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What began as a routine summer workshop on
incorporating games and game-like elements into instruction, turned into
a surprise for summer; two weeks of fun and intense online game-play
from an engaged and committed cadre of faculty and staff who were
working to apply the principles of gaming to their own courses and
activities by Suzanne C. Shaffer, Instructional Designer, College Reading/ESL Instructor.
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| Photo: Faculty Focus |
I had planned to end the workshop with a two-week online
game for participants, but I didn’t seriously think anyone would do it.
Deep engagement around an educational topic is rare on a small campus where faculty and staff wear many hats and are pulled in different directions. I started out being surprised when at the end of the workshop, there was a lot of buzz about actually playing the game. Okay, I thought, we’ll play, but activity will fall off in a few days. Nope, surprised again. Well, week two will surely see a drop off. No again. They pushed through to the end. Seven players visited the game site 1,350 times, posted 256 comments and fought hard in an exciting finish!
Like many of my colleagues, I’ve had my doubts about the educational value of “gaming” in college classrooms. In my mind, there’s an uneasy relationship between entertainment and education. Could gaming really be about learning, or is it just another example of pandering to student interests?...
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| What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition: Revised and Updated Edition |
I ended the workshop by orienting participants to the game we were about to play. Using a blog as our game site, those playing would get a daily challenge that involved applying a different gaming principle to one of the courses they taught. I used James Gee’s principles of learning (from his text, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning andLiteracy) to devise these daily challenges. Players received points for completing the challenge, helping a peer, adding a resource, finishing first, and so on. As they earned points, they could level up and win small prizes (e-cards and other free/inexpensive tokens).
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Source: Faculty Focus
