What could be the emerging global tsunami in education and corporate learning that is going to save the world!

How do you handle it when you live in the land of ‘disruptive high tech innovation’, and, due to a long running industrial dispute, you find yourself jam packed, on a very slow, early morning train to Tel Aviv? On the one hand, you are in a tightly enclosed space, like a proverbial ‘sardine in a can’, with at least, an hour’s wobbling journey to endure. On the other hand, you are scheduled to attend a one day cutting edge workshop, in the ‘city that never sleeps’, with one of the global leaders in this amazing developing technological space called ‘enterprise gamification’.

You adapt to the situation, of course! Doing the best you can with what you have!

Out comes the Ipod, tuning into recording of the Dalai Lama, as part of a discussion panel, at the Happiness Conference held in 2011, in Sydney, Australia. Sadly, my home country, despite its natural wealth, fabulous lifestyle and affluence has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world. The panel of experts, along with His Holiness were discussing, why might this be so and what could they do about it?

Everything happens for a reason, my role was to find and fulfil it!

Whilst many factors were discussed, one of the key points raised in the conversation, was the impact of our materialistic and evidence based Newtonian World, on children’s education.  How science, rationality and reason have become the educational core, and how children are being taught to aspire mostly towards academic and material success.  His Holiness raised the point that the real sources of Happiness are more heart centred, intuitive, and abstract and are also about being part of a community and a well functioning family. 

He suggested that for children to lead happy lives, they need to have a sense of meaning and connection in their lives. That they require more than sensible explanations for things, more than a single parent home, more than a secular and material focus in their young lives!

“Education and knowledge by themselves do not bring inner peace to individuals, families or the society in which they live. But education combined with warm-heartedness, a sense of concern for the well-being of others, has much more positive results. If you have a great deal of knowledge, but you're governed by negative emotions, then you tend to use your knowledge in negative ways. Therefore, while you are learning, don't forget the importance of warm-heartedness”. Dalai Lama

What really amazed me was that he talked a lot about Facebook, and the role of social media in enabling young people to form their own, new kinds of warm hearted ‘communities’. Where they are free to fully express and be themselves, and make a stand, without any of the major family, school or social imperatives and injunctions!

As I finally made my way to the Checkpoint Building, in downtown Tel Aviv, where my workshop was being hosted, I wondered about how this might apply, or not, to the workshop I was about to attend?

Having spent the best part of my 20 year career in the corporate learning space, I was curious as to how enterprise gamification might fit into the whole field of experiential learning? Perhaps not only as an adaption of ‘learning by doing’ principles, but possibly the next evolution might see the integration of experiential learning and social media practices in ways that we may have never expected?

How might it serve as an alternate way of learning that was more in tune with His Holiness’s criteria for Happiness?

So what did I learn?

Some Gamification Facts that I didn’t know previously:

-   We spend 3 billion hours a week playing online games.

-   Average player age is 37 years old: it costs a lot to buy video games (now)

-   The ‘Warcraft Game’, (pictured) has the second largest Wiki, (80,000 articles) after Wikipedia, globally.

-   97% of youth are playing computer or video games!

-   The ratio of social to competitive players is greater than 3:1.

What really attracts people to games is that they like to ‘try out stuff’, have fun and enjoyment whilst totally engaged in pursuit of mastery!

They like to operate autonomously and not be at the effect of any ‘real life’ consequences when they make a mistake, or fail to achieve one of their virtual missions!

This sounded very familiar to me, and I searched my mind to find where exactly I had heard these very same points, yet in another context?  Of course, from Dan Pink, who states that people are motivated by purpose (doing something meaningful, like saving the planet), mastery (be the best gamer on the global score board) and autonomy (I am playing my own game, even if I am part of a gaming community).

"Reality is broken” says Gaming Master Jane McGonigal, 

(see http://janemcgonigal.com) “and we need to make it work more like a game. The best hope we have for surviving the next century on this planet? Games”! 

Her goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games.

(http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html)

She explains that there are four key reasons why people love to game:

1. Creates urgent optimism.
2. Weaves a social fabric.
3. Results in blissful productivity.
4. Creates epic meaning.

She also says that gamers become super empowered and hopeful individuals.

Our facilitator then questioned the group:

“What if we harness the energy and the passion people expend on games to solve some of our major corporate, community and global problems?

“What if people could be enabled to engage and feel like that in organisations, about their day to day work?” 

“How would that impact on productivity, innovation and overall organisational performance?”

Great questions to chew on!

Reflecting back as to how I started the day, I then asked myself:

“How will our clever children evolve and adapt their successful virtual world discoveries into real world solutions, create warm-heartedness and really save the world?”

One in which their urgent optimism permits mistakes that are not perceived as failures, finds a deep sense of well being and profound connection points where they excel and be blissfully productive. Where they can embrace meaning, feel a sense of belonging, experience warm-heartedness and contribute to something greater than themselves!

I don’t know about you, I am joining the emerging global tsunami that is changing the face and nature of education and corporate learning on an unprecedented scale. 

I am looking to see how I can contribute, as a corporate trainer, facilitator and curriculum designer, towards Jane McGonigal’s unique and surprisingly deviant vision for saving the world!