What can you LEARN from Pokemon Go about (Adult) LEARNING?

I’m sure you’ve seen people staring at their own devices, or a “Pokepatch” (a group of players standing around a PokeStop), or maybe you’re also hooked on Pokemon Go.

Source: https://hypebeast.com/2016/7/pawel-kuczynski-pokemon-go

Education experts have long seen the value in game-based learning, but this is really the first massively viral Augmented Reality game that has inspired educators like Amber McLeod and Kelly Carabott from Monash University in their article “Gaming in the Classroom — What Can We Learn From Pokemon Go Technology”. McLeod and Carabott give great examples of how Pokemon Go can inspire learning in the classroom.

But I’m more interested in the WHY?

Why is Pokemon Go so popular? I want to start with the why so that we can apply these insights to Adult Learning. The most in-depth analysis I’ve found so far is by Yu-kai Chou, who is one of the leaders in gamification or human-centred design, where he covers 27 game techniques that makes this game so popular.

Chou uses his gamification framework he calls “Octalysis Framework” to analyse Pokemon Go, and explains that that there are 3 core drivers at play:

• Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback: Players are empowered to go anywhere and catch Pokemon
• Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession: Being a real Pokemon trainer (nostalgia and wish fulfillment) and focusing on your own neighborhood and owning gyms
• Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness: collaboration with friends, competition with rival factions for gyms

Implications for Adult Learning:

1. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback: Empower your learners to choose what they want to learn, when they want to learn it (learning on demand), and how they want to learn. Encourage your learners to provide meaningful feedback and ideas (and do act on these otherwise they won’t give you feedback or ideas again).
2. Ownership & Possession: For some learners, especially in Asia, the possession of certification/accreditation is essential for career advancement. In other organisations, what may be prized possessions may be the location of the car park spot, or amnesty from working the killer shift during the holidays etc.
3. Social Influence & Relatedness: Learning activities and challenges could require collaboration as a team. We can harness the natural competition between teams/divisions to accelerate learning. We can also leverage the natural competition between rival companies if there was open learning within a domain or industry. Learners can find passionate, like-minded peers if they could see meaningful analytics of themselves and their peers.

Pokemon Go is also hugely successful because it caters for all player types as analysed in this blog I came across:

1. Explorers: This is the primary group that Pokemon Go caters for. There is so many Pokemons to find, as my 10 year old can attest as he jumps for joy when he finds a rare Pokemon. You can encourage your learners to explore different courses, and curate their exploration by motivating them to do self-assessments so that they can identify their skill/knowledge gap, and then recommend them a course or activity.
2. Killers: They’re more about acting and interacting. They are gatekeepers who want to regulate and make sure people stick to the rules. They also want to be at the top of the food chain. In Pokemon Go (PoGo) there are gyms and you can take over gyms by challenging the person who currently has control of the gym. The pokemon you leave there rotates in the beacon of that gym declaring it your territory. Killers love this. You can reward the person who has got the most knowledge/expertise in an area to be a “Major” (like in Foursquare) who gets to set challenges for the rest of the community. Then you motivate the rest of the community to de-throne the Mayor by learning and doing more of what you want them to upskill.
3. Socializers: When you hit level 5 you have a choice of joining one of three teams: Mystic (blue), Valor (yellow), or Instinct (red). Also, in real life, when you realize someone around you is playing the same game you are, there’s this instant bond. Facebook groups for PoGo players in specific cities have popped up and people are sharing their experiences and funny photos all over social media. It is a socializer’s dream. You can set team challenges, and give your learners more analytics of how their individual and peer performance.
4. Achievers: Achievers want to get all the achievement points. They’re the ones who seek out the quests and have to complete every….single……one. There are over 700 pokemon in the pokemon catalog, although not currently in the game. There are also medals you can earn for say capturing 10 poison pokemon or for walking a certain distance. Achievers will want to capture ever pokemon and medal they can. You can set time-bound challenges to motivate your learners to learn and practice what they’ve learnt.

I attended the Melbourne Learning Cafe Unconference last week, and loved the passion and intellect of the Learning & Development professionals there. I asked the delegates at the gamification workshop I facilitated how well they knew the learners and their individual motivations, and was not really surprised that there was basically no delegate whose organisations:

1. Leveraged any psychological assessment past the hiring phase
2. Knew what the employee’s preferred learning style
3. Knew the employee’s player profile (if you don’t know yours, here is a quick assessment)

So the potential for employers is to help the learner learn more about themselves, and then their employers can better help them align their learning goals with that of the organisation’s.

The possibilities for more immersive and contextually relevant learning possible for both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is truly exciting!!

I do challenge you to ensure that if your organisation is considering VR, AR, or gamification, or if they are not because they have tried it and it didn’t meet their business objectives, is to honestly answer these questions:

1. Was it designed with the knowledge of what would motivate the learners with the design of the VR/AR/gamified system? OR
2. Did you try VR/AR/gamified system because you wanted to be cool or play with the latest shiny toy?
3. Are you considering VR/AR because you can really see the potential to use it as an empathy machine and emotionally connect the learner to a specific emotion?

I’m now going to return to working with my team which recently came 1st in the Singapore Institute of Adult Learners Innovation competition for our gamified mobile learning solution that integrates VR to make safety training fun, measurable and impactful. We came 2nd for the same solution that helps employers of millenials in the retail industry make customer service training more engaging.

Shameless Plug: We are looking for beta corporate partners to test out the next version of our gamified mobile learning platform. If you are a good VR/AR content production studio and want to partner, please contact me as well. You can reach me at theresa@play2lead.co!

Happy Hunting everyone!