This is in some ways a follow-up to my earlier post about gamification and the value of intrinsic motivation. One of the chief aspects of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation is that in the intrinsic case, one's experience is "almost spiritual," as the psychologist Edward Deci said. Intrinsically motivated experiences are infused with life, vitality, and intensity. They're what the painter Robert Henri called "more than ordinary moments of existence."

Unfortunately, many aspects of today's society have evolved to be very ends-focused, efficient, and cast under the eye of instrumental rationality, a form of rationality focusing on the most effective way to achieve a certain end, with no understanding of the intrinsic value. As philosopher Charles Taylor said, society has fallen under a malaise of instrumental reason.

There have been many very interesting studies showing that intrinsic motivation in fact creates better learning experiences, more long-lasting understanding of material, and greater creativity. In the educational system, grades are the primary external motivator to get students to learn. It was found that the use of controls (in this case the looming tests) actually decrease motivation and reduce the level of understanding compared to students that were told to learn for its own sake, and to put that knowledge to use by teaching others.

Students who learn material with external controls also forget much more quickly - even though they have superior rote memorization in the short-term, their brains don't retain the information and perform a "core dump."

So telling kids they will be tested on the material is likely to be detrimental for deep learning and real understanding. It pays to consciously create fundamentally engrossing learning experiences rather than just focusing on the bottom line.

In 2010, the National STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) video game challenge was created as part of President Obama's initiatives on STEM education. The $50,000 grand prize was taken by a Flash game called "You Make Me Sick!" created by Dan Norton and Dan White of Filament Games.

I was pretty impressed with the game and though it's short (not that much gameplay), it's much more in line with how educational games should be done. 

In “You Make Me Sick!”, my mission as a disease was to try to infect an elderly man (key characteristics: he’s a mouth-breather with many vaccines). I decided to create an airborne bacterium - airborne because his mouth-breathing would be an easy entry vector for my disease, and bacterium because viruses would have a harder time due to the vaccines my target had.

Mission #1 was to plan my attack. I had my bacteria blow in from the open window, and had to play a little minigame to guide myself into my target's mouth while he was breathing in and out. I succeeded after a few minutes of frenetic clicking and encountered another minigame involving infecting the target's lungs, hopping from alveolus to alveolus.

The game ended afterward (hence my complaint about it being too short), but it was definitely engrossing and was a great way to teach kids how an infection actually happens.

This sort of game, that's fun for its own sake and has real learning value, is what the educational game field should strive for.

I was chatting with Geoff Ralston of the “education YC-like tech incubator” Imagine K12 (former Chief Product Officer at Yahoo) earlier today. He was all dressed up because he was going to a fundraiser later for President Obama, and he told me this interesting little anecdote about the last time he spoke with a president - Clinton. It was after a speaking event, and Clinton was standing in front of a screen with an American flag on it, talking with people and taking photographs. There was an enormous line of people waiting to talk with him, which formed a large U-shape. Geoff was near the far end of the U-shape, and observed that when somebody went up to talk with Clinton, one of two things would happen:

1. The person would go up, say something, and Clinton would smile, put his hand around them, and turn to the cameraman for a photo.
2. The person would go up, say something, and Clinton would fold his arms, think for a moment, and start talking with him. After a few seconds Clinton would put his arm around them and take the photo.

So Geoff had plenty of time to think about what he would say that would be interesting enough to get the President to think and talk further with him. When the time came (this was in the early days of the internet), Geoff said that the internet is going to change the world, and access to the internet for everybody must be protected, otherwise there won’t be equal opportunity.

What happened? This must have struck a chord, because Clinton folded his arms, thought for a moment, and started talking. And talking. And talking. And talking some more. Then he put his arm around Geoff, took a photo for the camera, and continued talking. And talking. And took another photo.

By the end, Geoff became pretty self-conscious because everybody was watching and waiting and Clinton had spent by far the longest amount of time on him.

So he’s got a record to uphold when he talks with Obama tonight at the fundraiser. Obama is in Palo Alto and gave a town hall meeting at Facebook.

Geoff told me he was planning to talk to Obama about how most of the problems he is facing are short-term, and the real, long-term, enduring legacy should be focusing on education. Cheers to that.

Everyone has been in a rut – when you feel frustrated and aren’t experiencing any motivation to carry on with whatever you are doing.

What’s really at the root of this problem though? Motivation is a funny word that teachers often use incorrectly on their students. Many teachers claim that their students are unmotivated, as if motivation was an intrinsic character trait that everybody had different levels of. This isn’t the right way to think about motivation. In fact, motivation and drive comes from pleasure of accomplishment and incremental success. If you give a child a task to do, like assembly of a large jigsaw puzzle, and they work on it for a while with no discernable progress, it’s obvious that they’ll get frustrated and lose motivation to continue. However, if they’re able to figure out the first step of filtering out the edge and corner pieces and start assembling the frame of the jigsaw puzzle, they’ll experience continual progress and replenished motivation to keep solving the puzzle.

So here is the source of motivation – it comes from progress. This is particularly important in the classroom. If teachers think that students are unmotivated, the students should not be blamed – this means that the learning process and the actions of the teacher must be adjusted. Following this model, the primary job of teachers should be to ensure that every student is making progress and experiencing incremental success in the learning process. This is what games are so good at and why all children love them – it’s not because they’re easy.

In fact, games are oftentimes fiendishly difficult and challenge stretch the players’ abilities to the limit. However, when players overcome a challenge and make visible progress, they experience a rush of pleasure and continued motivation to keep playing. Why is it, then, that games are so hard but kids still want to play them, and the same doesn’t hold true for school? The answer is that school is oftentimes like a poorly-designed game. When students fall behind, there is a lack of support. They don’t understand what’s being taught, and are never given a chance to catch up. Failure is fatal. Good games, however, don’t punish failure. They always provide an avenue for players to see incremental success and make headway. Learning should be the same way – teachers must support the continual learning progress of students by keenly observing them and ensuring they are being properly and adequately challenged. This should be regarded as a powerful tool to keep their motivation levels high.

Related to this same point is the concept of social learning. The most effective type of new learning comes from binding of new knowledge to past experiences and knowledge and from making the material at hand both meaningful and relevant to students. Who better to socialize and learn with than a child’s peers, whose cognitive networks and past experiences are very similar? Peer-supported learning and interaction with others provides a backdrop upon which kids can measure their progress and understand the success they’ve achieved already. The teacher should support this process and manage the presentation of challenges and assignments to make sure that students don’t get stuck, but see real personal progress to keep them motivated.

At age 10, when I first stepped foot into a pathology lab at the University of Washington, I was originally interested in molecular biology and pursuing stem cell research. Next year, when I entered college, I started off by majoring in Biochemistry, but one day I saw an ad in an elevator for the Neurobiology major, a competitive major that everybody was trying to get into. That was my first encounter with neuroscience.

I became curious about how the brain thinks, and realized that neuroscience is one of the most powerful fields because the brain governs the entire fabric of society and human behavior. Everything is connected to the brain.

I applied for the major and luckily, got in – since then, I’ve been fascinated by the brain and wanted to understand its mysteries. It’s a young field and to say that we’ve charted a small fraction of its vastness would be an overstatement. In my travels and speeches, I’ve been asked a lot of questions from all disciplines and directions, and all of them to some degree are traceable back to how the brain perceives the world.

Nowadays, I’ve gravitated toward the broad topics of how the brain learns through play and games and how the brain makes decisions and experiences the world, including these subtopics of neuroscience:

• neuroscience and games
• reward and motivation
• play, pleasure and emotions (affective neuroscience)
• how the brain learns
• decision making
• how the brain buys
• interactive design
• neuro-branding
• user and player experience
• addiction

My training in brain research makes me reflect back to my education and it suddenly hit me that much of the school education I received in elementary school was not taking advantage of how the brain learns. It’s clear that the schools and teachers don’t understand, don’t have the tools to teach according to how brains learn. No wonder kids today in general are falling behind.

My parents believe that the education available in school was too narrow and had an inordinate emphasis on the traditional skills of math and language. Emphasis on math and verbal skills are not the problem. The problem is lack of attention and training in other areas that are very crucial for children’s success. They believed that there are many other values and abilities that are required for success once a person is out of school. In practice, they divided our curriculum into a more detailed categorization scheme to ensure that all the abilities needed for success are adequately prepared for and trained.

I see all too often from letters or emails written to me by students and schoolchildren that they are obviously very smart but are struggling in today’s rigid educational system. Once they start lagging behind, they feel they are without support in an uphill fight to catch up. They give up before long, as anyone would. They lose confidence, self-esteem, and passion for learning and school.

The idea of a new and unique learning system stems from my own experiences in learning and neuroscience, my parents’ educational philosophy, and the many correspondences my parents and I have had with other parents and students. We would like to build a learning environment where children will actually find learning fun and be fully engaged and immersed.

Combining neuroscience research findings on how people learn with the philosophy and practices of our version of what students need for success, we are constructing an online social game world where kids can engage in learning with peer-to-peer stimulation in a friendly and fun environment.

In addition to neuroeducational principles, multiple intelligence methodology, and social networking environment, we choose to deliver the core curriculum through games. This is the best format for kids to learn – just ask them.

Our vision is a world where kids can completely relax to focus on learning in a social network gaming environment. They will be engaged and happy. You will see learning at its full force on the learning platform we build for them. They will get smarter. And happier.