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3 simple things teachers could learn from Angry Birds
Posted on Apr 1st with 3619 views and 68 CommentsAngry Birds are played 200 million minutes a day. What would happen if so much time was spent on learning new things? Is there anything teachers could learn from Angry Birds to make their lessons more interesting to students and make learning more fun and rewarding? We have analyzed what made Angry Birds so popular and could the same principles be used to make education more interesting.
Mix simplicity and challenge – just right amounts, just right time
The key reason why Angry Birds are so addictive is the fact that the game is simple enough for anyone to play and at the same time you are faced with challenging levels at just the right times, when you start feeling confident and when your actions are becoming automated. In other words, the learning curve starts from a very low point, then goes slowly upwards, and at the right moment it becomes very steep. Since you have had no problems with completing previous levels and you have acquired the notion that with little practice and learning you could overcome this obstacle so you are persistent to continue trying until you are successful. This is sometimes referred to as “the unfinished job syndrome” and that is the reason which makes people go over and over again to try and complete levels in games (at least in those with good management of user experience). Timing is crucial here and that’s what Rovio guys did great since if the initial period of simplicity is too long, users simply become bored and uninstall the app (remember all those “five-minute glory apps you installed, started playing, got bored and uninstalled), but if it is too challenging at the beginning you simply give up (for me, it happened with Gun Bros for example).
However, in education, the learning process starts at a point which is pre-defined for an average person and from there it goes steadily upwards without paying much attention to make a “hook” – to make it simple so that everyone can do it and then introduce a challenge that everyone feel they can overcome. You constantly learn new things, write assignments, etc. and new information is introduced, but there is one catch – if you want to be successful you have to have a good start at the beginning (when you still don’t know why you need all this knowledge). In other words, if you don’t pay attention at the start of the course, or if your previous knowledge of the subject is less then average – you will probably have problems to catch up later. Consequently, as in difficult games, many kids simply give up. Nobody could assure me that some kids can’t learn some basic facts after being in school for a couple of years (ex. a recent survey showed that 25% of 17-year-old students could not identify Adolf Hitler as well as that 10% thought that he was a munitions producer) – it’s just that they gave up once and after that they only work before the test enough to get a passing grade (however, that knowledge does not end up in their long term memory).
If teachers would start easily and make it fun in the beginning, students would be more engaged and later when they get new information or task, they will see it as a challenge and not as a hard (unachievable) task. They would have already formed a mental picture that it could be solved and that it’s fun, so there will be motivated to succeed and not to pass the test.
Allow trial and error learning, then reward with mastery
Another problem in school is error correction. When you make a mistake in school you get a bad grade, it affects your self-confidence and you get stressed. So many students actually have a fear of making a mistake and that is what keeps them from mastering some skill.
On the other hand, when you play Angry Birds errors are seen as ways to improve your skill. You have the trail which stays on the screen long enough after your attempt so that you could use the data about your error to correct it. And except for the sound of pigs, which is irritating just enough to keep you trying, no one pressures you. This is known as error correction mechanism, the usually unused learning opportunity in schools. Getting a C or D means nothing if it’s not immediately followed by the explanation why those answers were wrong (not just what the right answers are).
And perhaps even more importantly, when students finish some assignment they get the mark (equals to score in the game), but they usually go to the new topic so quickly that they did not have the time to use the newly acquired skill and enjoy the knowledge they have just acquired. This is the process that leads to mastery and while trying to teach kids as much as possible our schools usually oversee this aspect.
Have you noticed how easy those next levels seem once you completed the one level which caused you so many problems? You have acquired the skill in the challenging level and all you have to do now is to use it – and while using it you become so skillful in it that when you look back you simply can’t believe that it was a problem before. Thus, your learning gets a purpose and you feel so good for making such progress that it keeps you in the loop. You can start practicing a new skill now and learning new things and connecting this knowledge with the new elements which are introduced into your learning experience. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen very often in schools – instead of that you get a mark and you move on to something “completely different”. Nobody plays Angry Birds because of the score (btw, do you remember your last score?) but because of the way they feel when they complete the level (or when they three-star the level, or find a golden egg…)
Think visually – Visualize everything
All this is great as a concept, but if Angry Birds weren’t so adorable – nothing would have happened. The first thing created were the characters and then Rovio created everything around them paying so much attention to make everything visually perfect. The visual experience is what got people involved to start playing the game – then all above mentioned addiction hooks kicked into play.
And now, open any school book and tell me – how appealing is it? Teaching materials have to be modern in the sense that they have to be able to compete with the wealth of visually appealing content students are surrounded by all the time on TV, web and games. This concept has already proved its worth with infographics – do you think that you would read all those things about state budgets, anatomy of Apple email, Web 2.0 summit, etc. if they were written in a school book – not likely, but you have seen (and more importantly – understood) the information when presented in this way, and you even got interested in the subject enough to decide to share this information with your friends.
There is a change of paradigm in the education world – schools can’t rely anymore on telling the students that education is important and that the efforts they invest now will pay out later. Students have to “satisfy” their immediate needs by using the newly acquired skills in the present, like they do in Angry Birds, and until schools find a way to provide it, education won’t be in sync with the world around it.
There is a need to manage the process of learning wisely in the way gaming experience is managed in Angry Birds. Rovio has shown that they have found the right formula to stay at the top of the App Store charts and we should see whether the same formula can be used in other aspects of life.
One thing is for sure – if learning was (like) a game, we would all know more. Do you think that there are other ingredients of Angry Birds success which made it so addictive, adorable and popular and which education could use? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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Comments
ESL teacher on April 1, 2011
There is another thing which is very important. Games are flexible, while traditional education is not. There are hundreds of options what the outcome of the game will be while in schools they try to teach you “the right way”
admin on April 1, 2011
Yes, good point there. Education is not a question of right and wrong answers, it’s about “learning to think” – in the same way as good games are not about making to the next level, but having fun doing it.
Sandra Prvulovic on April 1, 2011
“Nobody plays Angry Birds because of the score (btw, do you remember your last score?) but because of the way they feel when they complete the level (or when they three-star the level, or find a golden egg…)”
That is flow. Game gives full happiness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
Great post!
admin on April 1, 2011
Thanks for a great comment. As the article you linked says: “Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”
So, if you want to have a good game you have to put your users in this state. And if you want to teach someone, you should not push the knowledge into them, but put them in this kind of state and then just “feed” him/her with info/knowledge/skills. Then, it really gives results.
However, now mobile games face another challenge – how to put users in this kind of experience and at the same time allow the game to be played for very short periods of time – like while waiting for a bus – we’ll talk about that in one of the next posts.
Rohan on April 1, 2011
Great Post… I’ll remember such things during the next learning process :)
Loreen Leedy on April 1, 2011
Nice analysis, thanks! I’ve been looking into the same issues in regards to writing nonfiction for children:
Playing games with information
Gary Anderson on April 1, 2011
One of my students recently wrote a blog post about Angry Birds. His ideas and the follow-up comments from others students are relevant to this thread: http://fremdamericanstudies.ning.com/profiles/blogs/angry-birds-is-helping-you
Sanja Stosic on April 1, 2011
Very interesting and so true… Great post :)
admin on April 1, 2011
@Gary Thanks for sharing. It seems very relevant to the topic.
@Loreen I believe that it’s an interesting aspect of the issue- to use games to make sense of information to students. Since people are so overwhelmed with information that they do not know how to pick what is important and where it fits with other info and what’s happening in the world around them – and the use of games provides contextual information. Therefore, information becomes understandable. What I wanted to point out is that when designing games you have to be very careful of how your users will learn the skills needed to play it – to provide right amounts at right times. And to let users find their own way through the game. It all applies to the way students (children in your case) get information and there are people who put this concept into practice successfully. I just wished there were more :)
High Waist Shorts on April 3, 2011
Completely understand what your stance in this matter. Although I would disagree on some of the finer details
Michael Dubberry on April 4, 2011
this is a great example of how can students learn without considering it as punishment, but because they are willing to overcome the “more challenging level”
john on April 4, 2011
Good point there. Teachers think about it
Not Angry – Spring Break – Gamifying « Friday Flash on April 8, 2011
[...] personal devices. What makes Angry Birds so appealing or not appealing. A recent post by SmashApps, 3 simple things teachers could learn from Angry Birds, shared principals that might be used to make instruction more [...]
Kathy on April 8, 2011
I love your take on tying Angry Birds to the area of teaching! Video game developers have a keen sense of building ways to keep their “learners” engaged as well as expand their skills. We as educators can learn from the example rather than arguing that students spend too much time on video games.
I recently wrote two posts tying Angry Birds to teaching/learning and formative assessment.
Angry Birds: A Lesson in Assessment FOR Learning – http://learningisgrowing.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/angry-birds-a-lesson-in-assessment-for-learning/
and
Angry Birds: Part 2 – Instruction: http://learningisgrowing.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/angry-birds-part-2-instruction/
Mr Portman on April 9, 2011
But if Angry Birds involved any writing, do you think they’d still want to do it then?
smashapp on April 11, 2011
@Kathy I enjoyed reading your posts, too, especially the way you compared the game and the points from the action plan. School has to follow the way in which students are used to get the information and could use the strategies game developers have exploited so successfully for the benefit of helping students learn more.
@MR Portman: Because of that, I believe that a game which involved writing could be more successful than trying to teach the same thing traditional way, but would probably be less appealing to Angry Birds since they are ‘just fun’. However, if looked from this perspective, this game could be ‘Angry Birds among the other educational activities’.
Kathy on April 12, 2011
@smashapp Thanks for your kind words about my Angry Bird posts! Much appreciated!
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admin on April 14, 2011
Thanks for your comments. And thanks for giving feedback about the layout, especially since it is one of less used setups. We will fix this issue as soon as possible and we hope to give you full Smashapp experience on Debian/Opera combination the next time you come to our blog.
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Episode 2: Scott Meech « Edvancers on May 16, 2011
[...] Three simple things teachers could learn from Angry Birds [...]
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