I’ve been spending a fair bit of time in WoW recently, attempting to mash it into the PLTS framework to see what comes out the other end. More on that to come. In this post I want to talk about failing and how we’re not doing it nearly as often as we should.

The thing about learning to fail is that you learn that it’s actually not so bad. You develop skills to help you manage it, to come back afterwards. But we’re scared of it. We’ve built a system where failing is a big bad thing, and we must avoid it at all costs.

Distinctly Average

The problem with that is it breeds mediocrity. The biggest hardest part of my role is dealing with the fear of change, the unknown. It is safer to stick with what we know, maintain the status quo. You see it in individuals, and in whole institutions. You can’t fail if you don’t push it too hard.

This attitude means we end up falling into a trap where can can easily do the same to our students. At the big scary end of school you must pass your exams to get to the next thing. Want to create an environment that’ll scare you about failing? Not being allowed to carry on if you do will achieve that.

I don’t have a huge problem with this though. We need goals to challenge us, targets we are motivated to achieve. Succeeding at a difficult task is such a positive experience, we can’t take that away.

My problem is that because the fail is scary rather than building their confidence to think they can do it, it’s safer make the task easier. Take the BTEC in X because it’s an easy way to 5 GCSEs rather than doing that triple science you’re not smart enough for, improve this coursework by doing Y in order to tick enough boxes on the mark scheme, your current grades mean you should do the foundation paper and get a safe C grade rather than risking the higher, and so on.

Gamification

In the game world the tasks don’t get easier the more you fail. There isn’t an easy way round a hard obstacle, you just have to persevere. What we in schools need to learn from games is why people come back to them, again and again.

One reason is because it’s safe to fail. I’m happy to admit that in WoW I die fairly frequently. When you die in WoW you become a ghost, a little gravestone appears on your map and you have to head off and find your body. Once you’ve found it you carry on from where you left off, having learned from your mistake.

The quest doesn’t become any easier to accommodate my poor play, I don’t get a man over my shoulder telling me which button to press. I reflect on my own performance and adapt, all the time knowing that if I’m still not quite successful I can just have another go.

I’ll finish with a McGonigal quote:

“When we’re playing a well-designed game, failure doesn’t disappoint us. It makes us happy in a very particular way: excited, interested, and most of all optimistic”

Studying games based learning means I tend to encounter the phrase ‘I’m no good at games’ a fair bit. The problem I have with it is I’m not sure it is possible. What people who say this actually mean is any one or more of the following:

1) I am intimidated by computers or don’t want to learn

Needs no explanation, we’ve all seen it. In this example ‘no good’ translates quite nicely as ‘don’t want to try’. It’s about motivation. I’ll cite my Grandad as case in point. He doesn’t want a mobile phone because he’s no good at ‘technology’, but he can achieve the kind of magic with the cricket on his Sky+ box that I can only dream of.

2) I consider gaming to be a somehow lower form of entertainment

This one might be a little bit specific to the shire of white middle class England I live in, but there’s a social divide in play. You can test this out for yourself. Next time the ‘what did you do at the weekend’ question comes up in a peer group try alternating your responses between:

1. I got my hunter up to level 20 in WoW.
2. We went to the new Titanic exhibition at the city museum and I finally got round to finishing Obama book.

3) I’ve forgotten that ‘games’ is a wider field than that shooting thing my son likes

There’s no question that electronic gaming has got popular. The problem is that people tend to generalise based on what they see in the media. Talk about gaming and our first points of reference are either first person shooters and how they are encouraging little Jonny to go all Black Hawk Down on his school or that weird kid who stays up all night doing strange things with orcs.

Gaming is a massive field. It includes those board games you used to love and still make me play at Christmas, the whole of the sports world, even those stupid games you play with yourself on the commute to work or with the receptionist in your building. I refuse to accept that anybody can be bad at Every Game.

4) I feel the need to project myself as a serious grown up

This is very similar to 2), but needs a section of it’s own. At what point in our lives do we stop playing? Early childhood play is about learning. Go to school and learning becomes work and play what we’re allowed to do afterwards. As ‘serious’ adults do we spend time playing? Would you be prepared to tell your friends in the book group you’ve been playing? Why not?

5) I want to stop this conversation as soon as possible and talk to somebody here who is less geeky

Potentially more a reflection on me rather than the wider subject…

Image source- PS3 Controller by Chi