July eLearning Bytes: What Pokémon GO Can Teach Us About Learning

I love games: video games, board games, card games, you name it. I learn new things and gain skills in an environment that rewards curiosity and exploration. In that vein, I am totally enamored of Pokémon GO.

Nintendo's Pokémon GO launched in mid-July. After one week, it had become the most popular mobile game ever made. It continues to enthrall gamers and non-gamers alike, people of all ages. It's also the perfect summer video game because the user must be walking around outside.

Not familiar with it? Here’s the skinny: It’s a mobile game in which you're represented by an avatar on a map, literally where you are standing with your phone. You see roads, trails, and bodies of water. Occasionally, a little cartoon animal (Pokémon) will pop up on your map. Click on the Pokémon and your phone’s camera turns on. The Pokémon pops up on the screen, as if it were coming to life. “Capture” it to level your character up.

So, what does this have to do with eLearning?

You can apply some very interesting takeaways to eLearning (and learning, in general).In this ASIDE blog, you’ll discover “10 ways that Pokémon GO can support the skills of contemporary learning.” From map decoding to collaborative learning, this game compels the user to navigate the unknown, interpret it, and use a variety of skills to succeed.

One of the more interesting aspects is the incidental learning that occurs.

Many of the markers in the game are actual landmarks. As part of the game, you visit various local historical markers to gain experience points. While recently playing it with my kids in Minneapolis, I turned those game experience points into a real-life history lesson.

Drawing a relationship between Pokémon GO and learning in the workplace, this recent Game Effective blog post explains that Pokémon GO delivers a sense of real-time accomplishment. When you see your success lead to a “leveling up,” it encourages a sense of adventure and curiosity that positively ignites intrinsic motivation. You ask, “What more can I do?” And, as we know, motivation, encouragement, and reward are integral to bringing out the best in learners and ourselves.

This is exactly the sort of encouragement we should bring to eLearning courses, workshops, and our everyday work.

But what interests me most is how perfectly Pokémon GO illustrates the value of the gamification of learning. Pokémon GO may wane in popularity eventually, but its success will remain notable for how deftly it has tapped into so many aspects of human psychology.