Practomime leverages the advantages of role-playing games for immersive learning. Role-playing games (including popular MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft or The Lord of the Rings Online) rely on a player's investment in a created character or avatar and require the player to complete difficult tasks (quests) and problem-solve to overcome obstacles, in order to progress through the "levels" of the game.
As has been pointed out, role-playing games are the perfect assessment machines: you can't get to the next level without mastering the previous one, and you get constant feedback.Roger Travis, U of Connecticut
Travis suggests that this type of "assessment machine" can be easily translated into a learning game. "The first step is to realize it is possible to make course objectives and game objectives the same." Then:
- Create a storyline for an "alternate reality" in which students are tasked for some urgent narrative reason with learning the information and developing the skills required by the course
- Insert course activities into that narrative framework
- Have students create characters within that virtual reality, characters who have a stake in solving the problems/assignments given and achieving the objectives of the game and the course
- Assign credit for assignments in the form of "levels" or "experience points" within the game