Have you ever had that awkward moment, when someone shows you a baby photo, be it their own child or a grandchild, and you take one look and try as hard as can to say, “wow, what a cute baby”, when you’re really thinking, “I’ve seen cuter monkeys at the zoo”?

Recently, I was working with a fellow EMS instructor, and she wanted to create a game to review for the final EMS training session of the year. She had a clear objective in mind, a game with educational content, but she wanted it to be fun as well. She is an admitted “technophobe” (one who fears computers and anything that plugs into them). I showed her, in about 2 minutes, how she could enter her questions, answers, preview, and summary slides using the BRAVO! game builder. On the day of the training event, we met a few hours prior to the first session. (Did I mention I was going to help her co-present?) Well, when I saw her game, I felt like someone showing me a photo of some hideous looking baby (I know some people are thinking that I am being cruel, and that all babies are cute. These are also the same people who say there are no stupid questions -- yeah right). She fell into the common trap that I have seen many instructors fall into, when she asked me what I thought (Just like any proud mama or grandparent). I did everything I could to not feign an illness that required me to exit the building. Did I mention that she expected me to co-present this game with her, since she had never done it before and there were going to be 60 or so co-workers in the class? So much for my reputation ;-) But hey, I was brought in to mentor her, so let the mentoring begin! (To be fair, she is a very good presenter and she really knows her stuff.) Here are some of the issues I addressed, and some basic guidelines I like to follow:

1. Frilly Font: She chose a curly or pretty font she liked. Which, combined with the length of her content would have driven most people to reading glasses after the class or to poke their eyes out to make it go away. A general rule that I teach is, “Above all, make your text readable.” Look at the network news or news print. Do they use frilly text in their newscast or on the cover of their papers? I think not! This isn’t about boring; this is about readability, simple as that. There are ways to “dress up” the look of your game board, but text should not be one of them. For readability, especially for electronic media like PowerPoint, stick with a basic sans serif font like good old fashion Arial or Verdana.

2. Lengthy Questions: About half of the questions where over a paragraph in length. Way too wordy. Sometimes you need to give more detail for a question (i.e. when you are using a scenario). What I do when this is the case, is I set up the scenario in the preview slide that precedes the question. Here is an example of a bad question: “You are playing basketball and a 43 year old teammate suddenly collapses. You check for consciousness, and find he is unconscious with no pulse and no respirations. You direct someone to call 911 and get the AED. Until the AED arrives, how many chest compressions to ventilations should you give? Good heavens, you have just cost the students precious minutes they will never get back. Get to it; simply ask the question. None of the other information in the questions makes any difference for the answer. Here is an example of a straight forward question: “For an adult victim, what is the compression to ventilations ratio?” I want you to understand, that this is just as much about keeping it simple, as well as how it looks. When you get too lengthy, especially in a game, it looks intimidating, and looks too much like work to read.

3. Lengthy Answers: Many of her answers were very lengthy and, in a few cases, rolled over into two lines on the game board. I like to keep my answers to less than 4-6 words when possible. People should be able to quickly glance at possible answers to a question choose the correct one immediately (providing they know the answer). In her game, I knew the correct answer, but she had so much information in each answer, that I had to read each answer twice to make sure I got it right.

4. Wordy Summary Points: In many cases the summary text was way too much. As with PowerPoint, you don’t create a slide that contains your script – just your main teaching points. You just need a few points on the slide to guide you, and your class, through the content you’re presenting. Less is better.

So, what did I do? I actually considered letting her do it her way and letting her see for herself. But, I was supposed to co-present, so that was not going to happen. Fortunately, the game Gods where with me, and she had to leave for a while, leaving me with these magic words: “Hey, you are much smarter than I am, and you are the game God, so I would consider it an honor if you could clean up my mess.”

When she returned, I showed her the changes, and, when it came right down to it, I just moved some of the text around. In the lengthy questions, I just moved the set-up to the preview slide. In fact, I resisted the urge to delete or shorten anything, she wrote. I decided to leave the summary as is. The only thing that got changed or removed were some of the answers. I cleaned them up quite a bit, shortened up the answers, and just reworded the questions, so the answer worked. In no way did my changes affect her teaching points.

I started the game off for her, explaining the rules and playing the first 3 questions, and then stepped aside and hid in the shadows. What was cool, was that she expected that she’d be real nervous, but found that she got comfortable very quickly. The game was a hit and, to her credit, she looked like a pro -- the game became the focus for the audience and not her. She was simply the subject expert, and the game, along with the audience response pads made it much easier for her to concentrate on her teaching points.

Ultimately, her students not only loved the game, but they also mentioned that the questions were a little wordy. Useful feedback she can use for her next presentation!

NOTE: From time to time, I will write about my experience of working with other presenters that use games in the classroom. This helps me to learn more on how they use the games, both good and bad, and also their experiences.