What comes to mind when you think of the word engagement? The Oxford Learning Dictionary defines engagement as "succeed[ing] in attracting and keeping someone's attention and interest."
So, first, you need to create something attractive, then keep the learner's attention by making it interesting. Easier said than done, right?
The best way to keep your learners engaged is to effectively use interactivity to make them the leading agent of the learning experience. Take videogames. Whether you are racing peachy princesses and plumbers in a colorful cartoon environment or taking down zombies in a post-apocalyptic town, as the player, the game does not progress unless you interact with it.
This deeper level of interactivity inspired Dr. Ian Bogost, author, professor, and director at Washington University, to coin the phrase: Procedural Rhetoric. Procedural Rhetoric describes the methodology that makes digital experiences, like videogames, so engaging.
Dr. Bogost (2010) defines Procedural Rhetoric as the "art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or [videos]." Let's say it's his way of elevating the player experience, and you can take a tip or two and apply Procedural Rhetoric to your learning experiences for the same effect.
Before you build a learning experience using procedural rhetoric, it's essential to understand what it is and how it makes your learning experiences more engaging.
Let procedures lead the way.
In his book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Dr. Bogost explains procedurality as "a way of creating, explaining, or understanding processes" (Bogost, 2010). Bogost (2010) highlights how processes help us understand the methods, techniques, and logic that make up the material (or "real") world.
Instructional design is all about training employees on the procedures that help drive the business forward. By designing instruction using Procedural Rhetoric, you give the learners agency and place the success of the learning experience in their hands. Transform learners from passive audiences to active agents by creating rules that base the completion of the experience on their ability to apply methods, techniques, and logic. This approach to instructional design creates an elevated level of engagement because the learner has to apply critical thinking skills and active recall to follow procedures that solve challenges.
The art of persuasion
Rhetoric and persuasion can often carry a negative connotation. As an Instructional Designer, you're not trying to trick the learner into changing their behavior; however, persuasion and motivation are needed to convince them to accept, adopt, and apply new information.
Procedural Rhetoric is a relatively new style, considering the history of rhetoric dates all the way back to ancient Greece. Bogost (2010) shares that Procedural Rhetoric takes notes from both the classical and contemporary models of rhetoric--with the use of persuasion to change opinions or actions from the former and to convey ideas effectively from the latter. Dr. Bogost suggests it's prime time to dive into how Procedural Rhetoric works and how we can widen its application due to computational systems.
Computer programming enables Instructional Designers to build simulations that represent a set of potential events. Gonzalo Frasca (2001) argues that "simulation authors...have to think about their [learning experiences] as systems and consider which are the laws that rule [learner] behaviors." Designing experiences that push learners to follow the same procedures that they would use in their role creates a more vivid and impressionable experience when compared to other forms of rhetoric such as visual (videos and photos), oral (facilitation), and written (text).
So, what do you think? Will you apply Procedural Rhetoric in your next project and elevate the learning experience by leading with procedures and leveraging the art of persuasion? Tell us how you plan to use Procedural Rhetoric. Connect with us on LinkedIn to join the conversation.
References:
Bogost, I. (2010). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (The MIT Press) [E-book]. The MIT Press.
Frasca, G. (2001). Videogames of the Oppressed. School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology.
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