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.

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.

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.