Thursday, October 27, 2011

Gaming in education

Today I attended a seminar at Penn State about gaming in the classroom. This was presented by Chris Stubbs.
  • Games can integrate and add value to lessons.
  • All games can be use in education

What is a game like element?
  • needs  to be compelling
  • can be used to alter motivation
  • piece of a game that adds something to it
  • objectives - can be overall objective, can be spelled out or subtle embedded within a game
  • scaffolding - gives a player enough information to play, but not so much that it keeps them from playing. (WOW- great example), constantly reuse skills or topics learned and reflect, start off easy, use it!
  • expression and progression - progression bars, meters, fill up bars, level up
  • feedback - sound cues, grades, meters, numerical, fail or “die”, progress, success
  • competition
  • achievements  - badges, developer creator goals, objectives of the game (mini quests), about feedback, accomplishment, positive reinforcement, allow for reflection, shareable and social
  • narrative - gives background information, gives context, story telling
  • role play
  • choice - character, reactions, gives ownership to players
  • fixed rewards
  • interval rewards
  • lottery
  • modifiers
  • ownership
  • status
  • ranking


Gamification  - takes pieces of games to make it more compelling (improve engagaement or change behavior) - takes these elements and use in different contexts

How can we use these elements in the classroom?
  • Attendance
    • Extra credit ball - 4 x a semester a ball is tossed out (inside the ball are numbers) the ball gets tossed out into the crowd a student picks a number, whatever number is pulled, that's the number of extra credit points is given that day to students.
    • A code is embedded in a presentation to unlock quizzes or extra credit points given to students who attend class
  • Experience and meters
    • Start out with an F in course, each item handed in then meter goes up, shows progression throughout course
  • Give objectives that are clear (a rubric)
  • Blogs - start a leader board (based on comments) - bring your A game to a blog post


Risks
  • extrinsic motivation
  • competition doesn’t work for everyone
  • over justification effect - constant feedback etc. ask to do without an extrinsic reward - the motivation is at times lost
  • privacy - use systems that are not all about grades, most items are not required


Examples of frameworks that already have this to import into your class:

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