Episode 71 What is Grokking?

What is Grokking?

Hi and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. Find out more at www.universityxp.com

On today’s episode we’ll answer the question: “What is Grokking?”

You may have heard the word “Grok” before but may not have known what it meant. Grokking is used by different people and in different contexts. Usually, people use the term to convey thoroughly understanding and interaction with a game or system. But, the origins of the word; how it’s used; and its application to games and games-based learning is diverse and fascinating

This episode will review the origins of the word “grok” as well as its definitions and what it means. Grokking has been closely attributed to game play and game design; however there are connections to “grokking a game” and mastery learning. This connection will be reviewed in greater depth as well as how curriculum design, student experience, and instructor interaction influences mastery learning. Games-based learning practitioners will learn how to adapt the concept of “grokking” to mastery learning and how to implement feedback loops in mastery learning through games-based learning.

The word “grok” was originally coined by the author Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 book “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Since then, the words “grok” and “grokking” gained traction among techies, programmers, and developers before gaining more mainstream usage.

According to the book, and usage, the term “grok” means to understand intuitively and empathetically. Grokking involves developing a rapport with something and to communicate sympathetically to it while also enjoying the experience.

This means that when you “grok” something you get into it. You are able to completely “grasp” the aspect of its being and function. The aspect and procedure of grokking something is to optimize and learn so as to implement the maximum strategic advantage. Players who can grok games often enter a state of flow.

In his book “A Theory of Fun” Raph Koster makes specific reference to grokking as players attaining a level of understanding after playing a game. This intuitive understanding and response to the game often becomes muscle memory for players.

When considering grokking and game play, players first consider the base mechanic of the game and how their interaction affects the game state. The continual action of the player through this base mechanic - or core loop - constitutes the first learning period for the player.

This is often useful for games because base mechanics and core loops form the backbone for the player experience. That experience in turn is affected by engagement curves; challenges; and other assessments the game provides in order to test the player’s mastery of abilities further along in play.

For many games, players are only required to learn how to use a basic mechanic in order to apply it later on. We see this with side scrolling games like Super Mario Bros where learning how to move from one side of the screen to the other is sufficient for moving on past the first stage. However, learning how to “grok” these basic mechanics make it so that players need to demonstrate base competency as well as how to use their skills in advanced ways that help them progress throughout the game.

Learning to grok these basic mechanics is incredibly helpful for players. That’s because they can best use the game’s structures to their advantage. However, grokking also has the negative side effect of acknowledging a player’s pinnacle in game play. After grokking all available aspects of a game, it loses its challenge and becomes boring and uninteresting.

Very simple games such as Texas Hold’em include very basic mechanics such as betting, raising, and calling. However professional players often invest years into learning when and how to use such mechanics in order to grok the game.

Even after years of study and practice, professionals players may not know the game well enough to play at the most advanced levels because mechanics are only part of the game. Whereas reading players; observing tells; and acting on them require much more from players.

Game designers want players to become comfortable and confident with the base mechanics of games. Without those outcomes, players are unlikely to pursue the game and continue to play. However, grokking is always a consideration when designers are creating new games. That’s because grokking makes it so that aspects of the game are no longer challenging for players.

Game designers can overcome this by presenting base mechanics to players that allow them to become comfortable and competent at it. Once they have mastered and grokked those mechanics they can use it in a number of different situations during game play.

However, established mechanics - such as jumping in platformers - can be built upon to provide new ways for players to interact with them. The double-jump - also from platformers - comes to mind as a way for competent players to build on a base mechanic that provides them with new abilities to apply through other areas in the game.

Introducing small augmentations to games provides a recognizable pattern to players - via the base mechanic. Providing new ways that they could use that mechanic provides them with new opportunities and avenues they can pursue for a deeper understanding of the game and new competencies to grok.

A table top example of this is the worker placement or - action drafting - mechanic. This mechanic allows players to draft or choose actions in the game that have a desired result. By drafting or choosing that action it becomes unavailable and other players may no longer use that action.

Likewise, players also have a limited allocation of “workers.” This allocation limits the number of times they can draft actions. As a result, when a player no longer has any workers they can no longer act on their turn.

Many players can easily grok the worker placement mechanic of table top games. What makes this mechanic interesting is its use in games where placing a worker on a specific location allows the active player to take back a worker from another location.

This in turn provides the player with new opportunities to draft remaining locations and creates new openings and applications for the player using this new feature. In essence, this provides the player a new way to grok this base mechanic.

Games and learning are often intertwined. Before we can become good at games; before we can grok them; we have to first develop competency for its basic mechanics. This is much like mastery learning. Like with games, mastery learning requires that students first master specific outcomes prior to moving onto - and applying them - to more advanced applications.

At its core, mastery learning allows students to pursue these ends at their own pace. However, in order to move forward, they must first master specific concepts. This educational structure is often at odds with what is presented in a traditional classroom session where information and activities are provided to all students at the same time.

This structure makes it easier for instructors and administrators to enact and provide education; but it doesn’t always serve the needs of mastery learning. In mastery learning such structures would be customized to the pace and needs of individual students.

When examined from a games-based learning perspective; mastery learning is much like playing games. Even more so when approaching the variables necessary for enacting mastery learning which include acknowledging that al l students are capable of achieving mastery under the right conditions.

This support for student mastery from an educational standpoint is often actively managed. Instructors, teachers, and trainers must scaffold, provide reinforcement, and feedback for the student in order to help them attain mastery.

Whereas in games this structure can be self reinforcing. Feedback loops provide stimuli to players where they determine if their input had any impact on the game state. Likewise, the result provides them insight on what they should do - if they should do anything - in order to achieve the desired result.

Video games are especially apt examples of mastery learning because they provide the structures and basic mechanics in order to participate in the game. After mastering those core mechanics, players use and apply them in different scenarios until they reach a specific assessment.

In education we call these formative or summative assessments - names for tests, quizzes, projects, presentations, term papers, or final exams which are meant to test students’ knowledge. However, games provide different ways to assess players’ mastery: the boss battle.

The boss battle in video games exist as a way for players to demonstrate their mastery and competency of basic skills and abilities in order to help them overcome and defeat their adversary. Much like mastery learning, the boss battle is an assessment – a demonstration – that players must pass and demonstrate proficiency at before moving onto learning more material – and exploring the rest of the game.

In learning - like in games - the steps necessary to achieve this mastery can be difficult and challenging. However, games like the Dark Souls series and Cuphead demonstrate that you can develop very difficult - almost punishing games – that players will still play to demonstrate mastery.

Such mastery in both education and in games is often achieved through mistakes. Repeated mistakes that provide a feedback loop to students and gamers alike - mistakes that hopefully provide more insight into how both students and players can improve.

Curriculum in education is often laid out in a scaffolded approach where students must first learn individual and basic concepts before moving onto more advanced ones. However, mastery learning requires that students play a part in determining curriculum to best serve and demonstrate their mastery objectives.

This application can be difficult for students, teachers, trainers, and administrators alike since mastery learning doesn’t follow a traditional pacing schedule. As such, students are required to develop and follow their own track. This is often a difficult structure to accommodate as it means providing swaths of students various customized learning paths for learners to achieve mastery in their own right.

However, this can be achieved through the development of specific groups of content - or modules - that students engage with and attempt mastery at their own pace. This structure gives students agency and meaningful choices from which they can select the path that they follow next in their achievement of mastery.

Games provide this structure by outlining different options for players to take and their expected outcomes. Educators can mimic this process by providing the same options for students to take.

They can also take this structure one step further by providing instructional activities when players do not achieve mastery, pass a challenge, or cannot otherwise successfully complete an assessment. Doing so provides an active feedback loop for students to identify where they can improve and remediate their future actions in order to achieve their desired results and mastery.

Games-based learning can be used by instructors to help achieve this by providing them with the structure - the game - from which to demonstrate different concepts or as an analogous activity to reach a specific learning outcome. The difference between just playing a game with students and using games-based learning is the reflection, debriefing, and overall metacognition of the learning process lead by a teacher or facilitator. These facilitators help students gain insights on their activities and actions within the game and how they have developed their own knowledge and meaning from the experience.

Students are emphasized as a central focus for mastery learning – after all they need to master the concepts, content, and outcomes of a course in order to progress. In this vein, students no longer need to repeat answers to questions in order to demonstrate mastery. Rather, mastery learning requires that students apply what they’ve learned in order to demonstrate competency and eventual mastery.

This is often at odds with the ways that many students have learned in both primary and secondary education. The orthodox approach has emphasized standardized assessment methods in which students could take tests and quizzes. If they fail, then they simply do better on the next one. Mastery learning challenges this by requiring students to demonstrate mastery for a concept before progressing towards the next one.

Games support this concept by requiring players to demonstrate competency for basic mechanics before engaging with the rest of the game. However, games and mastery learning diverge in that games allow players to fail - often ad museum - in their pursuit of mastery. Through that repeated failure, players establish competency - and eventual mastery - by grokking the game.

Like games, mastery learning requires that students try and try again. Failure can be difficult – often debilitating at times for students. However, mastery learning, like grokking games, requires that we fail - or at least don’t achieve our expected outcome - through numerous attempts.

Failure alone cannot be an educator. Rather, failure serves as the outcome for student engagement and involvement that provides individual feedback on performance. Failure can even be fun if the process of play reinforces individuals’ intrinsic desires.

However, failure itself is not learning. As such, failure and feedback need to be used hand in hand with instructors, guidance, insight, and remediation in order to help students and learners achieve stated learning outcomes and eventual mastery.

Instructors play a critical role in both mastery learning and games-based learning. Games alone cannot help students achieve a specific learning goal or objective. Rather, instructors must use their intervention, insight, and often remediation in order to help students learn and achieve.

This is most often done through the review or debrief after an activity. This is most closely documented in the experiential learning cycle where experience becomes the primary driver of learning and cognition. In games-based learning, instructors use debriefing activities in order to help learners makes sense, form conclusions, and develop a pattern of action for the next time that they play or engage.

This is often done at a one-on-one or small group level. What makes debriefing challenging at the experiential learning and games-based learning level is the scalability of the activity for larger groups of players and students. Such scale is not easily attained in traditional classrooms. But, digital games-based learning is poised to offer these interventions on a wider scale with instructor input.

No matter how it is implemented, debriefing activities should focus on student learning, takeaways, and insights in order to help them form their own conclusions and actions based on their personalized process. Where mastery learning shines is how it can be used in tandem with games-based learning and instructor intervention in order to help students reach established learning outcomes while grokking the game in the process.

Adopting mastery learning for teachers, instructors and trainers can be difficult; particularly if they have been teaching in a certain discipline and style for an extended period of time. However, implementing mastery learning and letting your players “grok” the game is a way of giving them agency in the learning process. The result of which is constructivist practice that provides them the ability to create meaning through their learning experience.

One strategy involves developing criteria to attain “mastery” as greater than what you would normally create. For higher education instructors this could include an oral exam rather than traditional assessments like tests and quizzes. Otherwise, corporate trainers might rely on application of practical concepts in the field to secure more clients or attain a specific rating from a vendor.

No matter what the application, instructors must always involve some sort of feedback mechanism for students to review what they’ve accomplished. Ideally this feedback should also include what they could and should do in order to improve their practice.

This is done automatically when grokking games. The game environment changes and adapts in order for the player to continue playing and improve. However, in education, this must be paired with practices which allow learners to reflect on not only their activity but their process of creating their own understanding.

This could be difficult to implement – particularly when it comes to individual organizations and institutions and their implementations of learning, training, and development. However, it is imperative that instructors and facilitators retain an active element of feedback and review for students in order to help them attain mastery.

Likewise, a systemic creation of how students’ performance is evaluated is needed. In addition, specific pathways for remediation, improvement, and insight should be provided to students. The results of which create a feedback loop in which students constantly reevaluate their activities and progress in order to make meaningful choices for setting their own direction.

This feedback loop is necessary for both players to progress and improve their play in the game as well as for students to master concepts and move forward. The difference between games and education is that instructors also provide remediation to students when struggling with concepts. Games-based learning on the other hand combines the application of feedback loops within games with the outcomes of teaching and learning.

Digital games-based learning applies this concept further with mastery learning practices. In digital games-based learning, artificial intelligence and machine learning can track students’ progress and offer immediate feedback. This real-time feedback can be incredibly useful for learners. However, it isn’t necessary for all applications of games-based learning.

Rather, instructors can use the feedback loops present in games now in order to demonstrate the effect of actions taken and implement a process of iterative improvement. As such, improvement through failure is an important aspect of mastery learning, games-based learning, experiential learning, and grokking the game.

The repetitive actions that individuals take in these scenarios are where players and students alike improve through action and engagement. Without this aspect, games-based learning could only be applied so far. Succeeding through trial and error is a critical function of business prospects and relies heavily on mastery development of successful practices. Thus, it’s critical to rely on how players and students can try, fail, learn, and try again throughout the feedback loop cycle.

Games-based learning is about using games as the medium through which education occurs. Games-based learning is experiential learning and benefits from the feedback loop of the experiential learning cycle. Thus, mastery learning comes into play when addressing games, game play and grokking.

Games-based learning focuses on the application of games for teaching and learning and serves as the feedback loop for students. That feedback loop determines student success as well as how well they’ve mastered the concepts and content.

Students’ continual play of the game in order to attain mastery should also be aligned with the major outcomes of the course. This alignment ensures that students’ play also helps them master course concepts. Likewise, grokking the game also includes the added benefit of mastery of course learning outcomes.

Games-based learning relies on the game as the medium for teaching and learning. Games also provide players the opportunity to master basic and elementary elements of the game. This mastery carries over to applications of these basic concepts to more complex challenges within the game. Mastery learning is embedded in games-based learning as students must master basic concepts before they can be applied in more complex scenarios.

Games-based learning also excels over serious game development because games-based learning uses established and available games for students’ learning and development. Game design can take considerable resources and consume both time and talent. While creating serious games for educational purposes can certainly be done; it is not always possible to do so with resource limitations.

A player grokking a game is also a player who’s demonstrated mastery over the game and its core concepts. Likewise, students who master their course have also grokked the elements of it in order to achieve their desired outcome. Grokking games requires skillful play. Similarly, students who have mastered a course have demonstrated both competency and proficiency with the learning material.

This episode examined the term “grok” and its relationship to both play and games. Grokking in game design was discussed and its connection to mastery learning. Mastery learning requires a different approach to curriculum development. Similarly, the roles of students and teachers in mastery learning is different compared to more orthodox approaches to education.

Steps for adopting mastery learning were discussed as well as how the feedback loop affects and influences students in mastery learning. Mastery learning and grokking were compared and contrasted in their application of games-based learning.I hope you found this episode useful. If you’d like to learn more, then a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification You can also get a full transcript of this episode including links to references in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining me!

Again, I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you liked this episode please consider commenting, sharing, and subscribing.

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grokkingDave EngNovember 6, 2022grokking, grok, learning, mastery, games, mechanics, students, playersComment