They say that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. This doesn’t apply for an experience like this one. I’m so excited to have the chance to attend DevLearn 2013. Here are my thoughts on the first day.

Opening General Session: Things started off with David Kelly recalling his DevLearn 2012 which he spent battling Hurricane Sandy. After explaining some of the specifics about how the conference would operate, David turned the mic over to Jeremy Butsche who energized the group talking about how to Exploit Chaos. Here are a few items mentioned by Jeremy that resonated with me:

• questions don’t change, just the answers
• we are in a time where we are no longer selling product, but experience
• it’s important to know your customers
• culture beats strategy – fulfill, adapt, motivate
• there is no point in innovating if you think you already know the answer – be open to possibilities
• 3 ways to exploit chaos – viral creation, viral mediums, well-packaged story
• portray your product as average and that’s all it will ever be
• challenge: describe what you do in 7 words or less
• to make message stick -simple, direct, supercharged

Expo – impressed by the crew that I interacted with.

Gamification on the Go: This session was about a topic that has been on my mind for awhile. But there is something that bothers me about the idea. While I can see that there is a chance to accomplish more by using gaming techniques, it seems almost subversive in its approach. One item that reinforced what I have been learning is that status in the community is more important than getting rewards for learners.

Redesigning Learning Design to Meet Today’s Challenges: This was an interesting session. I liked the layout. It was clear what was going to be covered. I took this session as a challenge to rethink learning design to think beyond ADDIE. Here were some of the suggestions to research:

• HPT (Human Performance Technology)
• BPR (Business Process Re-engineering
• Six Sigma
• Lean
• Agile
• CMA (Critical Mistake Analysis)
• SAM (Successive Approximation Model)

There was alot of conjecture about what has happened over the past 40 years in e-learning. While most of it resonated with me, I’m not completely confident that society is going in the right direction and that we don’t play a part in the problem.

One thing that has bothered me lately is the speed with which we are trying to put together courses. In order to do this, there needs to be some give and take. From my end, I have come to terms with the fact that the initial product will be unfinished and unpolished. But the problem is that it cannot stay that way. It is important to continue to address issues as the course progresses to fit learner needs.

Back to the challenge that Lance Dublin issued, he would like us to think about how we can take the different models and create a new model or a combo model that helps to better address design than our old friend ADDIE. I have thought this for years. When I went through school at Philadelphia University, we as a cohort were almost anti-ADDIE. I remember doing an assignment in Dr. Russ Pritchard’s course where I amassed my own ID model to glowing reviews from him. It inspired me to consider my philosophy. This session helped to further reopen my investigation. I’m so glad that I have been reflecting on the Clark blog. Now I need to keep going down this road by looking at an overall framework that we can use to better address course design, development, and growth.

The Real Power of Games for Learning – This was my favorite session of the day and sparked conversation afterwards with my good friend and colleague, Kent Matsueda. Ian Bogost helped to lay out the differences between Game Design and Gamification. He did a tremendous job, & I will be forever grateful for his efforts on this.

He started by making a statement about games as an underdog. This was of note to me because I don’t see it that way from my perspective. At least I didn’t until I heard Ian explain his position. To me, games and sport are ubiquitous and drive our society. By Ian is not talking about sport, necessarily. He is talking about games which often are associated with youth, violence, and sloth. It gave me a new perspective which I needed.

He went on to describe the 7 differences between Game Design and Gamification while adding examples and infusing important game design principles into the talk. Here are those ideas:

I liked how Ian clearly laid out his points in a way that he wasn’t attacking gamification. He has a strong opinion, but he wasn’t trying to shove it down our throats. He explained his view in a coherent and transparent way that opens up a discussion that he need to have.

I get the feeling that many would rather move forward with gamification and not worry about the impact of the movement. To me this is not wise. We are going to impact our craft and our learners, so we bettter know if this is something that is good for them and society in general before fully committing to this strategy. To me, this is the time. We finally have a dialouge started. Thanks again to Ian for starting this dialouge. I look forward to participating for the betterment of the appropriate use of games in teaching in learning.