Lloyd reminds me that it's time to sum up the formal session of the paper (though discussion can continue and I'm a regular at this particular pub). There are several responses I wish to reply to. I'll jumble them in together rather than write an elegant summation, as time's rapidly running out, and I'm incapable anyway, so excuse the incoherence.
First, though, I'd like to thank all the people who gave thought and voice to the issue. I've certainly learned a lot (mostly where the holes in my ideas are), and I hope others have learned, been inspired, or even just amused.
To start off, I'd like to give a delayed response to Joe Beckmann, who raised an important issue in two separate postings [24 Jan 97a and 24 Jan 97b]. I can only agree that there ought to be rigorous evaluation of all educational technology, and there is certainly a dearth of results of commercial "edutainment." It's complex, of course, because do you evaluate with or without a context of support for reflection? But until such evaluation is done, we're likely to see the market continue to tout the value of their "edutainment" without any basis.
This relates to Steve Draper's [27 Jan 97] commentary on the types of learning. I think T. Kent Thomas' [25 Jan 97] comments support the validity of extending the "engagement" approach (at least the elements I'm pushing) beyond just the entertainment market. I am aware, however, that there are limitations both in the perceptions of "games" (for example how hard it is to get funding for game research, sigh) and in the appropriateness of use.
I agree that there are vastly different motivations for learning, different preferences for the mechanism of that learning, and different conditions under which learning can proceed no matter how motivated the learner. I could easily add more factors, such as the preparation and level of the learner for the material. Even interest and motivation won't work if you pick up a book about a subject you wish to learn but it is not appropriate for you.
On the other hand, when someone is not engaged in an activity, but rather has a more general interest, motivating the learning through creating an engaging practice scenario seems to me to be appropriate. For example, I'm reading Sophie's World, where philosophy is embedded in a story that makes it meaningful; I wanted to know more about the entire philosophic history, but never got around to picking up a text. Yet now I can get it in a form that makes it accessible (and I believe more memorable than if I was forced to read a text and take exams). I appreciate Steve's careful delineation of the qualifications I make, but at the end I'm not yet convinced my simplistic model is that far off the mark.
However, I didn't really intend to push the convergent model too hard. I'm not convinced it's wrong, but it's a side issue here (though it was deliberately contentious and I'd like to thank Barney Dalgarno [27 Jan 97] for stirring that pot). What I really wanted to do was to use it to show where I thought games fit in the educational process. Also, I do have to admit to being a dilettante in the ISD field, and please read all my comments in that light.
Both Todd Thuma [23 Jan 97] and Lloyd Rieber [24 Jan 97] touch on an important issue, the artistic and creative effort involved in designing engagement. I haven't talked about a systematic process for design, but have proposed a brief framework elsewhere (Quinn, 1994), as have Alessi & Trollip (as Kent pointed out). In fact, to reply to Kent's later missive [Thomas, 25 Jan 97], I firmly believe that the first step is to identify the instructional goal, and the next is to find an embedding fantasy. The relevance comes from the former, and the large part of the creativity comes from the latter. I definitely would argue against the gratuitous use of media, and that's not what I've been proposing.
As a brief aside to Brett Bixler [27 Jan 97], creativity is not a mystic art, and there are reliable ways to increase the likelihood of creativity (for example, Stein's two volumes on psychological research on creativity); I recommend including such systematic creativity in the design process (Quinn, 1995).
There were other comments, many more comments than I can do justice to, so I'll stop here with the blatant self-references and thank you all again.
Quinn, C.N. (1994). Designing educational computer games. In K. Beattie, C. McNaught, & S. Wills (Eds.), Interactive multimedia in university education: Designing for change in teaching and learning (pp. 45-57). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Quinn, C.N. (1995, July). Designing the design process. Proceedings of the Australian Computers in Education Conference. Perth, Australia.