Babel develops innovative new learning tool

Game based learning company Babel Digital, run by Teesside If we can, you can member Jeremiah Alexander, has developed the first in a new series of 'serious games' they have been working on. 'Guanxi' uses 3D graphics and advanced animation techniques to teach people about how to engage with foreign cultures and languages, especially when it comes to international business relationships. Here, he tells us how he came up with the concept for Guanxi, and the steps he's taken to bring it to market:


Like any good solution Babel Digital’s GuanXi started with a problem. The idea for using games to teach foreign languages and culture actually came to me a long time ago while I was sitting on the Metro looking over notes from my Japanese evening class and thinking, there must be an easier way to learn than this. That was the starting point, which seemed to match in nicely with the work I was doing using advanced games technologies and I began to see how video games could be applied in novel ways to solving this problem. This was the beginning of my interest in Serious Games.

Video games are often at the centre of a lot of controversy and recently have received unfounded negative criticism. Strangely enough, it’s for many of the same reasons that they are criticised that can also make them great tools for learning. Games are all about immersion that’s their real strength, they can relax you, then they can engage you and then that’s when you’re psychologically in the best mindset to learn.

Looking deeper, games have numerous strengths as a learning medium, such as the ability to accommodate all styles of learners visual, auditory and kinaesthetic due the variety of media possible. Additionally, we know that absorbing learning material on as many levels as possible is the best way to ensure that as much as possible is captured. Again games strike gold here, as the iterative nature of games increases the retention process and the challenges presented forces users to apply, and reapply their learning in immersive ways. These are the three steps required to best facilitate understanding.

With Gunaxi we asked ourselves, what is the single best way to learn a language and the culture? The answer was… actually living in the country of that language and culture! It’s all about immersion and necessity. We looked into ways to emulate this invaluable experience and this is where games came in. Using realistic games technology we can simulate real to life scenarios just like someone would face if they were in a foreign country and by making their understanding of the culture and language the driver for progression, we are able to facilitate the learning as if they were there. However, as we have full control over the environment we are able to add benefits beyond real-life scenarios, we can direct the situations that someone faces and furthermore, we can track performances and tell users how they can improve.

Alongside our bespoke development work, we have designed and developed a prototype of the system allowing us to demonstrate the concept and prove our hypothesis. As a next step we will be taking this successful model and developing a version to release online in time for the Chinese New Year. We’re really excited about launching the product; we believe it will make a really strong impact on the way people learn.

Jeremiah Alexander
MD – Babel Digital Ltd

For more info, visit http://www.babeldigital.com/guanxi.html