What are serious games?

Serious Games leverage the power of computer games design techniques and mechanics to captivate and engage end-users for purposes beyond pure entertainment. While ensuring learners are challenged and motivated, the main purpose of a Serious Game is to develop new knowledge, skills and to ultimately produce a behaviour change. Serious Games enable learners to undertake tasks and experience situations which would otherwise be impossible and/or undesirable to practice in the real world for reasons of cost, time, logistics and safety.

Helen Routledge17 April 2017

The importance of characters in games

Social learning theory focuses on the importance of observation and modelling as a key part in the learning process alongside classical and operant conditioning.

Social learning was illustrated by one of my favourite experiments by Banduras Bobo Doll experiment in 1961. Modelling is taking on board the behaviours which we observe from people around us. In society, we are surrounded by role models, who illustrate both positive and negative behaviours. For children this modelling is an essential part of their development, helping to mould them into the person they are to become. It is also important for adults as well.

Helen Routledge10 April 2017

Rage against the machine?

Well not yet anyway. Last week we talked about how Augmented Reality or AR can make certain processes much more effective in terms of time on task.

Helen Routledge6 April 2017

Project Management: what is the point of it?

There is a lot of chatter amongst those who are interested in businesses and organisations about the value of management. There is the whole push towards Agile. On top of this, there are radical new ways of structuring organisations, such as that being proposed in the recent book Holacracy. And those chattering can question the worth of anything with the title “management” or “manager” in it.

Guest User4 April 2017

Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and the 'Magpie Effect'

Google Glass was first made available for sale in 2013 and brought with it the promise of a new way of viewing the world with added information and personalised views, if you could afford the hefty price tag of course. At the same time Virtual Reality stormed into our awareness with the Oculus Rift, a completely immersive, yet still admittedly basic, gaming head set.

Helen Routledge30 March 2017

How serious games can help relieve stress

It looks like the Dutch are once more a step ahead in the world of serious gaming. Researchers from Radboud University have received funding to develop a serious game which will aim to train officers how to optimally respond under stressful situations.

Magda Bekou27 March 2017

What poles are you learners climbing?

We were interested to hear about OpenReach’s use of immersive simulations to safely train new engineers in the skills they will need to help the firm in its plans to provide 12m homes with super fast broadband by 2020.

Helen Routledge24 March 2017

Are leadership skills important for your employees?

Every corporate environment nowadays is struggling to find and develop good leaders. Every company out there is looking for employees who will not necessarily be great leaders but will incorporate leadership characteristics in their skills portfolio. So, which skills turn someone into a good leader?

Magda Bekou17 March 2017

What does it take to be a successful project manager?

A guest blog by Richard Newton.

Totem Learning20 February 2017