Captivate and Gamification

Examples are often hard to come by since most of what e-learning designers make ends up being proprietary and cannot be shared. Since I had one I could share even to the level of the Captivate file, I thought I would jump in.

Gamification is more of bringing content into a game template, but don't forget that often if you start with the content first and think through what it takes to understand or practice to mastery that content you can get a more natural fit between the content and the game. The downside is it takes a lot more custom work for everything from graphics and animations to advanced actions. 

So, for example, let's say that one of your goals is for students to learn the anatomy of a shark and compare it to a marine mammal. You could build a lecture that serves up the content and then end it with a drag and drop anatomy diagram activity. But, let''s deepen the pedagogy and expand it to a stimulation within a storyline. The student can experience the activity from the perspective of a character that is a guest in a lab environment exploring why sharks and dolphins have washed up on a beach and died. In the lab, the student is a newbie and is learning from an experienced forensic marine investigator. They start with the dolphin and the learner is to listen to the expert during the examination and given the task of removing the organs as they are described and the background given for what the organ does. Then the simulation moves to the shark - still natural to the story line. In this part of the simulation there is less direction from the expert but more feedback on errors. The focus first is on anatomical similarities, but shifts to comparative differences as the student is brought to interactions that highlight differences such as examining teeth and jaw structure and relating it to the stomach contents (diet of the organism) and hunting methods and the associated anatomy (scent and electrical signal detection in the slower shark vs sonar in the speedy dolphin). 

From this example, you can see it is much less passive than a lecture with a drag and drop diagram as a wrap up activity. It is more involving and interesting. It feels more like exploration and discovery with a friendly guide along the way. But, it is much more complex in the design requiring lots of creative thinking, custom graphics (including character design and animations), advanced actions, more complex audio because of piecing together the dialogue to play in response to what the player does, etc. 

I teach chemistry (among other subjects) and did a proof of concept level of Chemicus to see if it might be possible to build an explore/inventory style game in Captivate. It was my first learning foray into advanced actions and the more complex world of simulations and games (beyond drag and drop and Jeopardy templates). I only went so far as to be certain it would work well so it is missing some of the more subtle game play attributes such as atmospheric sounds, but it is definitely a confirmation that it is very doable. Though my test was for Chemistry, we actually decided to build a totally original game simulation course in Marine Biology (the first example given above is actually one of the interactive simulations in our marine bio course). 

Here is the proof of concept Chemicus game level - http://www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.org/vhsgfiles/03_Science/04_Chemistry/General_Chemistry/00_proof_opf_concept_Captivate/03_Richards_Lab/Published/SWF_and_HTML5/multiscreen.html

Feel free to download the Captivate file - http://www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.org/vhsgfiles/03_Science/04_Chemistry/General_Chemistry/00_proof_opf_concept_Captivate/03_Richards_Lab/Captivate/

There are quite a number of advanced actions, so studying how those are created and how they are inter-related can assist you in creating your own inventory style explore game for the topic you need to cover. You may even find more efficient ways of doing things. This one was my very first experience with advanced actions and was built about three years ago (republished a few times to keep it current). I didn't want to tie up too much time since I didn't initially know if it could even work in Captivate. Thankfully, what I asked of Captivate it delivered. In the case of this proof of concept, the topic was chemistry - acids and bases. That one is not SCORM for the interactions (puzzles), but is can easily become one.