, or simply “naïve”
problem solving enhanced by instant gratifications
in various forms: points or audio/visual “rewards”.
A simple method for turning exercises into a game
is the introduction of a scoring system. A scoring
system allows a learner to gauge their performance
from exercise to exercise, as well as enabling
comparison to their peers and thus competition.
Even the most simplistic scoring system may
revitalize a learner's efforts as they offer easy
alternatives to the sparsely taken and heavily
weighted tests mentioned earlier. In contrast to