Read the book
The second edition of Ludodidactiek — ontwerpen voor didactici covers the full method: theory, tools, cases and the design process. Published by HKU Press.
Order the bookBoring is not a student problem. It is a design problem.
In Ludum Erudite — designing learning since 1994
Walk into any school or training room and ask what word people associate most with learning. The answer you’ll hear most often is ‘boring’. Not because teachers don’t care — they do, enormously — but because the design of the learning situation has missed something essential: the quality of the experience. Ludodidactiek is a design method that puts that back at the centre.
Not gamification. Not game-based learning.
The first question we always get is: "Oh, you mean gamification?" We do not. Gamification borrows elements from games — badges, points, leaderboards — and plants them onto existing content to make it more attractive. A colleague of ours, the game designer David Shaffer, had a name for this: Chocolate Covered Broccoli. It looks appealing. The broccoli is still broccoli.
Game-based learning — having people learn by playing existing games — is a different thing again. Valuable in its own right, but not what we do either.
Ludodidactiek starts from scratch, at the structural level. We ask: what would this learning situation look like if we designed it the way a game designer designs a game — with the learner’s experience as the primary design constraint?
"The fun in games is the sweetness of overcoming unnecessary obstacles." — Bernard Suits, 1978. That principle belongs in education too.
The exercise was still the exercise.
A sixteen-year-old had suffered a brain injury. His right arm wasn’t responding. The therapy required him to repeatedly flick a pen from his hand — building impulse strength in the affected arm. He knew the exercise was good for him. He found it boring, painful, and meaningless. There was no goal, no context, no sense of progress.
His therapists adapted a Guitar Hero controller for his right hand and let him play a song he knew. Four minutes later, he had met his treatment target for the next three weeks. No pain. He looked at the camera and asked: "Can I play one more?"
The exercise was still the exercise. The movement was identical. What changed was the experience of doing it — the goal, the feedback, the sense of agency. This is what a ludodidactic design does. Not a shortcut. Not a trick. A different approach to the same learning outcome.
How to start
Summer School at HKU
An intensive design week at HKU in Utrecht. You design, prototype and test a ludodidactic intervention in practice. The fastest way into the method.
Learn moreIndividual trajectory
The part-time master track in Art Education at HKU, with ludodidactiek as specialism. For professionals who want to develop full design expertise over time.
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