Football, Kangaroos and e-Learning
This month, Wired magazine ran this article about the effect EA’s Madden NFL series has had on professional football. Rookies have grown up playing football simulations and now have a knowledge and understanding of the game never seen before in new players. This reminded me of my own time tossing the ol’ virtual pigskin.
As you remember, the Akron University Zips football program won the BCS National Championship in 2003 and 2004. Or at least they did in my dorm room. For a two-year period in college, I suffered from a severe addiction to EA Sports’ NCAA Football (the college variant of Madden NFL). I’m terrible at sports. I don’t enjoy watching them all that much. But NCAA Football became a life-consuming, mood-altering experience that took me from total football naiveté to intimate familiarity with facets of football I never even knew existed.
In sixth grade I expressed mild interest in playing Little League football, which my mother promptly shot down as she dropped me off at rehearsal for a community theatre production of The Velveteen Rabbit. That’s as close as I ever got to playing real football. Years later, I started playing NCAA Football and became hooked. I took charge of the Akron Zips, my parents’ football-challenged alma mater. In case you were wondering, they’re called the “Zips” because the zipper was invented in Akron. This is also the reason the mascot, Zippy the Kangaroo, has a zipper pouch. I became well-versed in offensive formations, the appropriate occasions for zone defenses, and the subtleties of clock management. The Zips rocketed to national prominence. I lived and died by their conference ranking. When my roommate beat me and ended my perfect season, I refused to speak to him. (I still won the Heisman, so whatever.) Despite being unable to throw a spiral to save my life, I had become a knowledgeable, bloodthirsty Division I college football coach.
If I sat down and watched college football games in the hopes of understanding play formations, I never would have gotten it. If I stared at a playbook for days, there would have been even less of a chance that I would have understood anything. And beyond the basic ineffectiveness of it, I don’t want to watch that much football or even glance at a playbook. But by playing a deep simulation with competition and stakes, I became an expert in something I didn’t even know I wanted to be an expert in. If the game could teach me so much, imagine what it would do for someone who actually plays football.
At NogginLabs, we try to change the behavior of learners in the same way: through engrossing, competitive simulations. When you make something a game, you can make concepts interesting to learners who would have otherwise found the subject matter inherently boring and uninteresting. Suddenly you go from an audience of apathetic listeners to one of engaged and passionate players, learning even when they don’t know it.
Go Zips!
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Mike Lacher
Designer/Media Producer
NogginLabs, Inc.
