Guest: Terry Pearce

In this episode of the Become and IDOL podcast, Dr. Robin Sargent interviews Terry Pearce, an instructional designer with over 20 years of experience in learning and development. 

Tune in to hear:

• How Terry stumbled into a career in instructional design after studying photography in university and his journey developing a focus on gamification.
• Terry explain his "Six Levers of Games-Based Learning" framework for designing engaging learning experiences using gamification principles.
• Terry's advice for those looking to enter the instructional design field and find their niche.

Listen to this episode below: 

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Are you looking for a no-nonsense formula for creating engaging courses and training? Check out my new book, The Do It Messy Approach: A Step-by-Step Guide for Instructional Designers and Online Learners (IDOLs) on Amazon.

Enjoy the Episode Transcript below:   

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Welcome to Become an IDOL. I'm Dr. Robin Sargent, owner of IDOL courses. This is the place where newbies come to learn and veterans share their knowledge.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

I have here with me today, Terry Pearce from Untold Play and Terry, would you please do a better job of introducing yourself and give us a little background on who you are?

 

Terry Pearce 

I'll do my best Robin, thanks for having me on the show. It's really good to be here. So I started out my career in L&D 20 years ago in call centers, and I was training people in customer service, and kind of my career has evolved through me following my interests really within learning and development. So I really enjoy facilitation and kind of broadened out a little bit from that initial focus on customer service to a much wider range of things. But I really found my specialization and what I really love in design, and that's what I've been doing in my consultancy, and with Untold Play. For the last kind of half of my career, is focusing on designing really interactive and really enjoyable as well as effective learning experiences. And then particularly even going more specialized, focusing on gamification and games-based learning, which is what Untold Play is really all about is helping people to learn through the power of games.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Okay, so I want to rewind just all the way back to the beginning. You've been in L&D for over 20 years, how did you get into it? Did you stumble upon it? Were you an accidental instructional designer? I know you said that you were creating training for customer service but even before then, how did you find the field?

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, it was very much a stumble actually, in fact, it's a little strange, because my father was a trainer and I had no intention of following in his footsteps, but then just kind of stumbled into it in the company that I was working in. But I think it just gels with a lot of what I really love, which is learning, which is being around people and helping people to learn. I just found that it was something that I could do and do well and get a lot out of myself.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

So did you go... What did you go to school for? You didn't go to school for this.

 

Terry Pearce 

So at university, I studied photography.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Oh, okay, so a similar, some form of a vein that like a lot of people might come from like, film or photography or graphic design, and then they just kind of fit in there that artistic side, your like half researcher, half artist?

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, I guess the creative thread is the unifying thread. Yeah, definitely.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah. Okay. And so you worked in corporate, I imagine for a long time, or at least a while before you started your business. How long did you work as a learning designer and a trainer?

 

Terry Pearce 

So well, yeah, it's been a few kind of jumps in that time. So it's first of all, in a couple of different call center focused businesses, and then in the NHS, the National Health Service in the UK. And then in a small consultancy, so all of that, dealing with different audiences and gravitating more and more towards design. So that was about the first kind of half of that, the first 10 years, but then focusing more and more over the time that I've been in my own business, on the design side of things, because it's just where I found myself where I guess I followed my passion, really.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah, I want to talk about that, too. So you started your own business. First of all, I want to know what made you want to start your own business. What was your purpose there? Are you doing the same thing that you started your business to do, now?

 

Terry Pearce 

Well focused much more on the games-based side of things. Definitely. Again, that's been kind of following what I found that I loved. I guess I started doing it because I wanted a bit more freedom. I wanted to do the things I wanted to focus on. I mean that's... comes with its own difficulties in terms of obviously, there's plenty that within a corporate environment people are doing for you, in terms of marketing, admin, etc, that you don't quite, perhaps appreciate until you're having to do them yourself or find people to do them for you. But absolutely, it has allowed me a lot more freedom as well.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And so you moved into your own business to have that freedom. And do you think that's how you continue to cultivate your niche? Or do you think you kind of found it before you started your business? Tell us like, the process you went through, because a lot of people know that, you know, at some point, they're going to need to deepen their skills and find their niche and how did you do that? What did your process look like?

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, I think it's been a lot of exposure to different things. So as well as trying to find my own clients when I was running my own business. I was doing a lot of work on an associate basis. And so getting in front of a lot of different clients, working on a lot of different kinds of projects. And the ones that really suited me, suited how I work, suited what I could offer, I think they blossomed. And I found myself able to pursue more of the same, able to add more of that to my offering. And the ones that didn't suit me and I found myself moving away from. So I think, you know, one of the key things, certainly early in that process, was exposing myself to a lot of different things, and then finding what really, really suited me, but then, kind of, I guess, slightly aggressively pursuing that, once I'd worked it out.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Was there a spark for you, Terry? Like, was there are specific project that you did, or something you worked on or anything that said, this is the place where I'm just the happiest, you know, doing the gamification or the certain types of activities? Or was there any one thing?

 

Terry Pearce 

I think there was an early project, while early on in my consultancy for a utility’s provider, where I was initially part of the project team as delivery design, kind of a bit of everything, really, but definitely found that I was getting a lot of really great feedback on the design work that I was doing, and a lot of freedom to pursue stuff that was really working and really engaging people. I think that really kind of pushed me towards that side of things, and made me see that actually, I could make a business out of that.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Describe a little bit about that, like describe, like, what is the... what was the mechanic? What did it look like? What was it about that utility training that you did?

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, well, the main client actually was really, really keen on making something that was really memorable for the people who were involved in the learning. So she had a quite a lot of latitude she gave us in how to achieve that. When that freedom again, I think really made me think, okay, all the different ways I could do this, and I am someone who does games a lot as a hobby. So I'm naturally thinking in those kinds of ways, and but finding ways to not just have it as something that's fun and enjoyable within a learning session, but actually also achieves the objectives. So it's kind of like a puzzle for me, I think that's, that's quite how I work to say, okay, the puzzle is, let's meet the learning objectives, given the constraints of the project. And how can we do that, and I drew a lot of my inspiration from games and other things that engage me.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

So you have been... so you started with the utility project, maybe it's like, okay, this is where... this is my lane, I'm gonna stay right here. And you probably evolved so much. So, you mentioned to me before we started recording that you have even developed your own framework about how you implement gamification into your learning design. So would you walk us through what that looks like?

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, I would absolutely love to Robin. So one of the things that I do, I mean, actually, back up a second, I think one of the best things to do is to start to think about why games are relevant to learning. And I think if you start to think about what games do, is they really draw people in, people spend millions of hours every year playing games and coming back to the same games and getting really engaged. And so there's a real power there. And if you start to look at why do games work? How do they do that? Obviously, some of them do it in a way that you can't really necessarily bring into a learning environment. But some of the things that they do that really engage people and draw them in, you absolutely can. You can say, well, how could we put that in a learning experience? And that's really where my kind of framework came about was through observing that, seeing what worked and seeing what could be drawn into learning, as the framework I kind of developed from that been developing over the last few years, is called the Six Levers of Games-Based Learning. And it is this idea of the lever because you know, there's this thing of issues, if you've got a nice lever, then you don't have to put as much energy into something to really leverage it, to really get power or a good result from it. So I found six ways that kind of map to that six ways that games do things really well, that if we bring them into a learning experience, then you can really leverage that great learning that great engagement. Would you like to hear about those six levers?

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yes, of course.

 

Terry Pearce 

Fantastic. So the first one is putting learners at the center. So games work well, and learning games work well, or game-based learning experiences work well, when you put learners at the center of things, when instead of being a spectator, they're a protagonist. So things like and, you know, this encompasses each of these levers, encompasses so much, but I'll just give you a couple of quick examples from each. So things like co-creation, so they're really involved, creating what you're doing as you go along rather than you've got it all mapped out. Or something like just in time instructions. Games do that really well. So video games, you don't read something for 20 minutes first and then play. You're right in the center of things, and you learn by doing. So that's the kind of ways that games put learners at the center and whether you're designing a learning game, or whether you're just trying to draw inspiration from games in any other kind of learning experience, I think putting learners at the center is really powerful. Second lever, is setting learners an open challenge. So that's saying, you know, there's not necessarily one right way that we're looking for, we're sending you a challenge, that we're giving you perhaps some resources or outlining what resources you have and we're saying, these are the limitations or the rules. But within that, how you achieve the challenge, it's kind of up to you. And I'm sure a lot of your listeners will be familiar with some of the really traditional ways of doing that like building a bridge out of straws, or things like that, within a team building session. I'm not advocating that we only do things like that. There's lots of much newer and different creative ways to do that. But it's that kind of principle that actually if you set people a challenge and give them some resources in the right way, in a way that's consistent with the learning, you're getting them thinking.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And if it's open, how do you know if they... I'm thinking eLearning. Are you thinking in person or are you thinking both? Or?

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, that's a really good question, Robin. I think it... you know the idea behind six levers is their point of inspiration. So it's about saying, How can I use these within whatever I'm designing? So it could be a classroom-based session, it could be eLearning. And obviously, they're going to be differently useful or have different challenges in implementing them, depending on what you're doing. But I do think they're applicable for any of those. So for eLearning, yeah, you're right. An open challenge is a little bit difficult in the sense that, you know, what if they don't do it the way you expected if you're not on hand to kind of guide things. But actually, I think that in a way, that's one of the most powerful things about games, it's a bit scary, if you're a designer, letting go of things and saying, I don't know what they're going to come up with. But I think you can even with an eLearning put in ways to kind of check that. Whether you have peer review, or in depending on your exact setup, there's things you can put in place to have some kind of feedback there at the end. But separate from the feedback, you know, the value power in the learning is often about how they're solving the challenge on their own terms and in their own time, I guess.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah. Okay, that's good. All right, open challenges, learners at the center, what's number three?

 

Terry Pearce 

Number three is let learners explore. So that's this idea of an open landscape that they can explore. And I think one of the best ways to illustrate this one is with an example. So something that's really impressed me is Minecraft's Education Edition. And this is one of the places where I think that schools in education can often be a little bit ahead of kind of corporate learning, because, you know, people are learning, kids are learning in schools about conservation by exploring game reserves within Minecraft, and really having the whole landscape to explore. And then once they've explored a while, or exploring being set questions to say, Okay, well, if we were going to try and conserve the animals better, if we're going to try and work better with the poaching problem, whatever might be the thing that we're learning about, how might we do that? Which is going back to an open challenge, but you know, the answers are there for them to explore in the landscape. Right? There's a very literal landscape, but landscapes can also be maps of things, maps of organizations, you know, can be more abstract things.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And the other thing I thought of too, Terry is like, if we're letting learners explore, maybe that's another way of saying like, let learners pull the information, instead of always push, push, push. So they can like pull it from like, Oh, here's a hint guide. Or if you want extra resources, they're up here, you can kind of hide them in a scavenger hunt or something like that. And I'm always thinking of eLearning because the majority of what we're building over here, so. Okay.

 

Terry Pearce 

Sure, yeah that's a great example. And again, I think that's exactly what I intend with the six levers is, you know, think about how they apply to your situation. And yeah, that's a great example.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Okay, number four.

 

Terry Pearce 

Number four is, let learners fail, and this is actually my favorite one because it sounds really scary. I think, you know, the idea of letting people fail, but I think it's key to learning, you know? We learn in real life through failing, and then learning from that failure. And I think sometimes as learning designers, certainly, in my experience, we're a little bit scared of anything that might be interpreted as failure, actually we want people to always have this kind of experience of success. But actually if you can create an environment where they can fail safely and again, that's what games do. You know a game that you succeed and do it on the first try is a bad game. You know, it didn't challenge you. So I think creating a learning experiences where okay, maybe they're going a bit of a loop, they fail first time but they use the learning from it to succeed the second time.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah, well even in getting the like deliberate practice, right? And you have... I have my students, they have to submit all their assets to their peers, and then they submit it to our academic evaluators. And it's pass-fail. And a lot of times, none of them pass the first time because they have feedback that they have to implement in order to pass. And so I get exactly what you're saying, right? If they got it right the first time, why would they even need to be in my school? Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's, I like that. Also, you're right. I mean, who wants to play a game where it's too easy, and you don't fail? Like that's, I think there's probably even studies out there, right, that like, about getting that mix right, about being challenging where you fail, but not so challenging where you just give up.

 

Terry Pearce 

Absolutely. Well, a great model for that actually, and I'm a big fan of bringing in studies and frameworks is Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, I think something like that, but the Flow Model. The Flow Model of, you know, challenge versus skill level. And I think that, absolutely, you want to get that right balance,

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Challenge versus skill model, okay. Say a little bit about that.

 

Terry Pearce 

It's called the Flow Model and it's just this idea that, and again, this is some of the games do really well, that we tend to, as you kind of said, get bored, if our skills are too equal to the challenge. You know our skill level is too high, the challenge of it was too low. But we tend to get discouraged if the challenge level is too high. So there's this kind of corridor between the two, where actually you can see it as a kind of staircase or kind of escalator, that actually, if, as learners skills develop, we keep raising the challenge level in kind of time or in tune with that, then that's going to keep the learner or the player in this kind of area of flow, this zone of flow. Which, you know, people experience as really, really exhilarating, if you're in a sense of flow with a game or with a sport is a great example. You know, you feel like you're in the zone, everything you're doing is just right, and you're just meeting these tough challenges. It's a great feeling.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah. Okay, I am with you. Number five.

 

Terry Pearce 

So number five is give learners meaningful choices. And by meaningful choices, and this is one that I think is particularly relevant to kind of eLearning because there are a lot of those kinds of scenarios with branching paths and different choices. And I think that sometimes it can be difficult to make those choices meaningful. You know, it's like wrong or right, it's not necessarily a meaningful choice, it's just a test. But if you're thinking about, well, let's try and construct a scenario or a situation and again, games do this really well, where both options are kind of plausible. And there are consequences to choosing both or all options. You know, things like different risk levels, versus different reward levels, or options around discovering versus consolidating, or ideals versus pragmatism or depth versus breadth, and all these things that are a bit in conflict so that people are actually having to choose and lose some things maybe at the same time as they're gaining some things, make tradeoffs.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Okay, I get this and also I like how you say that they are going to learn like non examples, right? Like or the consequences, because that's so much a part... I think that's another part that I see even like my students will sometimes miss, right? Like, they'll give them all the best-case scenarios, all the good options but they have neglected to show them, like, what happens if they do it wrong. Or they press the wrong button, or so on. So...

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, absolutely. And also, I think it just engages people more in that choice. If they know that they're just being tested on what's right, then if they know it, they'll just click it, and they're not really engaged. But if they actually have to make a tough choice, where there are some wrongs and some rights both ways, then that's actually I think, gets people debating certainly, and looking back on what they've chosen and why. Yeah.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Okay, we're at the end of your framework, number six.

 

Terry Pearce 

Number six is nudge learners towards preferred actions. And this is about kind of keying into nudges, about kind of behavioral, social nudges. So there's a lot of study behind this one from people like Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in economics. And this is where Yu-kai Chou is a great practitioner in terms of gamification, and, again, nudges. But it's saying, you know, what kind of things tend to nudge human behavior? So this can be social influences, or just clever UX design, you know? To say, well, if you put a button in this color, or in this position, they're more likely to click it. So it's just saying, as you're taking things, as you're taking people through, and again, games do this really well. So we should learn from that. Think about exactly what kind of action you want the learner to take for their own benefit at any given point, and try and design an experience that is easier, or more rewarding for them to take the action.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Okay, so now when we are looking at all these levers, does that mean that you can't... you're saying you can pull some of these levers? Or should you pull all the levers? Or?

 

Terry Pearce 

That's a great question. So absolutely, I think you, you know, it's designed to be a very flexible framework. If you think about how I came about it, is by seeing what kinds of things work really well in games that could also work, or in my experience do work, in learning design and learning experiences. But they're not always all happening at once in games, and they shouldn't necessarily all happen at once, in learning experiences. So absolutely. I think, you know, you could be just pulling on one of these levers in a given moment. Or maybe sometimes you could be pulling on most or all of them. But you know, whichever seems to lend most power, or most affected us to the design that you're creating, I think.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Is there any lever where you're like, you must keep at least this one? And any favorite lever that you're like, every time I design training, I am I putting learners at the center or something like that?

 

Terry Pearce 

Well, you've nailed the one that I was about to pick out. Absolutely, actually. So you're already in tune with the model, I think. But absolutely, there's a reason that that's number one. Because I think that in a way, the other five are kind of offshoots of that when you are setting people an open challenge, you're putting them at the center, when you're letting them explore, you're putting them at the center. So in a way, the others are kind of in orbit. And that's one way I've represented this sometimes visually as kind of planets orbiting around the sun. They're kind of in orbit around the idea that learners tend to learn best as protagonists and not spectators.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

So I imagine that you start thinking about these levers at the very beginning like after you've done your analysis, it's at the very beginning of your design.

 

Terry Pearce 

A little bit, I mean, certainly at the design phase, I tend to follow that kind of double diamond kind of design thinking approach where you are, first of all getting really clear about the challenge, and then the needs. So doing some discovery and some definition on those. But once I'm into the second half of that of developing the solution itself, then yeah, absolutely. I'm looking at this framework. Also other people's frameworks, you know, this is one, I hope, in a long tradition of frameworks to inspire people, ones like Yu-kai Chou's Octalysis Framework, or BJ Fogg's Behavior Model, or as we mentioned, the Flow Model. So you know, I'm often looking at frameworks for inspiration. But yeah, often using this one early to say, How can I put learners at the centers? How can I let them explore?

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And I know it's the Six Levers of Games-Based Learning, but have you come up with a title for it? Like, what are we gonna... What do we call this framework, Terry?

 

Terry Pearce 

That is the title at the moment.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

We need something memorable.

 

Terry Pearce 

I mean, I'm open to other suggestions. I've written a few articles about it. That's where it kind of exists at the moment online is there's some articles. I'm just in the process of putting it into a form where people are going to be able to have an interactive electronic version. And then we're going to design a course around that and some other things. So at the moment, the title is Six Levers of Games-Based Learning. I think that does describe it really well but if you think it should have a catchy title, maybe I'll give that a little think.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yes, I love naming things. Okay. And so, I wonder, do you have examples or places you would point people if they want to see some of these things in action? Like, I think you gave one example of an open challenge, like the Minecraft and education, Living Learners Explore that probably is still part of that example. But are there other.. have you? You know, are they on your website? Or would you point people somewhere? What would you...

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so the other thing that people will find on my website is, The Transform Deck, which is a product that I created actually before the Six Levers of Games-Based Learning, but it absolutely does demonstrate quite a few of the levers in action. So The Transform Deck was a tool that I developed to try and help learning designers to make more activity led learning. And it's essentially a deck of cards and each card is a kind of category of something that you can do to take what could be quite dry content, and transform it into a more of an activity led learning experience. And just the idea of having people using a deck of cards, is doing some of the things that we talked about, you know, letting learners explore, setting them an open challenge and giving them some resources to complete it, and things like that. So you can find that on my website.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And where's your website?

 

Terry Pearce 

It's untoldplay.com.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

untoldplay.com, that's easy.

 

Terry Pearce 

And also on there is a blog which is regular articles about games-based learning, gamification and learning and the six levers article is within that.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And is that mainly where people will find you? Are you active on LinkedIn or some other social media?

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, so definitely the website and there's a mailing list sign up on the website, which people can get regular updates on. But in terms of social media, the main place that I'm active is LinkedIn. So very happy to connect with people on there if they're interested in learning design, in games-based learning. And yeah, Terry Pearce on LinkedIn.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

And just kind of like as a final thing, Terry, what would be your best advice for those who want to become an IDOL? Those that are looking to make the transition into our field, what would be your best advice for them?

 

Terry Pearce 

Yeah, I think, you know, there are lots of different stripes within that. There are lots of different specialisms. So I would say, learning from what I did certainly be open to trying lots of different elements of that, lots of different parts of it, and see which one works best with your skill set and with your passion.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Yeah, you just gave them an open challenge, didn't you?

 

Terry Pearce 

I did, yeah. You're doing it already, Robin.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

I know I'm going to start paying attention to these levers. Terry, it has been so interesting and so nice to have you on the show. I know that many, many people are going to go check out your website, which is untoldplay.com, and they can follow Terry Pearce on LinkedIn. And so thank you again for being a part of the Become an IDOL podcast.

 

Terry Pearce 

Thank you for having me.

 

Dr. Robin Sargent 

Thank you so much for listening. You can find the show notes for this episode at idolcourses.com. If you liked this podcast and you want to become an instructional designer, and online learning developer, join me in the IDOL courses Academy, where you'll learn to build all the assets you need to land your first instructional design job, early access to this podcast, tutorials for how to use the eLearning authoring tools, templates for everything course building and paid instructional design experience opportunities. Go to idolcourses.com/academy and enroll or get on the waitlist. Now get out there and build transcendent cou

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