We have an environment. We have rules that guide our behavior in the environment. We get information, experiment, make decisions and mistakes. We learn, and then go on to be more successful.

That describes every popular video game on the market today. In fact, it describes every game ever made or played. And it's no accident, because it also describes life, and we design games as a reflection of how we experience life. That's why good games make for such compelling e-learning.

But as soon as I say that, it seems to me that I'm under-selling the product. I mean, game? It's not just a game. What we're talking about, really, is a mini-life experience!

More than that, we're providing the opportunity for people to experiment and make mistakes in a safe environment, so that they learn both obvious and very subtle ways to be more successful. You see? Game...just doesn't say all that!

Now...is it any wonder why people don't retain what they learn when we stand at the front of the room and talk though PowerPoint slides? Is it any wonder why reading, clicking next, and reading some more, is just short of fingernails on a blackboard, when it comes to learning? 

From day one, we've all interacted with our environment and learned...naturally, not by PowerPoint. And in a nutshell, that's why w/ continues to develop e-learning that more closely represents our natural habits of learning. Sometimes that means simple exploration, sometimes it's practicing skills within a simulation, and sometimes it means developing a game, er, I mean...mini-life experience. So, how do we go about that?

Well, to start, it's important to throw out two elements of the popular learning paradigm: pages and linearity. Throw them out. We can always go back and get them if we find they fit somewhere, but they're not a natural construct for learning. Certainly they offer a very incomplete construct for learning, do they? And while we're at it, throw out games like Concentration and Jeopardy, when used to simply develop a rote memorization of facts. Popular game shows aren't necessarily good models for e-learning.

Now, let's lay down some pretty obvious and sound guidelines: In general, learning is most successful when it's:

• Fun, challenging but not stressful, and relevant to other things that are important in our lives
• Purposeful (interpret this to mean driven by specific business expectations or desired outcomes
• Reflective of the skills we how we behave in real life, which includes having rules and being able to experiment, practice and make mistakes

There are a couple of other things that make learning more like real life: interacting within a group and being on the go. The first leads us to avatars, and social tools (blogs, wikis, online collaboration) while the second speaks to mobile learning. To be sure, there barriers to adoption for these tools, but because they imitate real life, they're destined to become part of real e-learning.

So what's the wrap-up here? The short answer is that your e-learning probably isn't compelling; probably has less impact than you want. But the great thing about that is, you don't have to be stuck there. You can start re-making your e-learning in a way that mimics life. Not linear, but exploratory...not reading, but practicing...not in isolation, but as part of a group.