Product Description

Learning is at its best when it is goal-oriented, contextual, interesting, challenging, and interactive. These same winning characteristics also define the best computer games, which suggests that the most effective learning experiences are also engaging. Learning can and should be hard fun! The challenge is to get in touch with what it takes to design learning experiences that will excite your audience. Engaging Learning offers a much-needed guide for training professionals who want to create learning programs that are both effective and engaging. Clark N. Quinn Learning, a system designer, presents a unique framework for systematically aligning the key elements of learning and engagement with a proven design process for e-learning games. This nuts-and-bolts guide, which is both research-based and grounded in experience, offers the tools needed to transform learning experiences from humdrum to fun.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #162604 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review
Quinn presents an enhanced instructional design model that is grounded in the concepts of cognitive apprenticeship, situated learning, constructivism, and the Zone of Proximal Development. (The Journal of Continuing Higher Ed, 06/08)

Review
"I believe you will find that the book you are holding is equally useful for the curious learner as for the e-learning developer interested in creating something truly special. It explains beautifully and gently not only how to craft more meaningful learning experiences, but also why it is vital to do so. I look forward to seeing what you create as a result of what you learn here. You have the opportunity to truly change the world."
--From the Foreword by Marcia L. Conner

"I have often said that simulations may work in practice, but they certainly don’t work in theory. Clark Quinn has proved me wrong. He has uncovered and presented the academic underpinnings to tell us why simulations work as well as they do, both at the highest level and in the nitty-gritty of design."
--Clark Aldrich, author, Simulations and the Future of Learning and Learning by Doing

"Many so-called e-learning simulation games are neither good games nor good learning experiences.  Engaging Learning bridges the chasm between the engaging world of great games and the essential elements of effective learning experiences in clarifying ways to create truly powerful e-learning."
--Michael W. Allen, CEO, Allen Interactions Inc., and author, Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning

"Games are great motivators—sometimes you can’t tear players away from their session. How would it be if we could harness that motivation for the cause of education? In this book, Clark Quinn leads us through the necessary stages of development. He provides precisely what you need to know: systematic, logical coverage of how to create simulations and games that engage the learner and create the compelling learning experience we all dream about."
--Donald Norman, professor, Northwestern University and author, Things That Make Us Smart

From the Inside Flap
Learning is at its best when it is goal-oriented, contextual, interesting, challenging, and interactive. These same winning characteristics also define the best computer games, which suggests that the most effective learning experiences are also engaging. Learning can and should be hard fun! The challenge is to get in touch with what it takes to design learning experiences that will excite your audience.

Engaging Learning offers a much-needed guide for training professionals who want to create learning programs that are both effective and engaging. Clark N. Quinn, a learning system designer, presents a unique framework for systematically aligning the key elements of learning and engagement with a proven design process for e-learning games. This nuts-and-bolts guide, which is both research-based and grounded in experience, offers the tools needed to transform learning experiences from humdrum to fun.

Engaging Learning is the hands-on guide to designing learning programs and specifically simulation games that engage and educate—the type of learning we need. Illustrated with case studies, the book shows trainers and instructional designers what they have to know to create e-learning games and suggests how to do it on a budget and on a schedule. Engaging Learning also shows why this process can improve completion rates and garner rave reviews from learners. Using this revolutionary process, even the most inexperienced trainers or instructional designers can feel confident tackling the design of their own simulation or learning game.

This book

• Introduces an enhanced instructional design model
• Outlines the criteria for creating meaningful learning experiences
• Explains the common principles that define compelling learning experiences
• Explores the different levels of games and learning from mini-scenarios, through linked and contingent scenarios, to a full engine-driven experience
• Defines a new design process for simulations and e-learning
• Discusses the use of media, pragmatics of production, and budgetary concerns accommodating various audiences

Engaging Learning will give you permission to stay abreast of what people say about learning. At conferences, look for talks about using dramatic presentations, keeping learners motivated, and the value of making learners laugh. Read books, trade magazines, and journal articles—whatever you can find. Similarly, see what's being said about having fun. And, of course, have fun yourself. As mentioned before, you now have license to read novels, watch movies, and play games.

Customer Reviews

Engaging what?
I have yet to finish this book; however, for the portions I have already read, I am not impressed. To begin, his expanded usage of the English language is unnecessary for the simplicity of his context. He also has multiple run on sentences that can be as long as 64 words! Also, "his" concepts are more or less variances of colorations of others theory's. The first half of the book is lofty, very wordy and lacking clear definitions. Perhaps this may be a test to see if I can Engage in learning.

Also to gain my credit I am a student of new media including Flash and have read multiple books based on learning through interactivity.

Didn't find anything that was useful or particularly interesting
I had high hopes for this book what with Dr. Allen's apparent endorsement and Jay Cross writing a positive review of it. I found the book dry and boring. I started each chapter with the hope that it would reveal something useful that could be readily applied, but each chapter ended flat. I found a great deal of wisdom in Dr Allen's books. I was hoping that this book might give me somewhat of a different perspective that would expand upon (and even disagree with) the instructional design perspective in Dr Allen's books. Instead it caused me to want to go back and re-read Dr Allen's books to see if my present experience level would cause me to find new meaning. (Micheal Allen's Guide to E-Learning and Creating Successful e-learning)

I give this book 2 stars because Clark Quinn does include some examples. I think that this book would have been far more worthwhile if it was written around these examples. I would have liked to see him explain an idea and then really delve into how he applied that idea in the examples he shows in the book. Instead the examples seem somewhat removed from what the author is primarily saying in each chapter.

good but very basic
a very basic overview fo the situation; does not include major players like BTS, SMG, Real Learning that are the worlds number 1 in simulation these days from invoicing and development of simulations.