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Corporate games

The onward march of technology continues to invade every aspect of life and every facet of business, including auditing. Stephen Davies explores how videogames, once the bastion of teenage distraction, are now being used to add value to auditor training

The chances are four to one that employees under the age of 34 have been playing video games since their teenage years. Organisations are now capitalising on this information by using new technology and software to train, transfer knowledge and elicit behaviour changes within their workforce. Digital games-based learning (DGBL) is a merger of two seemingly opposed worlds: serious learning, found in schools and in businesses, and interactive entertainment, derived from computer and video games.

Using techniques developed in the interactive entertainment industry, DGBL makes computer-based learning appealing to the end user. For many years, video games have been covertly using advanced learning principles to teach players how to use their complicated software products. The addictive quality of video games is a by-product of these embedded learning strategies and thus an ideal tool to solidify knowledge.

The psychology of games

In his book What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy James Paul Gee of the University of Wisconsin argues that good video games have learning principles built into them that are based on contemporary research on human learning in cognitive science. Popular role-playing games allow players to take on the role of various characters in a virtual world. Within these worlds the player has three identities: a virtual identity, which is that of the character; a real identity, namely their real-world identity; and a projective identity, where one's own values and desires are superimposed onto the virtual characters.

In a game, your virtual character has to learn in order to survive and ultimately win - this is one important reason role-playing games are so effective at teaching subjects; the game brings to life what might typically be considered boring subject matter. Learning the names of places and locations in the game is essentially geography, and understanding the most prominent groups and how they are interconnected is essentially political science, for example.

Unbeknownst to the player, they're actually absorbing essential facts that become more relevant because of the context the game has put them in. Many popular action games embrace another learning principle called 'learning by doing'. In learning by doing, information is imparted only at the moment the learner first needs the information or once the information can best be understood and used in practice. The learner is then given a concrete situation in which to practice and experience the usefulness of what they've just learned. In Tomb Raider, the first time the game's heroine encounters a small obstacle, the game instructs the player how to get over it. These instructions help the player learn how to use the computer keys to control their character - ultimately training the user to manipulate a complex piece of software with a complicated user interface.

Much of the overt learning in video games like Tomb Raider, a popular action game, is done through tutorial levels - small, introductory parts of the game that act like a training module. Tutorial levels are an example of the learning principle of subdomains. Subdomains are a mainstay in serious learning because of their logical and progressive dissemination of information.

By recreating a simplified version of the same world in which the player will live, play and learn, subdomains help prepare them for greater eventual challenges, whether they occur later in the game or later on in real life.

Not only does DGBL create appealing content for today's learners, it also helps organisations prepare for the coming shift in learner demographics. Business and training managers, for the most part, do not realise the impact and significance of video games in today's media landscape, but their employees do. More and more gamers are entering the workforce with alternative needs for information absorption.

Shifting demographics

In a ground-breaking study, John Beck of the University of Southern California's Annenberg Centre of the Digital Future and consultant Mitchell Wade surveyed over 2,500 business professionals to find out whether the experience of gaming and growing up surrounded by video games changes attitudes, expectations and abilities related to business. To understand why this new generation of gamers takes in information differently, it is important to understand two things: what the game world is like and why gamers have found it so compelling.

On a subconscious level, the gaming generation has been raised in a world of consumerism. They are all customers and they firmly believe that the customer is always right. Games have catered to this mentality by being extremely customisable. You can change the level of difficulty, the gender of the protagonist and even the content of the game. You can start and stop the game when you want and you can enjoy the experience on your own without waiting for another person to play. The range of options, or game genres as they are called in the video game vernacular, is as varied as in film or television.

Traditional business training, with fixed curriculum, non-interactive content, set times, and rigid agendas, does not provide the range of choices that the new generation entering the workforce has grown accustomed to. Coupled with their own ingrained consumerist mentality, gamers don't just expect choice in everything they do, they demand it.

DGBL for auditors

Auditor training is a particularly interesting application for DGBL. Typically, a potential lead auditor goes on a five-day training course to understand the specific details of a management system. The training focuses on knowledge transfer and some acquisition of skills and behaviours using, for example, role-playing and even a limited practice audit in a real organisation.

With the introduction of a DBGL tool it is now possible to provide a subdomain or 'sandbox' environment, where the student auditors can practise skills at their leisure before being let out into the real world. As an integrated part of in-class training, the instructor can focus in on specific areas of concern raised during the DGBL experience to improve assessor performance. Prior to the course it can also be used as a benchmark or as a measure of competency once the course is completed.

This is absolutely critical when looking at certified programmes. The new standard ISO 17024 (general requirement for bodies operating certification of persons), requires that competency is measured on outputs (exam scores, feedback from skills examiners etc) not on inputs (number of days attending training course, number of years experience etc). The DGBL approach naturally measures competency in terms of outputs during the training course or as a post-course assessment, thus complementing the ISO 17024 approach.

How does this work in practice? To start with, both the knowledge an auditor needs to perform an audit (by examining a defined standard) and what competences are essential in the audit itself need to be defined. For example:

• asking the appropriate type of question, like open or closed
• interpreting answers to guide the direction of the audit
• covering the scope of the audit in an allotted timeframe
• reacting to changes in body language of an audit subject (for example, choosing appropriate questions in response to the perceived mood of the auditee)
• spotting relevant information within the environment being audited (for example, the company says it promotes an egalitarian environment, but employees parking miles away from executive parking suggests otherwise)

Traditionally, these auditor competences are trained or examined by people watching the auditor perform on-site. Now it can be done in a virtual environment which allows for consistent, yet flexible, delivery of a simulated training or assessment scenario.

A DGBL product recreates a simplified real environment such as an office and its employees. It is possible to embed the surroundings with key pieces of information, like broken boxes in a warehouse or out of date labels on calibrated equipment for example, and give the characters unique personalities portrayed through verbal reactions and body language cues.

Talking to virtual people

In creating a DGBL product, time is spent identifying the characters' qualities and working out how they react to different question types and auditor actions. This gives the character some elements of 'personality' and the user does the rest. Making assumptions about the environment based on what has happened previously, users create complex behavioural models in their imaginations based on the motivations and responses of the characters. This intuitive aspect of the approach then gives the sense of an immersive environment with much greater fidelity than can ever be programmed in. This effect is very common in most video games, including role-playing ones. Players are encouraged to interact with the environment in many different ways, picking up clues to help them with developing their virtual characters. In essence, most of these interactions are random but the human mind, which is used to creating cause and effect, generates the same complex behavioural model, enhancing the experience for the player.

‘Players are encouraged to interact with the environment in many different ways, picking up clues to help them with developing their virtual characters’

The next step is to create content based on the standard that needs to be trained or tested. In existing knowledge-based platforms information tends to be presented serially, with testing at regular intervals using multiple choice questions. DGBL implants this information into the fabric of the game itself, with the players using their skills to uncover and then process the information to provide accurate assessments of the virtual organisations.

An example could be to give the player an option of which questions they would like to ask an auditee. One question may have a reference to the standard in the question: 'Can you explain to me which key processes could impact customer satisfaction?', whereas another question may not: 'What makes the customer happy?'. The player picking the first question will elicit a detailed response, getting information relevant to the standard, but a response to the second question may give a vague answer. However, there may be some instances where the second question works better to warm an audience up - like with a room full of new employees who are not totally at ease with all aspects of the company they work for.

This is an intuitive way for the player to learn which question is the more relevant one to ask. They aren't necessarily choosing a question because it is listed as 'good' in a training manual or course, but because they are anticipating and interpreting the responses of the auditee.

Super models

The advantage for the player is that by interacting with the virtual surroundings and the people within it, they are not only solidifying their comprehension of the standard they are auditing, but they are also learning to probe for information and examine subtle social and environmental details. These sophisticated mechanisms are what allow organisations to test the competences of an auditor with confidence.

As a person plays through the environment it is possible to track their progress by logging every action taken. By doing so, an auditor 'model' is created. Recognised experts can also play through the same environment, thus creating an 'expert model'. Player results can then be compared against this ideal to quantitatively evaluate their level of competence. Notably, the output of a DGBL assessment is human readable, for example: 'You mostly matched the expert group in asking the correct type of question, but you had a tendency to ask leading questions to senior management.' It is critical that the group of experts is significantly large. In a DGBL environment there is no correct path. Consider a taxi driver navigating through a large city. Different paths to a destination depend on time of day, traffic and weather conditions and maybe the time of year.

Two expert drivers may take different routes to the same destination, both being optimal. DGBL assessment recognises the fact that multiple paths are optimal, and compares the person doing the assessment to the multiple expert paths. It also recognises that the environment in which we work is dynamic, with optimal paths that are continually changing shape.

Critically, DGBL removes key issues traditionally associated with the assessment of auditor competence with one-on-one assessment, namely conflict of interest and examiner-to-examiner subjectivity as the environment itself is standardised and the comparison is to a group of expert auditors, not to a single auditor.

Limitations

DGBL, however, does have its limitations. Even though coverage is huge, not everybody is connected to broadband internet. Limitations also exist for DGBL assessment where the statistical group of experts is not large. Additionally, security concerns arise when the question of whether the person doing the test is actually the person going for certification. Precedents for security have already been set, most notably with the Project Management Institute online project management professional certification. Over 5,000 candidates per year sit the exam, using a cost-effective proctoring scheme.

In addition to this, advances in biometrics (eg fingerprint and facial recognition) provide more high tech alternatives. In addition, there may be repercussions in different industries with replacing human contact normally associated with in-depth training and assessment.

Great care should be taken when creating a DGBL solution to understand the correct mix of human and computer contact, otherwise there is a risk of alienating the target audience.

The future

The market is poised for a large surge, especially in those areas that deal with skills certification and validation. This surge will be fuelled by changing learner demographics and the cost savings and versatility brought about by delivery over the broadband network. By building on what existing DGBL has started, content creation tools based on DGBL promise to go even further.

Once individual organisations can easily jump on the DGBL bandwagon with inexpensive content creation tools that allow them to create and adapt their own content, DGBL may well become the de facto standard for online competency training and assessment.

Biography

Stephen Davies is the vice president of business development of i2 Learning Inc, a publisher and developer of digital games based in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit www.i2learning.com