 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today in this back to school episode, we have Randall Fujimoto, the executive director and game-based learning designer of game train learning. Our topic is game-based learning, and we're looking forward to learning all about it. Welcome, Randall. Thanks, Catherine. Good to be here. All right. So how did you get involved in eSports? Let's see. So I got involved in the video game industry from the beginning. So I worked in the video game industry, and after a while, they decided to get into education, kind of a higher calling, I guess. And in education, always the problem has been for quite a while, is how do you make education more engaging? And so I thought with a gaming background, I'd combine that with instructional design. I got a degree in instructional design and decided to use gaming and game-like thinking and trying to make education more engaging and enjoyable like it should be. So my mission since that time about eight, nine years ago is to use game-based learning in all phases of education from preschool all the way to adult. How do you make education more game-like, more fun, engaging like a game? So I've been working on different game-based learning projects, programs for a while, and which brings us to eSports, which is the latest gaming, game-based learning type program that I'm working on. So that brings us here. All right. So do you call it gamification? Good question, question to get often asked. So game-based learning is different from gamification. So gamification, like literally is the technical term is making something that is not a game into something that's more like a game. So it's taking like chores and trying to make it into a game. Game-based learning, on the other hand, is a broader term. It means it's not just using digital games or educational games. It's it's it's using everything that that's a game or game-like thinking or game-fied process, like game-fying your classroom activities or less like that. So when I think of game-based learning, I think of this broad area of using digital games, using analog games, using game design projects that kids are making games and then using any other like new media, VR, AR, all that new technologies, even in-person escape rooms or immersive. You've got you've got in-person experiences like over here. I'm in the LA area. So down in Disneyland, they've got Galaxy Edge, where it's kind of like you're playing inside the Star Wars games. Right. So so things like that are all if if we add learning to that and folks don't learn, that's game-based learning. And so gamification is a subset. I could say that a subset of the whole universe of game-based learning. OK, so there's an escape room in Waikiki. If I go to that, is that a game-based learning experience? It is a game-based learning experience if there's learning going on. So generally escape rooms are just solve a puzzle, solve a puzzle, solve a puzzle. But it could be a math escape game-based learning experience that if every puzzle is related to math, right, then it becomes a game-based learning experience. OK, now I mean, I have another example for you. OK, my brother and I, we use Duolingo all the time and we're learning a whole bunch of different languages and kind of trying to rack up the points and learn various languages. Is that game-based learning or is that gamification? That's more gamification. It is taking language learning, which is typically taught just by, you know, just by repeating after me or something like that or identify the vocabulary. It's taking that and and adding game elements, game mechanics to it, like your point through your levels or whatever. It also added a story mode, right? Yeah, that's supposed to be pretty fun. So that that's so when you think about gamifying something, it's it works when it it focuses on the intrinsic motivators. So things like adding a story gives the the player or the user like a purpose in continuing on, right? So very it's motivating that way. It's not so much this point or this gold star. I want to do that, which is an extension motivator. Those types of systems usually don't work or last for very long. But yeah, but the way that they're doing it, I think the story mode has a lot of promise. OK, OK, so when I was in school, there was no game-based learning as far as I could tell. It was just you learn and we're not going to make this fun. But what point did game-based learning come into fashion in our history? OK, let's see if I can give you give you a little history lesson as far as I know that that. So remember, like there's a game called Oregon Trail like a long time ago and and they just did a remake of it. So I'm looking into the history of it. But that was I don't know when that was the 70s or so. But that was just like the simple like graphic of this wagon going across the country and learning about history of the Oregon Trail. And so that was one of the first successful, I guess, what they called edutainment back then. And it started to that that got popular along with maybe a couple of the games. And then so that got got software companies thinking that this is a good area to go into, because obviously they want to make money. But they found that it was very hard to get these games really popular and good and fun and make them fun. And get them into schools and into kids' hands. So they found that business model very tough. So it kind of took a dip down. And then maybe in the early 2000s, we started seeing more more interest in game based learning and in use. Maybe that's a time things like Minecraft, right, came onto the scene. And instead of being an entertainment game, that they found that, oh, we can use this to like teach math or teach English or teach like different things, just using this entertainment game. And then there became this renewed interest in using games in schools. And then we also realized that we are in the gamer generation where kids and even the young teachers, right, they grew up with Nintendo or Atari or whatever. And so this whole gamer generation is here now. And our medium of today happens to be games before it was like videos and then before that was like pictures and books. But today, we've got like almost every kid is an adult, almost as a gamer. And so to me, what this means is that that we have a whole generation that thinks and learns differently, they think and learn like a gamer does because we played thousands and thousands of hours of games. Right. So obviously that playing, doing something over and over and over, it affects how you think and how you behave. And actually it physically rewires the brain, the amount of gaming that we've done. And so how does that manifest in behavior? Is that this is what I call a gainful mindset, meaning that I go through like the gainful mindset person goes through life thinking and learning a little bit differently than in previous generations. So for example, the gamer expects continuous feedback for everything, right? We want to, we move our avatar a little bit, we do something, we get feedback from the game immediately. And we expect feedback for every single thing we do. But then you contrast that with schools, right? You turn in an essay, maybe a few days later, maybe you get it back with a grade and maybe that's it, right? And then you move on. So you've got a lot of summative assessment in schools, right? So it's a lot of summative assessment, but in games it's all formative assessment. And so you're getting a whole bunch of formative assessment, which is what gamers expect. And so that's one of the many characteristics of the gainful mindset. Another key one related, kind of related to that is that, is that with all the feedback, you expect to fail over and over, but you're okay with it. So you embrace failure and you learn from that and you learn how to iterate in your experiment. You're okay with experimenting and then iterating and learning from that. So this is how the gamer approaches school, approaches career, approaches life, right? They approach it through the lens of a gamer. And this is where we need to have our schools and our activities that the kids do. We need to have them on the same wavelength, right? In order to really connect with students. So. Sure. Yeah, you know, that's a really interesting thing. A few weeks ago, I interviewed Dexter Carr Jr. and we talked about kind of the gamer generation and I call them Gen G. And so, you know, it's interesting because as you talk about that, I'm thinking as an employer, I have a law firm that I have had employees that require more feedback than what I would think would be normal. And so I do think that perhaps in business environments that perhaps the employers need to understand this Gen G and that they need feedback on a more significant or more frequent basis than other generations. What do you think of that? Yeah, I totally agree. I think as the next few years or so, we'll get the hiring managers also as gamers. So they kind of understand that and they'll say that our old method doesn't work, that we need to ask different questions. We need to give maybe more interactive type of thing and give much better, much more proper feedback. So I think as we go along, we kind of understand how the gamers think and as more people are gamers then we get more into that type of mode. Sure, you know, and I think that if you're looking at the gameful mindset in schools and if you're thinking about gamification and game-based learning in schools, then I think you could actually expand it to apply to work and apply it to industry and apply it to have more effective workplaces. What do you think about that? Oh, definitely, yeah. I mean, you already see that with my gamified sales systems that you try to like, you're going through your sales and you're actually going through a game and you're actually playing a game with the other salespeople kind of thing. So the more it can become an actual, a real game, the more invested you get into it and then the more it feels like you're playing a game and less like you're just doing actual work. So I think we'll see quite a bit of that and this is where innovation comes in and if we need students that graduate that can think that way and that have creative minds and I think shows like this obviously help because they help expand your mindset and your thinking and your ideas. So I definitely think we'll see that in workplaces as we go forward. So tell us more about your company, Game Train Learning. Yeah, so basically the mission is to focus on how to make all education more engaging through the use of game-based learning. And so any projects that we take on have the direct impact on how to change education and how to introduce new ideas into education that are more game-like and more engaging for students. So like I have, we're working maybe about half a dozen different projects right now. And so all of them all have the same focus. They might have different demographics, different areas, but they all have the same focus. So if I can talk about this eSports program that I've evolved in since it's an eSports show, that we approach eSports not like other eSports startups. Most of them are focused on making leagues and on like gathering teams and like creating that infrastructure. We're focused on what are the educational benefits of eSports. And so looking at it from a game-based learning standpoint, so the soft skills or life skills or social and emotional intelligence, all those types of non-cognitive skills, whatever you wanna call them, are so important in a child, in a student, and adults like future, future in everything. And so I'm a big believer in the importance of these skills. And so we took a look at the universe of soft skills and analyzed about 165 different soft skills in this universe. And we partnered with Research University and asked them which of these soft skills can actually be measured one and are malleable, can be developed. So out of these soft skills, they came up with a list of 33 and they looked at all the research and then narrowed it down to these 33 skills. And out of these 33 skills, we looked at eSports and we said, which of these skills can we both assess and develop in eSports? And we came away with a framework of 15 different skills and we grouped those into five different categories, leadership, communication, teamwork, problem solving character. And through our eSports program, we help kids develop all 15 of these skills they under, we assess them, give them prompt feedback, continuous feedback and then help them develop these 15 skills just by playing eSports on their teams. So that's our whole premises is we help kids become better humans by simply by playing eSports because they are developing, they see that they're developing these critical life skills. What games are they playing? So our program is actually game agnostic so they can be playing any team game. We started off with League of Legends and we also use, we're doing a Minecraft program. We want to do basically any popular eSports games that are out there. And then also we're looking at our practices because we're basically an analytic company. We take in data and then we analyze it and we say you are good or deficient in these areas and these skills and this is the way that you can improve them. And this is what it also means for your future careers, what type of careers could, if you're excel at these areas, what type of careers can you excel at? So we're actually program agnostic as long as it's a team activity. So we can, we're gonna expand into like regular sports and into other, into classroom project-based lesson. And so any team activity we can use our platform. Terrific. And it's called We Think by the way. So we think- Oh, okay, sure. Okay, you know, so it's kind of interesting because a lot of, there's been a lot of growth in eSports in the last few years and certainly during the pandemic. But you've been around for a while. So how has this recent huge kind of increase in the visibility of eSports impacted you and your company? Oh, it's huge, John. I mean, it seems like everybody has heard of eSports now, which is the big thing because before you mentioned eSports, they kind of blank look but now you mentioned it to even parents or whoever and they go, oh yeah, I've heard of that. So that's a big hurdle. And then also just getting the acceptance of gaming as a real, like a profession or a pastime that is valuable. And that's not just some teenage kid in a basement thing, right? And so just raising the level and awareness of gaming as a media, right? As a viable, and for me, a viable and probably the, maybe the best learning medium that's out there because games as opposed to videos or books or whatever other media, games are by definition, like active, right? So they're interactive. So therefore you have to be active in order to consume the media. So therefore, and we know that, you know, there's no real learning without active learning. And so it forces you to be active. So you just can't slough off and kind of like semi-watch a lecture and then say, oh yeah, I learned it because you probably list about 10% of it. But if you're playing a game, in order to get to the next part, next level, you have to actively participate, actively learn. Sure. And, you know, it's interesting to me that now, you know, games and esports is more of a common thing, but you've been doing this for a while. So was there a time that if someone asked you what you did for a living and you explained it, you got some puzzled look? Oh, all the time. Yeah, I mean, yeah, to make the connection with games and education and then have to go over why games can be good. But, you know, what really helps is that there's so much research now on game-based learning on all these different areas of game-based learning. So there's so much new interest, like just in the past 10 years or so, and you've got a lot of universities have, you know, not only game design programs, but also research in games and how they are effective in the education space. So I think as we get more acceptance and more just visibility and it just becomes like in the future, it won't be game-based learning, it'll just be learning because everybody kind of expect everything to feel like became like. So that's my vision of the future. Sure, and then I'll just be learning designer, no game-based learning designer. Right, there you go. Okay, you know, so it's interesting because I do get emails every day of research done in esports and gaming and they're generally at the PhD master's collegiate level they're producing these papers and, you know, the amount of research is phenomenal because I would say that every day at least I get one. So, you know, one email of a new paper. And, you know, so it's, it is a really common thing although a lot of people may not realize how much of a research topic this is. So what is the future for, your company and game-based learning aside from what you've discussed? Well, I think so this kind of this pandemic, like a remote and then hybrid and then back in person and then maybe back to hybrid or something. It's an interesting, well, it's initially time, of course, but it's an interesting time for innovation and an interesting time for using and so different types of game-based learning like activities, right? So we can have remote escape games or even hybrid escape games or in person. Like, so when you combine like sort of an immersive theater so one of my projects is trying to combine immersive theater with escape gaming and having the immersive theater telling a story but then having the escape games adding that interactivity. And so how do you merge these two and how do you make them in-person, hybrid, remote only and make them fun, enjoyable, participatory learning experiences? So I think where we're kind of headed is more innovation in all the different spaces and especially with new technologies coming in with VR becoming cheaper in AR solutions and phones becoming better phones, more ubiquitous, more capacity. And so I think all the different technology and all the different ideas and especially when we get kids graduating as game designers or as thinking like gamers we'll get just more and more innovation into the space and then it'll just become learning again. Everything will be fun and interactive and that's where we wanna get to is learning and you go through your whole school career and learning is fun the whole way through, not a drudgery. Sure, and then people will go, oh no, I have to work. And we wanna make work fun too. True, that's absolutely true and people will not wanna be at home because that's not as doing tours is not as exciting as all of this gaming. So now how you mentioned virtual reality you mentioned mobile games. So how impactful are those two on what you're doing? VR not as much right now because I think we're still in the phase of adoption that it's come down in price and more and more people have it but it's still limited to those that can afford it. So I like to work on programs. Basically my philosophy is just to try to work on programs that can reach like the inner cities in the mess. Work with the inner city of LA schools there. And so what can kids there do? Or even in rural areas or even in poor countries what can we do to bring this game-like environment into those areas? So one idea that my immersive escape game idea first start off as how can we turn an ordinary classroom use some sheets to coordinate off the room and make different rooms in there? And then how can we tell a story and make it like a little escape game in just the classroom using like basic materials that any teacher can use or any that doesn't cost a whole bunch. So I think with VR, I like, you know, wait to come down in price to the hat where everybody has it with VR though. I think with phones and it, you know with all the technology being integrated into the phones and even cheaper phones. So once that happens and everybody can, you know we've got everybody playing Pokemon Go when it came out. So I think that has bigger potential for mass adoption right now. So that's, I think that's where I want to think of next. So one idea I have, I could share is that that got a map in environment. So you can map in like a historical story and map it onto like a playground or a school ground, right? And you can have them going through their school ground but then actually in AR is the historical environment and you can have them go through quests and things like that and living inside that historical environment. Yeah. Well, that would be fantastic. Yeah. I don't know if you can do like an actual eSports competition out there in AR. What's it gonna think about? Sure. Wow, that is really a terrific idea. So let me just ask you, are there any pushback from parents about what you're doing? Oh yeah, all the time. I mean, and traditional teachers that have been there for years, right? Then they don't want to change from their binder of lesson plans to something different. And then parents, obviously you've got still the stigma of games just being some frivolous pastime. But once they see like one benefit of like a game-based learning experience of maybe just a Minecraft game that teaches a little bit of math or something, once they see that, then it kind of opens their eyes a little bit saying that, okay, it's not just a complete waste of time. And so it's still a sell to a lot of people but I think the more that we're in this space and that we're sharing things like this and the more the awareness level is risen so. So I think we will hit us, right? We'll hit us a point where most people are okay with it and then we'll really take off, I think. Sure, and that might be a new era, even so much exciting stuff. And so let's conclude by having you tell us about how people can contact you if they want to invest in what you're doing or if they want to seek game-based learning from your company. Yeah, so you can contact me on website, probably on the note, but it's game-trainedlearning.org. I'm also on LinkedIn, you just search for my name. And Twitter is under Game Train Learn. Also, my eSports company is that we think inc.us, and I wonder if we can put that in the notes too. So you can take a look at what we're doing there. And so yeah, you can contact me anytime, any of those places. Oh, one other thing, for any educators out there, I run a game-based learning certificate program for educators through Cal State Fullerton so you can look it up there. Fantastic. Well, Randall, thank you so much. We learned so much today from you and I hope everyone who's watched will contact you. Great. It's always fun talking about education and I can do this all day. So thanks for having me. All right. So thank you to our viewers for joining us today. Next week, my guest will be Seth Shor. We'll be talking about Ninth Isle eSports and if you don't know why is the other islands and Las Vegas is the ninth island. See you then. Aloha.