Rules in gaming and in teaching
In itself, a game is just a set of rules, for example, how to get points, what is allowed and what is not, how many players can play. But there are also rules about which actions are possible and which are not. If you want to apply game design to teaching, you have to consider the different types of rules:
- Operational rules: These are rules that describe how the game works. For example, the information that you can buy a better snowboard with 2000 tokens belongs to such rules.
- Constituent or basic rules: They underlie the game and determine its basic functionality. These often include mathematical formulas based on, for example, the probability of rolling a six on a six-sided die.
- Implicit rules and rules of behavior: These rules relate to social interaction, netiquette. These rules are often implicit. Violation of such rules can lead to exclusion in the game.
- Instructional rules: These are rules that align the behavior of the players and the goal of the game. For example, if you want to teach someone to keep their inventory small, then you should award points for small inventories in the inventory game. So this type of rule is used to teach the players something through the game rule.
(freely translated and paraphrased from Karl Kapp 2012, p. 30f.)
Similar rules are also used in teaching. Rules primarily serve to promote the learning experience primarily through transparency of the learning process design. In the following, you will get a few tips on how to integrate different rules into your ILIAS environment:
1 Operational Rules
Particularly if you are building a creative game-based learning environment, learners may not immediately understand how individual elements work. Prevent confusion and floods of e-mails by placing short explanations of individual elements in the learning environment so that they are easy to find. Furthermore, these explanations should be permanently available. For example, you could place a document as a start object at the beginning of the course to ensure that everyone has seen it at least once and make this document permanently available in a folder.
2 Constituent or fundamental rules
In this area, the functionality of the course should be ensured first and foremost. In particular, if there are dependencies, it should be transparent to learners that these exist and that the progress of the course is controlled by such rules. To do this, you can put information on the pages or in the descriptions of the objects. You can also provide information pages (for example, as content pages or PDF documents).
Technically you can realize such rules for example by controlling availability, pass limits in the test or also the forward navigation in learning module.
Technically you can realize such rules for example by controlling availability, pass limits in the test or also the forward navigation in learning module.
3 Implicit Rules
Although many people are basically familiar with rules of interaction, it can be advisable, especially when using new formats, to formulate netiquette, for example, or to clarify which activities are used for which purposes. In objects that serve social interaction, you can create sample entries (for example, in the forum) or appoint moderators. In areas where feedback is given, you can pre-formulate feedback categories (for example, in the exercise in peer feedback or in the survey by the way the question is asked).
4 Instructional Rules
Instructional rules for teaching address nothing less than competency orientation. The activities of your course should always be aligned with the learning objective. Rewards, progress in the game, and finally passing the course should follow the successful mastering of challenges that are as directly related as possible to the improvement of the target competencies.
Thus, the implementation of such instructional rules is primarily tied to the design of the activities and tasks in your learning environment. It should always be clear why certain rules are conducive to learning goals (see also constructive alignment).
However, you can also emphasize the direct connections between content and activities more strongly through the visual design, for example, by placing self-tests in the form of questions directly where the associated content can be found or by giving learners access only to the information they would have "in reality".
Thus, the implementation of such instructional rules is primarily tied to the design of the activities and tasks in your learning environment. It should always be clear why certain rules are conducive to learning goals (see also constructive alignment).
However, you can also emphasize the direct connections between content and activities more strongly through the visual design, for example, by placing self-tests in the form of questions directly where the associated content can be found or by giving learners access only to the information they would have "in reality".
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