Action Learning

Central theme: Gaming as a designed and embodied experience

Setting of a typical game session
When preparing a game session, the facilitator has to design a specific interactive learning environment for the intended audience of players. The following questions need to be addressed up-front. Is the subject matter tuned to context of use, and to the initial capabilities of the players? Does the goal of the game fit the purposes of group of players, and the client? While selecting a suitable game, the facilitator needs to check whether the framework of the game – its form and content – is tuned to the behavior styles of the participants. If for example the participants are not familiar with computers, or the Internet, then it will discourage them to engage themselves in a computer-supported game. A typical game session for professionals includes two interconnected levels of use: the macro- and the micro-cycle. The micro-cycle is embedded in the macro-cycle.

Learning is a culturally situated process. It involves problem solving in a particular social setting. In the context of a game, not only that type of cognition is relevant. Games are also artifacts that trigger meaning construction through linking explicit, tacit, local, and enculturated knowing. The related interactions and transactions among the players shape recursive processes: interactive narratives. Material and ideational tools, and embodiment mediate the origins and development of schemas: mental states connecting knowledge & action. For those reasons, games are fruitful to enhance organisational learning that happens through linkages between four types of knowing: explicit, tacit, local, and enculturated knowing. Meaning construction:

Keywords: action learning; play; game; model; simulation; simulator; gamble; exercise; sports; embodied experience; macro-cycle; micro-cycle; schemas; situated learning; sense making; explicit knowing; tacit knowing; local knowing; enculturated knowing; anthropology of knowledge; emotional intelligence; problem solving; zone of proximal development;

For more details about “Interactive & Situated Learning”, see Chapter 3 of the book: 
The Magic Circle: Principles of Gaming & Simulation