If you followed us on Twitter last week, you may have noticed bursts of tweets from ASTD TechKnowledge in Las Vegas. And if, from there, you followed our prompts to check out #astdtk12, you would have uncovered a plethora of conference snippets: reminders of things we already know about training design but forget in the heat of the project, discoveries about what exactly can be accomplished with technology while training, and pointers on how to use our systems a little bit more with the learner (rather than the system) in mind.

When we attended TechKnowledge a few years ago the focus was on the exploding world of social media. This year, the conference had a few sessions that addressed how social media can be tapped into before, during, and after a training session(I'm still very fond of using a Twitter backchannel during meetings, and would love to see our Twitter community developed at ASTD-OC so this feature becomes practicable at our Learning Events), but much of this year's focus (at least from the keynotes and seminars I attended) appeared to be on games - how they activate our brain, how we could apply game design techniques in our training design, and the science behind it all. 

After all, games empower us. They incentivize us. They convince us to complete mind-numbing tasks, sometimes over and over, that we wouldn't even consider doing for our bosses. 

How?

Dr. Jane McGonigal, Institute for the Future

Dr. Jane McGonigal, the Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future, answered this question by asking, then answering, a different one.  During the first day's TechKnowledge 2012 keynote, Jane asked why we spend so much of our free time playing games, pointing out the billions of hours spent playing Angry Birds or Call of Duty. Her answer: we play games to be challenged. We like the stress that comes with facing a problem, and overcoming it. And because we're the ones choosing the problem, we're motivated to solve it. The stress that comes with these challenges is a positive one, called eustress.

(Contrast eustress with the on the job stress we endure: the problems we face are seldom of our choosing, nor are they given to us in a safe environment). Tap into this positive, problem-solving eustress while at work, and you've got people who are blissfully productive, optimistic, believe that they're part of a social fabric, and develop an epic meaning in the workplace. 

Dr. McGonigal shared several examples of online games that had been created to solve world problems, and how people modified their real-life behaviors to solve the problems posed in the game. People spent hours playing the games, coming back to them week after week, willingly accepting tasks. Gaming communities discussed and ranked various ideas suggested by players. And finally, in some cases, the ideas applied in the game were developed into plans for businesses to be run by the very gamers who had come up with them - an epic win! 

In the second morning's keynote, Stuart Crabb, Head of Learning and Development at Facebook, showed us a workplace where the stress of choice appears to be eustress. Of the insights he shared about Facebook's approach to learning and organizational health, the following stuck with me: "career development is like a jungle gym." Watch children at play on a jungle gym, Stuart prompted. They go down to go up. They reach the top, and decide they don't like it there. They help others reach the top. And sometimes they just hang upside down on the inside. His point: there was no set path to get to the top of the jungle gym, and nothing that said that each child had to reach the top or they failed. The same applies to the jungle gym of life - it's not about the title, hierarchy level, or compensation (three things that tend to stress us out about our jobs). Rather, it's about experiences - developing strengths, learning, self-improvement.

Stuart Crabb, Head of Learning and Development at Facebook

With that insight, Stuart managed to shift the stress of managing one's career from climbing a career ladder to identifying problems to be solved and finding opportunities to embrace. He showed us a workplace that was a hive of activity in which employees would dedicate long hours to overcome an obstacle, much like they would tackle a quest in World of Warcraft - emerging unwashed, unshaven, yet victorious. And ready to do it again.  

Lisa Doyle, Chancellor, VA Acquisition Academy

Lisa Doyle's keynote was more of a case study in creating an effective learning environment, but within her passion for supporting our veterans one could also see the game framework in action: a new mission for the wounded warriors to accept, one that they researched and chose on their own. In the VA Warriors to Work Program, selected interns were tasked with identifying a need within the VA to support our veterans, create a plan for meeting that need, and then doing so. Real problems were faced, with real consequences for mistakes. Yet each intern was part of a cohort, a community that sought to ensure the success of everyone on the team.  While Dr. McGonigal had posed a challenge in her keynote - to bring more of the gaming element into the workplace and, in doing so, remove the stress that an employee feels solving workplace problems - both Stuart Crabb and Lisa Doyle provided case studies in how that challenge could be accomplished. Both Facebook and the Veteran's Acquisition Academy had found ways to tap into the positive stress that one can get from work not necessarily by playing games, but by creating experiences that allowed employees to approach work as if it were as enjoyable as combatting a Scalebane.

Not a gamer? This is a Scalebane.

While the TechKnowledge 2012 keynote speakers weren't always focused on learning and training design, they did pepper their speeches with the requisite: "People learn better this way."  Subsequent TechKnowledge sessions also exhorted us that positively motivating the learner was key to retention of knowledge, prompting one to write in the side margins of one's notepad: "eustress?"  For example: several presenters suggested that sexual harassment training should not be prefaced with: "You're attending this course because it's the law," but rather provide the learner with information that causes them to choose to attend the course.