xBox Education and PlayStation Process Improvement

Futurist and tech guru Dan Burres once observed that to play an average video game like Halo or Sonic the Hedgehog, a child must learn and master no fewer than 70 new rules or skills. These 70 skills do not increase the player’s probability of success in the game, rather these 70 skills are the bare minimum to negotiate the first level of the game.

Dan also pointed out that in this virtual reality environment or immersive simulation, the child is monitoring no fewer than 100 individual 360-degree incoming data streams in all three planes of 3D space (X, Y, and Z axes). Additionally, the latest generations of these gaming systems provide text, audio, and video conferencing, allowing gamers to collaborate in real time with people not only within their country but also over the Internet in other countries.

These collaborations are not subject to language differences. As a result, in order to work collaboratively within a given group, and to make that group work collaboratively with other groups, players must learn a new language, either one unique to the game or one used in common by all players on their team. .

Xbox Education:

But what does this have to do with education or improving business processes?

What if the much-vaunted No Child Left Behind curriculum was handed over to video game programmers and used as the rules, processes, and systems for a series of adventure and role-playing video games?

What if the same level of mastery of school skills was required to succeed at the various levels of these games?

It is estimated that the entire K-8 educational curriculum will be learned and mastered in two and a half years!

Also, the remaining four years of high school would be completed in 18 months. Since this sophistication of video games requires a certain level of reading and fine motor skills, students would not be ready to start such a program until they were seven or eight years old (third grade). Therefore, these students would finish high school at the end of seventh grade.

Military and civilian applications of immersive simulation and virtual reality training have found that application and retention of information and skills learned maintain greater than 90% recall and greater than 90% proficiency in real-world application. This means that students learning in an immersive simulation/virtual reality environment will not only master their K-12 education, but will recall it with greater than 90% accuracy and apply it with greater than 90% proficiency. This beats even the best educational programs anywhere in the world by a two to one margin.

Given this level of retention and proficiency, these seventh graders could augment their education with the first two years of college (liberal arts studies) which they would again complete within a year. A comprehensive education could be further enhanced with Music and Literature, which would of course be part of the immersion simulation rather than separate courses, giving little or no additional time to the programme.

In such a technology-augmented education, by the time the average child graduates from middle school and enters their teens, they will have completed the equivalent of two years of college in a liberal arts program, again at a higher proficiency level. at 90% or in college terms, a Magna Cum Laude level of experience.

Toaster or Technology:

The problem with applying such a model within our current educational system is that to a preteen or teen, the xBox 360, PlayStation 3, or similar device is not technology, but a toaster-like tool. Yet for those of us who provide education, whether in the graduate or high school setting, this same device still represents significant technology with “cutting-edge graphics” and “incredible speed.” For those of us who grew up in the Pong and Atari generation, the xBox 360 and PlayStation 3 were not only unimaginable, but had they existed in our teens, they would have cost tens of millions of dollars and would have been called “supercomputers.” .

The culture clash between today’s educators and the educational technology represented by the xBox 360 and PlayStation 3 is a chasm almost too wide to bridge.

Companies can lead the way:
Perhaps the drip of the effect would be more easily accepted. Instead of transforming the modern classroom into an educational arcade, what if currently available technologies like xBox 360, PlayStation 3 or even Second Life were applied to immersive simulation training of employees?

RPGs designed around works of literature, movies, or even fantasy could be modified or even built from scratch to incorporate new skills and processes needed in the business environment or even a manufactured environment. Fire safety, workplace safety, disaster preparedness, disaster response, or even activities as mundane as packing for trips, preparing for a doctor’s visit, or taking care of your own health could all be incorporated into the mythical world of virtual reality role playing games.

Today’s Dungeon Masters could draw on the wealth of knowledge and work cooperatively with professional organizations and trainers, academic institutions, and advocacy groups to ensure that evidence-based processes were built into games, thus It allows games to not only uphold the laws of physics, but the laws of business, medicine, and even real-world legal considerations.

Imagine logging into Second Life online and “volunteering” at a hospital that is responding to an earthquake (or Godzilla attack). Nurses, doctors, administrators, lab technicians, X-ray technologists, health care providers, and professionals of all kinds were able to practice their cooperation, collaboration, policies, and even procedures in this virtual space until these skills became second nature to everyone. SecondLife.

When an actual event occurred, the same people who trained in the virtual reality/immersive simulation environment would find that they apply these new skills with military precision and virtual reality realism. Life will truly imitate art.

Let the games begin:

So what would it take to put theory into practice?

The will to do it!

The technology exists. Programming algorithms exist. There are procedures and best practices in every industry that could benefit from immersive simulation/virtual reality training. The only thing missing is a simple collaboration between programmers who are masters of this new world and professionals who are masters of both new and old knowledge.

Perhaps like in the video game Cameo, these modern digital alchemists can join the wizards of ancient lore and forge a new world for all.