Best Practices
Gaming the Standard
Using Game Design Principles to Meet the Requirements in the Z490 Standard
By Dan McNeill
S
H&E professionals know that
training is a critical element of an
effective overall safety system. But
how do we create training that is
truly engaging? How do we design a
training program that motivates and
at the same time delivers on its stated
learning objectives? Perhaps most
importantly, how do we do all of this
while meeting the requirements that
many safety professionals already
follow, those set forth in ANSI/ASSE
Z490.1-2009, Standard Criteria for
Accepted Practices in Safety, Health
and Environmental Training?
Easy. We gamify it!
In this article, we’ll discuss concepts
that game designers use to create experiences that put gamers “in the flow.”
We’ll also look to see how we can apply
these same concepts in your training
design while still meeting the requirements of the Z490.1 standard.
One caveat before we begin. In this
article, we’ll only be reviewing the design and development side of the process (section 4 of the standard). Before
designing any training, it is assumed
that you have conducted an extensive
needs analysis to determine whether
training is even necessary, gotten to
know your audience and developed
learning objectives.
With that out of the way, let’s
remember our ultimate goal when developing safety training for employees.
We want it to stick. In a perfect training
world, we want our learners to be so
focused on the classroom activities
that they stop checking e-mail on their
smartphones.
In the game design world, this
concept is referred to as flow. The
concept of flow was defined by one of
the most popular researchers in the
field of video game design, Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced, cheeksent-me-high). Csikszentmihalyi’s
(1997) research centers around
happiness and creativity. Essentially,
in completely nonscientific terms,
Csikszentmihalyi is interested in how
to get people into the groove.
In the world of video games, this is
a big deal. Game designers want the
player experience to be one in which
players are having so much fun that
32 ProfessionalSafety
OCTOBER 2013
they are no longer conscious of the fact
that they are even playing a game.
Imagine if this could be applied in
the classroom. Imagine people coming
to a training session and never wanting
to leave, or being so caught up in the
learning that they forget they are in a
class. As a trainer, that’s an interesting
goal to strive for, to be sure.
Adding games to a safety class is
nothing new. Most of us have probably
sat through a round of safety bingo at
some point. But dropping a game into a
training class does not necessarily make
the entire classroom experience more
engaging. If you want to truly get to
flow, you have to start with the design.
Imagine people coming
to a training session and
never wanting to leave,
or being so caught up
in the learning that they
forget they are in a class.
Before thinking about the design of
your training, take a step back and think
about a basic tenet of adult learning
(mentioned in section 5.2.4 of the standard). Adults are internally motivated.
In practical terms this means that most
adults want to learn in their own way.
But in a typical safety training class,
do we do that? Do we design the learning to allow adult students to have some
opportunity to approach the material
and take it in on their own? Hardly ever.
Instead of guiding learners and giving
them problems to solve, we bombard
them with endless presentations and
lectures that, in most cases, they have no
control over (Deterding, 2013). They are
innocent training bystanders.
The way to move away from this is
to adopt a game design model. Here’s
a high-level model that many game
designers start with when creating
game levels:
•Gain attention.
•Establish the goal.
•Unleash the action (elicit practice
and provide feedback).
•Present a final challenge.
If you look at this outline (and you’re
an instructional design nerd like me),
you may notice that it is similar to
Gagne’s instructional events. Video
game design and instructional design
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truly are similar. In video games, we try
to get players into that flow state. With
learners, ultimately, we are trying to do
the same thing. We want to get them
to a state in the training in which they
are not even aware that they are being
trained.
Let’s now use this same format to create an outline for a day-long instructorled course on OSHA’s revised HazCom
standard. This is only being used as
an example (sorry, for anyone looking
for something to meet OSHA’s Dec. 1
training requirements). As we go along
exploring each part of the design outline, we’ll also see how it aligns with the
Z490.1 standard. You can follow along
by going to section 4 of the standard.
Gain Attention
In video games, gaining the player’s
attention is critical. Do it right and
you’re one step closer to flow. Do it
wrong and the player may tune out,
move on to a different game or blog
about how boring your game is. Adult
learners will do the same thing. Remember, with adults time is precious. The
students in your class likely have something else they would rather be doing.
Therefore, you need to make the time
they spend in your class worthwhile.
So, what can we do to get this right?
With games, gaining attention means
giving them a taste of things to come.
Probably the best way to gain a player’s
attention is to present them with something unexpected. This may be a short
video clip revealing some deep mystery
that the player is at the center of, or a
glimpse of some fantastical larger world.
For our GHS class, let’s do something unexpected right away by saying
to our learners that this entire day-long
class will be a guided simulation. If we
do that, we can begin by playing a short
video or reading off a statement from
their boss about a safety incident in
which a worker was killed when dealing with some hazardous material. We
then tell them that it will be their job
to make sure that sort of thing never
happens again.
Establish the Goal
Games have two types of goals:
overall and nested. An overall goal
is the player’s final objective, such as
saving the princess or bringing peace to
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the kingdom. Nested goals are goals for
individual challenges. For example, in
pursuing the goal of bringing peace to
the kingdom, maybe the player has to
perform a challenge in which s/he must
defeat a dragon.
Our GHS training will have overall
and nested goals as well. They’re called
learning objectives (section 4.3.3 of the
standard). In the instructional design
world, there are differences between
learning goals and learning objectives.
But in the gaming world, consider them
to be the same. Each mission goal will
be one of the learning objectives.
To keep people in the flow state, how
you present those objectives is key. Remember, we’re trying to make this feel
real. Reading a bunch of meaningless
learning objectives may kill the mood.
Presenting each learning objective as
a scenario-based mission goal helps to
keep learners focused on the action.
For this example we already noted
the overall goal during the opening
message: prevent people from getting
killed. We should refine it here, telling
learners that we will be using the label
elements and SDS as tools to help save
100% of workers’ lives.
The nested goals are the individual
learning objectives that will help us to
complete our overall goal. As the standard says, we want learning objectives
to be specific, measurable, reasonable and timely. Again, each learning
objective should be communicated as
a real-world task that is part of our
simulation.
For example, we don’t want to just
tell learners that they have to learn
about signal words just for the sake of
learning about signal words. We want
to create a scenario in which they must
know what signal words are so that they
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OCTOBER 2013
ProfessionalSafety 33
Best Practices
Unleash the Action
Unleashing the action is how we
facilitate the nested goals. This is when
we give learners the opportunity to
learn new skills and practice using
them in real-life situations. When facilitating this, think of yourself less as an
instructor and more as a movie director.
As the learning director, your job is
to keep the actors (learners) in the flow.
You want them to really feel the role
they’re playing. To keep things more
lifelike, allow for a certain amount of
failure. This can be a balancing act.
You don’t want to make challenges so
difficult that learners just give up. But
you don’t want to make things too easy
for them either. Filling your challenges
with “just barely” victories—fulfilling
victories that learners have to work
for—is the best way to keep them in
the flow. As they move through each
challenge, it is also your job, as director, to observe what they’re doing and
provide feedback.
Finally, when putting together the
content for your challenges, keep in
mind the items under section 4.4 of
Z490.1: Course design. As they say,
content is king. The information you
use to build activities must come from
valid resources (e.g., current literature,
trusted subject-matter experts, regulatory requirements). That same content,
as well as the exercises you design,
must be geared toward the target audience (think culture, language, experience level, etc.).
Final Challenge
One final point mentioned in sections
4 and 6 of Z490.1 addresses training
Interested in the Z490.1 standard?
You can learn more and
purchase the standard at
www.asse.org/shoponline/
products/Z490_1_2009.php.
34 ProfessionalSafety
OCTOBER 2013
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can successfully complete a challenge
and save lives. Perhaps we create a situation in which teams of learners must
look at a group of labels and identify
the chemicals that are dangerous to
workers. For the exercise to be measurable, we tell them that they have to get
the challenge 100% correct before they
can move ahead in the exercise. Zero
incidents is a real-world goal.
evaluation. As the standard states in section 6, “an evaluation shall be made of
the trainee’s achievement of each learning objective, considering the performance, conditions and criteria specified
in the learning objective.” With the idea
of nested challenges, this is something
we should be doing at all points during
the training experience. Every challenge
we throw at learners should be grounded in a learning objective.
However, it is also important to have
a final challenge that evaluates learners’
achievement of the entire set of learning objectives. In the role-playing game
Fable, the final boss is a dastardly fiend
known as Jack of Blades. To defeat Jack,
you have to throw everything you’ve
learned up to that point at him. Your
final challenge should set up something
similar. Maybe teams have to search
through a warehouse of dangerous
chemicals to save a worker. In the
challenge, they must successfully apply
everything they now know about the
new labels and SDS to win.
Speaking of final challenges, I want
to mention one final popular gaming
term: fiero. Not just a quirky sports car
sold in the 1980s, fiero is what we feel
when we triumph over some great adversity (McGonigal, 2011). In a game, a
fiero moment may occur when a player
beats the bad guy or overcomes some
difficult obstacle to complete a goal.
It’s usually something that results in a
fist pump or, if they’re playing online
with others, a verbal high five. It’s
something they’re proud of, and at a
psychological level, something they absolutely feel was real. When designing
your final challenge, strive to produce a
fiero moment outcome.
In the End
This is just one example of how we
can gamify the classroom while staying
true to the Z490.1 standard. And stay
true to it we must. Without well-written learning objectives, a strategy for
evaluation and a thorough understanding of our audience (all points covered
in Z490.1) even the most imaginative
concept for a classroom game will be
destined to fail.
And remember, our job is not to
create a video game. It isn’t even our
job to ensure that the training we
create is fun. In the end, the only “F”
word that we really want to concern
ourselves with is flow. Because keeping
our employees safe means first keeping
learners tuned into our training.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding
flow: The psychology of engagement with
everyday life. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Deterding, S. (2013, July 8). Gameful
design for learning. T+D Magazine. www
.astd.org/Publications/Magazines/TD/
TD-Archive/2013/07/Gameful-Design
-for-Learning
McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken:
Why games make us better and how they can
change the world. New York, NY: Penguin
Press.
Dan McNeill is ASSE’s manager, education development. In that role, he provides educational
and professional development offerings to enhance the ability and increase the knowledge of the
SH&E professionals through audio, e-learning and distance learning opportunities. McNeill holds
an M.A. in Human Resource Development from Northeastern Illinois University and is a member
of American Society for Training and Development. On a part-time basis, he teaches video game
design at McHenry County College in Crystal Lake, IL. You can follow McNeill on Twitter
@VirtualASSE or find him on Facebook at VirtualASSE.
www.asse.org