Intro: [00:00:00] From Silicon Valley, the heart of startup land, it's Getting2Alpha, the show about creating innovative, compelling experiences that people love. And now here's your host, game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach, Amy Jo Kim.
Amy: Karl Kapp is one of my favorite people in the learning and development space.
Karl wears many hats. He's a professor of instructional tech at Bloomsburg University. He's the author of five books on learning technologies, and he's a popular speaker and consultant with a specialty in gamification. Karl is passionate about making learning effective and compelling, and he knows a thing or two about how to achieve those goals, and what gets in the way.
Karl: So I think challenge is a really compelling method. Humans like challenge. The research is pretty clear that challenge leads to motivation and those kinds of things. So I think we do ourselves a [00:01:00] disservice from the learning and development industry if we decide to make learning not challenging. So I think challenge is a really big thing.
And then the other thing is failure. I really believe, and I'm not alone. There's a lot of research that says is that people learn best when they fail. If you think about. You're learning. If you've got something right away, it's not sticking with you or, you know, whatever. But if you failed, failed, failed, and then got the aha moment, that makes a lot of sense.
Amy: Join us and discover why this multi talented educator embraces failure as one of the most powerful tools for preparing students for real world success.
Karl: Amy Jo, it's great to be here. I'm so excited to be talking to you today.
Amy: Thanks for taking the time. It looks like you're, uh, in an airport lounge. Is that right?
Karl: I am. Yeah, I'm in Atlanta today. I was in Orlando yesterday and tomorrow. Well, tonight I'm flying to Harrisburg. I'm flying home and then tomorrow I'm flying to Columbia, South Carolina.
So it's, [00:02:00] it's been kind of a busy week.
Amy: Wow, we really appreciate you're taking the time.
Karl: Yeah, I'm glad I could do it.
Amy: This is gonna be fun. So in Harrisburg, where do you work and what do you do?
Karl: So yeah, so I work at Bloomsburg University. I'm a professor of instructional technology. And so I teach graduate students to design, develop, and deliver online instruction.
And many years ago, got involved in Gamification before it was even called gamification, just using game elements and learning to make the learning a little bit more exciting. And I remember when I first brought it to the faculty and they're like, Well, we don't design games. We're not going to do this.
You know, we're not we're not teaching programming. And I said, No, no, no, we just use we're Parts of games, like not, we're not creating, you know, a whole game. And so years later, we finally kind of got through. And so I've done some, some writing on that. I've written several books on gamification and just wrote one on game based learning and did some several lynda.com courses and travel around, obviously talking to people about how to [00:03:00] intelligently combine, you know, game thinking, gamification, and learning together to get the results that people want.
Amy: You must have seen some amazing patterns working with these different companies, talking to all these different people, coaching all the students that you've coached.
What's one of the things you've learned over the last, say, five or six years about what really makes a compelling experience if what you want to do is make it Game like or gamified?
Karl: Right. That's a great, that's a great question. One of the things that I find that is so interesting to me and so antithesis to what a lot of what happens in the learning industry is that people really respond well to a challenge.
And so what we've done in the online learning industry is we've, we've dummied down instruction. It's so easy that anybody could do it and there's no challenge. And when there's no challenge, nobody cares about it. So my students, for example, I one of the things that I do is I put them into teams and I have them [00:04:00] all compete against each other to create a proposal and right from the beginning, they're engaged with the class because they want to do well and they have to present the up the stakes.
We haven't presented in front of like 30 corporate advisory council members. So it's not just dr cop that they're presenting To it's it's this group. And so it really raises their focus. It really sharpens what they do. And it really gets them excited. And I found the same thing in the corporations that I work for, you know, I say, Well, you know, we don't like this training because of this and this.
And I said, Well, what if We recast that as a challenge that you have to overcome or the learners have to overcome all of a sudden They're like well, yeah In fact, I get challenges every day And so the more real we can make those challenges for them to overcome and work through. We find the more they become engaged.
So instead of telling them well, you need to know this policy because of da da da We say okay. Somebody violated this policy. What policy did they violate? Why did they violate and what are the repercussions and that really seems to get people engaged? I think challenges are [00:05:00] really compelling method.
Humans like challenge. The research is pretty clear that challenge leads to motivation and those kinds of things. So I think we do ourselves a disservice from the learning and development industry if we decide to make learning not challenging. So I think challenge is a really big thing. And then the other thing is failure.
I really believe, and I'm not alone, there's a lot of research that says is that people learn best when they fail. If you think about the You're learning if you got something right away, it's not sticking with you or, you know, whatever. But if you failed, failed, failed and then got the aha moment, that makes a lot of sense.
But I mean, I've literally been in organizations where they say the legal department says you can't teach them the failure state because or expose them to the failure state because then people will think we're teaching them how to fail, which is not true. It's crazy. How do you know what the wrong thing is if you've never been exposed to it?
And how do you how do you get motivated to do the right thing? If you don't fail, fail, fail and then figure out how to do it now. I'm not saying fail forever set people up for failure, but I really [00:06:00] believe that and the pattern I've seen is that people really try to overcome failure and then learn lessons from it rather than just being taught the right way or the right information or the right policy.
Amy: That's deeply connected to what we're teaching in game thinking. You know, you have to look for information about what's wrong with your idea as well as what's right with it. That's how you go quickly. And it really is how you learn and it really is how you prepare your students for the 21st century.
Karl: Yeah. I mean, if they can't deal with failure, they're in the wrong, I don't know what they're doing. I don't know how people can survive without dealing with failure and failure. It really is a motivator. It's an educator and it's something that focuses your thoughts on the future. So I think failure is a very important part that gets way underplayed.
Amy: So can you tell us a story about something that you learned personally? From failure from trying something and saying, Oh, that was maybe not the right thing or that work. But this other thing over here, boom.
Karl: Right.
Amy: To [00:07:00] illustrate. And I think part of why people don't do it is frankly, it's not easy emotionally to learn from failure. Right?
Karl: Right. It's not, it's not fun. So yeah, there's lots of failure stories I could choose from but one of the ones that I I had You know, so I have a bunch related to this one process that I was doing So we had a grant from the national science foundation and it was a team that was put together There's I was kind of the designer on the project.
There was a programmer and there was educators And so we were teaching kids to understand the concept that heat flows from hot to cold Uh in ninth grade or sixth grade that it's a it's a concept that you would think is obvious, but it's not So we developed this really cool thing called survival master.
So the idea was the kids were learning about dead load and live load and heat exchange and everything through these activities in this game and the series of games you were going to become a survival master. So one of the games was this platform and you had a laser and you got on the platform and you had to [00:08:00] shoot either the hot side or the cold side or or shoot both of them to move the platform, and it only worked if you shot it correctly from heat flowing from hot to cold.
That's how you moved on the platform. And the players had to do that six times to get across this, like, you know, moat filled room, and we were so excited about it because it was a practical application of really doing heat flow. And we're really excited because they had to know that in order to get across the room.
So we were really excited to show it to the educators. So we brought him in the room and he said, look at this. Like he flows on for a while and they looked at it for a while and they looked at it and then they said, um, they raised your hand and said, yes. And they said, well, how do we know that the students know that heat flows from hot to cold?
And I said, well, you know, because. Otherwise they couldn't get across the room. Like that's how they knew it. And they said, but how do we know they know it? I said, because that's how they get there. And I said, nah, we don't think that's enough. And I said, well, okay, well maybe we'll put like a little coach that comes up and says, Hey, congratulations.
You made it across the room. You know, that heat flows from hot to cold. [00:09:00] They're like, now. That's not going to work. And we said, well, why not? And he goes, we have to ask them the question. And I'm like, are you seriously? And so, so at the end, and we had to acquiesce, you know, because it was a national science and they had to assess it.
And so once you made it across the room, there was this giant multiple choice question, like floating in the air that you had to answer, you had to answer hot to cold. So that was really kind of disappointing that, that we couldn't get across the fact that if they actually demonstrated it. That meant that they knew the concept.
And so that was really kind of frustrating to us and to me. And so we put compromise in there a couple places, and then we just couldn't turn the corner on that. And then we thought, okay, so this project, we want to try to commercialize it. So there's a bunch of failures related to this project. So we decided to try to sell it into school.
So we had this really good curriculum. We had both a. Game based curriculum and we had a blended curriculum and we actually did research on it. So we knew that the blended curriculum was a really [00:10:00] good curriculum and we knew it worked. It was effective. We had the numbers because it's an NSF grant and we went to the schools and we had the worst time trying to sell this product into the schools.
We just couldn't do it even with the multiple choice questions for a couple reasons. One, We learned that at least in Pennsylvania, the school districts are all independent entities. So you couldn't sell to one and get like lots of sales. You had to sell to each individual school district. And then even in the school district, if you went to the supervise superintendent, it was the teacher's decision whether or not to use it.
So one science teacher might use it, but one science teacher might not use it. And so trying to get that to take up and be um, embraced by the, the, the school district. Faculty didn't work and then they then they said well the other problem that we're having in terms of you know This needs to be related to common core.
We need to have time to test the students We don't know that they're going to know this even though we embedded the multiple choice questions. They thought it would take too much time and here we were with this really exciting [00:11:00] We thought innovative product this game that kids like to play games kids the play tested really well. The kids really liked it But the experts who weren't even I mean the most frustrating thing amy was that these people, they didn't play games.
And so when we said, you know, this is a game based learning, you demonstrate and they're like, yeah, but it has to be multiple choice. It has to be questions. So, so to me, that was one of the most frustrating experiences and, and failure. I mean, the product is sitting on a shelf somewhere, it's collecting dust because we just couldn't move the needle on that.
Amy: So now with the benefit of hindsight. Looking back on that, what are you taking into your next projects? The project you're going to start in six months or a year. What lessons are you taking into that?
Karl: Yeah, so the, the very first uh, lesson is to spend time up front educating the stakeholders about what the game learning process is.
So these people that didn't play games who are [00:12:00] educators, we should have spent more time educating them about. You know demonstrating of the knowledge and the content the second was, you know We probably pushed back a little bit too hard on the multiple choice question You know, it's not going to kill somebody to take a multiple choice question Although I would still try to do that like outside of the game So to say then okay now that they've done this experience in the game Let's do something outside of the game.
And then the other thing is we should have got more educators across the state involved earlier so that they could become vested in this particular product. And become co creators. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, we came down from on high with the, you know, magic tablets and that doesn't, that didn't work.
Amy: Yeah. In fact, I'm so glad you brought that up because finding the right slice of your early market to become your co creators. And not just your fans and the people that are going to spread it, but the people that actually understand its [00:13:00] value, it's not very easy. And that's part of the lesson that you learned is, boy, if you just go to sort of like your mainstream teachers, it was too innovative for them.
Right. But there are people around that you probably could have found, and you probably could have gotten them involved early, but it's not necessarily going to be just those people, those random people that you met, as you said, they were wider.
Karl: Right. And I think to your point is, getting the mainstream, like innovative teachers are easy to find.
There's tons of innovative teachers and they'll do stuff, but there's not a ton, ton of them. Right. So once they adopt it, getting it to the next set. So, you know, the early adopters are going to adopt it. Maybe the late majority or the early majority adopted, but you know, crossing that chasm, getting to the larger group of teachers.
Is, is really hard or, or in any organization trying to get to that group of people. So I think to your point of getting like the mainstream people involved and if it's too, if it's too much for them, um, maybe a new redesign is needed. [00:14:00] Actually, that wasn't my point.
Amy: Let me clarify.
Karl: Oh, okay. Sorry.
Amy: My point was don't get the mainstream and people involved early.
Karl: Oh, okay. Interesting.
Amy: Yeah. And it's really important actually. And it's a hard one. It's a, no, here's the punchline and you can, you can extrapolate backward from the punchline. The punchline is to cross the chasm, to have a hope of doing that. You first have to delight and really capture that small early market.
So when you say it's easy to find innovative teachers who you will adopt it, I disagree, it's not that easy and it's incredibly important and you aren't going to cross the chasm. So you actually have to design for them first and you have to design something much smaller and very rough and get them involved first.
Cause they're actually the people you first have to capture. If you're doing anything innovative, then one of the worst things you can do is say, you know, before we launch this, instead of really focusing on the early [00:15:00] market, they're not important enough. We're going to focus on the mainstream and we're going to design for them.
I have, I have many stories of that feeling. People forget that the story that Jeffrey Moore told about crossing the chasm and that book where he named it started with a hobbyist hit. You have to have the hobbyist hit first. And he made the Apple computer popular, but it was a hobbyist hit that had been evolved as a hobbyist.
Hit. You can't skip that step. So that just my, I mean, just so my feedback for you is the next time you're in the situation, you know, find 10 of the right people and those are your first co creators. So as you work with students, as you work with companies, as people come up to you after you speak and you talk to them, what are some of the really common blind spots you see when people come up and they tell you about their project?
Do you start to work with a [00:16:00] client? What is it that you have to work to help them overcome?
Karl: Right. I think one of the main things working with the client is to help them overcome really the resistance to doing it differently, especially in learning and development. So a lot of people who, well, Hey, we were always taught that you need to give the learning objectives first.
And then we were taught you had to tell the terminology first, and then we were taught you have to do this. So it's a very linear process that they're used to in terms of developing the instruction But the problem with that is it's just kind of shoving it down people's throats and it's not really engaging the learners So the manager says yeah, they need to learn this they'll do it because it's part of their job But just because something's part of your job doesn't mean you're going to enthusiastically embrace it or you're going to try to find.
You know the interesting areas of it and make it resonate and I think one of the things applying game thinking is to Use those tools to make it [00:17:00] resonate with the learners and then coming back to what I said before Is this this acceptance of failure, you know, I can't tell you how many times i've i've I have students and I have in the capstone Class and you know, I formed the students into teams and then the teams then have to compete Uh in front of a corporate advisory council, so I give them a request for a proposal that they have to answer in a proposal and One of the things that happens is early on, I set them up a little bit to not be as successful as maybe they're used to and students all come up to me, Oh, Dr. Kopp, you know, I have a 4. 0 in this program and, you know, I've always gotten really good grades and, you know, I can't believe this, you know, didn't work out really well. What can I do to, you know, not have this failure? Again, I think you learn an awful lot from that situation. So I explained to them that actually this is part of the process.
Um, I expect you not to be 100 percent successful, but that's okay. Don't beat yourself up for not being successful. Now, how are you thinking, you know, the question you asked earlier, how are you [00:18:00] thinking, differently now that you've had this experience? How are you thinking differently now that that hasn't worked for you?
And so it really gets them to think about that. And in that case, especially with the students, trying to get them to think about the learning and not the grade. Right. So it's the process, not the end point. And so many people I think get caught up in the end point and forget about the process, especially when I'm working with the students and I've got clients like, Oh, they'll start with, and I'm sure you've had, you know, they start with, I want a game I'm like, for what?
It's like, what, what is the purpose? You know? And sometimes it's really peeling back the layers of the onion to find out, you know, what is the performance issue or what is the behavioral issue or why do you want this other, other than. You went to a conference and you heard somebody talk about it and you think it'd be really cool for what you're doing.
Those issues come up, uh, more often than, than probably I'd like.
Amy: Yep, I've been there. So, those are, those are also good things to watch out for. So, if you're going to give one piece [00:19:00] of advice, To say a client who wanted to work with you and wanted to do a really smart project and do something where you would be working at the peak of what you can do.
And you want to give them advice about how to frame their issue and how, how to think about it. What would you tell them?
Karl: So I would tell them to, to start backwards. I would say, look, what is the performance you want to elicit out of your employees? And then how do you think that the employees that do do that Learn to do that skill and how they do that skill well, and I would love to have the time to do a detailed task and cognitive analysis of what the experts do in that particular field and then develop the Experience based on that based on backwards far too many times.
I find managers and everything. They kind of um start with you know training is the [00:20:00] problem or The employees don't know enough or whatever, and often that's not the case. Sometimes it's an environmental issue. Sometimes it's, so we worked with a government agency one time, and they found out that everyone in this one district, it was a welfare agency, who was on welfare, was illiterate.
And so they wanted us to create some training to help these people on welfare become literate. And so one of the first things we did, we went to that office and we said, okay, what, what's the process? Like how do you intake a client? And they're going through and then this water watching this woman click through screens.
And we said, what's that? What's that on that screen? She goes, I don't know. But if, when I put this code in, it allows me to skip three screens. I'm like, oh, okay. So we go back, we find out the code she was putting in. And all our colleagues were putting in was for illiteracy. So this whole district,
Amy: Oh, that's too god. Oh my god.
Karl: Isn't that amazing? It was totally just a process.
So that whole district, these people weren't illiterate. It was just the easiest [00:21:00] code to skip.
Amy: Oh my God. They were hacking the system.
Karl: They were hacking the system. Right. So we had to go back. And this is a horrible system. I mean, we actually, the first day we went there, one of the early days, we said, what can we do to change the interface?
And as soon as the people got up off the floor from laughing so hard, they're saying, okay, really, what can you do for us? And we're like, this interface is horrible, but that was not changeable. That was a non starter. So starting at the end and then actually doing an analysis to find out what's really going on and not making an assumption about what's going on, that would be my ideal work state to be able to do the cognitive and task analysis.
Amy: Yeah, and just that framework of articulating and then testing your assumptions. So powerful. Yeah. And that's really the essence of lean startup and you know, what people are trying to do with agile. Where are you getting your inspiration these days? Like what lights you up? What are you paying attention to?
What people are you [00:22:00] inspired by? What trends are you following? What's on your mental horizon.
Karl: So, well, one thing I'm actually really kind of excited about is in the learning and development industry, how serious games and learning games are finally taking off. You know, there's been decades of talking about serious games and learning and development.
Like we would say five years ago in the corporate space, like the word game was a four letter word and now it's much more acceptable. So I'm really excited about that. But I also look to people, you know, who are. You know, when I do learning games, that's different than doing entertainment games, you know?
So I look to the people who are creating like really exciting, uh, entertainment games and kind of seeing what they do and seeing if there's anything we can borrow kind of in the learning space. Uh, I'm a huge fan of assassin's creed series. So I'm like, okay, anything I can steal from that series, I get a lot of inspiration from, and I also get inspiration from not so much inspiration, but I'm [00:23:00] really interested in.
Not even VR, but the AR, like how that's going to impact the future. I actually think AR is going to be much bigger for learning and development than VR. So I'm very inspired by augmented reality and I'm very inspired by what's going on and some of the really rich story based games. I think those are kind of exciting things and kind of give me some inspiration in terms of.
What I'm thinking about and what I'm kind of doing. And I also think that as an educator in the area of technology, looking at trends outside of education really kind of can feed education as well. So I think the whole, you know, you look at a mobile phone and everything that that can do. It's not even, I don't think being taken advantage of in terms of the sensors in the phone and all that kind of stuff.
And what can we do from a learning perspective to do that and make that more mainstream. So those kinds of things I think are really kind of exciting and inspiring.
Amy: I think your students are very lucky to have you as their teacher. [00:24:00] So this is wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us. Talk to you soon.
Outro: Thanks for listening to Getting2Alpha with Amy Jo Kim, the shows that help you innovate faster and smarter. Be sure to check out our website, getting2alpha.com. That's getting2alpha.com for more great resources and podcast episodes.