I want to go there - bringing "optimal experience" to the classroom.

I recently read a book called Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. In the book, McGonigal focuses on the ideas of positive psychology (particularly the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) to explain why games are so engaging, what games offer that is better than reality, and how we can both play productive games and incorporate "gamelike" activity into our everyday lives to improve everything from education to global issues such as poverty.

Csikszentmihalyi argued in his studies on optimal experience that "the optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness," i.e., when our attention is "invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action." (Csikszentmihalyi, Ch. 1). Basically, optimal experience or "flow" comes at the balance between anxiety and boredom, difficulty and ability. When we are afraid that a task is too difficult, we become anxious. When a task doesn't challenge our current abilities, we become bored. When a task pushes us to the edge of our abilities, when we feel challenged (but still capable of success) and motivated to single-mindedly pursue the task at hand - that's "flow."

Unfortunately, a lot of our daily environments (school, work, etc.) don't provide many opportunities for achieving "flow." In fact, according to McGonigal, "Csikszentmihalyi's research showed that flow was most reliably and most efficiently produced by the specific combination of self-chosen goals, personally optimized obstacles, and continuous feedback that make up the essential structure of gameplay" (McGonigal, Ch. 2). If the elements of gameplay create an environment that consistently produces "flow" and flow optimizes our potential for learning and growth, it begs the question - why do we find so few of the elements of gameplay in real life?

McGonigal also argues that the games successfully provide intrinsic rewards that meet four essential human cravings:

1. Satisfying work
2. The experience, or at least the hope, of being successful.
3. Social connection.
4. Meaning (i.e., the chance to be a part of something larger than ourselves).
   

As McGonigal puts it, "gamers aren't escaping their real lives by playing games. They're actively making their real lives more rewarding" by filling these cravings in ways that their reality currently does not (McGonigal, Ch. 2). The goal, for me, is to learn how to satisfy these four cravings within the classroom setting to optimize student engagement and learning.

In addition, I believe it's important to research how we can structure the learning environment so that classroom activities are better able to create balance for each student between anxiety and boredom to produce "flow." If gameplay consistently produces flow and satisfies our cravings for intrinsic rewards, it seems productive to determine how these goals can be accomplished in education by incorporating actual gameplay or elements of gameplay (specifically "self-chosen goals, personally optimized obstacles, and continuous feedback") effectively into the classroom.

I want to go here.

Sources:
1. McGonigal, Jane. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can
Change the World. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

2. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York:
Harper Perennial, 2008. Print.


Jane McGonigal's TEDTalk - for your viewing pleasure.