- Games can teach? You're kidding!
- The Cisco Learning Games
- The Story of the Cisco Mind Share Game
- Got Game?
The Cisco Learning Games
At Cisco we are always looking for innovation, so we decided to give learning games a try. We thought if players could learn real job skills from a game then “let the games begin.” Some of the early attempts were better than others, but when the Cisco Binary Game went viral (over a million visits) we knew we were on our way.
As we continue to make learning games, we are interested to see if they make a difference. To that end we have done some analysis and gathered various types of data. You may find the following results interesting.
Surveys
We surveyed hundreds of players to find out if the Cisco Learning games helped as they studied networking and prepared for Cisco Certifications. Here are some results of these surveys:
Mind Share Game Testing of New Students
We gave sixteen new networking students a 55-item pre-test developed from content covered in the Mind Share Game1.
Next, the students were given several hours of class time to play through the entire game multiple times. No other instruction was given.
Finally, an equivalent 55-item post-test was administered.
Results: Using only the game to learn, average test scores improved by 241% !
Mind Share Game Helps Advanced Students2
We wanted to know if the game could help advanced students. We tested students after they completed a semester in a networking class. We found the average improvement in test scores was 10% after playing the game. This demonstrated that the game was a good way to practice and reinforce skills and concepts learned in a regular curriculum.
The Binary Game3
We conducted a similar study with The Binary game. In an introductory networking class, students were only able to solve about 3 or 4 binary number conversion problems on a test before playing the game. After playing the game several times, students were able to perform an average of 25 conversions. That is a 600% improvement after only about 30 minutes of game play.