Category Archives: Good Teaching

Games-based learning for exploration and discovery

Blogging the 2014 AECT International Convention.

Preconference Workshop: Games-based learning for exploration and discovery

Presenters: Hannah R. Gerber, Sam Houston State University; Dodie J. Niemeyer, Sam Houston State University; Carolyn Stufft, Stephen F. Austin State University

Interesting Notes and Ideas

  • Minecraft snapshot

    Universities are starting to give scholarships for esports; the U.S. is starting to give visas to pro-gamers.

  • Watch out for gaming as a reward; students who could benefit most from this type of learning may not get to experience it
  • One way to gamify a whole course is to create role play throughout the whole course. I would love to do that!
  • Terms: Affinity space (as opposed to community of practice), paratext, metagame, ludology vs. narratology, makerspaces, machinima, fan fiction, walkthroughs, gamification, modding, edutainment, novice, feedback loop (assessment engine)
  • James Paul Gee
    • A video game is just a set of problems – you have to solve them in order to win. Connect that to problem based learning; problem posing learning – students learn to pose problems or forecast them.
    • The theory of learning behind games is quite different than regular learning. It’s much more complex than in school. If games couldn’t teach you, they would go broke. We teach the way we do because of the tests. We have to change the assessment, because it drives the teaching system. You wouldn’t be tempted to give a gamer a Halo test; if he finished the game, he already knows it. The learning system should be so immersive that the assessment is built in. Situated and embodied learning – can you DO stuff with your learning?
    • Learning – you need to be able to USE and ARTICULATE your knowledge.
  • Adaptive learning – you can’t move on until you are expert at that level. That’s a gaming concept also.
  • Games are one-on-one – the gamer is learning at their own level. It’s individualized instruction.
  • The differences of a game where the concepts are all connected in the game vs. where you answer a math problem and then get to move a car forward – but those two are connected.
  • One thing to watch out for with using off the shelf games is that students can be frustrated that the fun is taken out of the game because it’s been “school-ified”.
  • Game mechanics for gamification – feedback loops, iterative sequences for learning, levelling up with a reward system, may have real-life ramifications. Immediate feedback and self-reflection.
  • Issue of extrinsic motivation vs. intrinsic motivation. There aren’t enough studies to really say that extrinsic motivation are a detriment to intrinsic motivation.
  • The trick is really designing the curriculum around the game – and the creativity of the teacher.
  • Affinity space is the location, metagaming is the activity there, and paratext is the product of the collaboration/community.
  • There are communities around this – virtual communities, or playing with family, brothers, parents, uncles, in a real human interaction around the game. Well, of course! We have human interactions around Scrabble too! 
  • Types of writing around gaming: fan fiction, machinima, walkthrough, maker spaces.
  • How to gamify assessment:
    • health bar – to show how healthy your character is
    • a map to show where you are compared to everything else in the course
    • leaderboards?? maybe
    • XP – experience points
    • Present more challenges and opportunities to earn points
    • Quests and missions – students can choose these different goals and customize based on their interest
  • The idea of in course workshops (in the form of writing workshops) to support learning needed to be successful in the course game
  • How to do modification / modding – students can recreate parts of the class based on their interest

Resources and Links

References

Best Practice Workshop Presentation Tips

Things I noticed that worked well in how they ran the workshop.

  • Access prior knowledge by asking for a personal definition
  • Pass out terms related to the concept on an index card and have participants in pairs write down what they know already and what they want to know about the term (tactile KWL)
  • Silent reading time adds variety to an all day workshop

Student Reflection

Student reflection is designed to assist students in thinking about their learning processes, their learning experiences, and their metacognition. Reflection is a critical component for teaching students to be self-directed learners. Students should reflect on the course content and it’s application to their personal and professional lives.

Dee Fink’s Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning includes a series of questions for including reflection in course design (p 19-20).

Students reflect with:

    • oneself through journaling or learning portfolios
    • others through class discussion or others outside of class
  • Students reflect about:
    • the subject of the course: what is an appropriate and full understanding of this topic?
    • the learning process:
      • What am I learning?
      • Of what value is this?
      • How did I learn?
      • What else do I need to learn?
  • Students reflect via:
    • one-minute papers
      • i.e. What is the most important thing you learned in this module?
      • What was the “muddiest point” from this module?
    • weekly journal writing
    • learning portfolios

Need more ideas for designing reflection?

Talk to your Instructional Facilitator for more ideas or assistance with applying these ideas to your course.  Find these tips and more online in the Online Course Development Support Site.

Faith Integration

Andrews University is a Christian school; and therefore faith integration in online learning is an important value and task. Among other statements, the Andrews University Mission Statement includes this: Andrews University students will seek knowledge as they understand life, learning, and civic responsibility from a Christian point of view. How this is done makes for interesting discussion and research. There are certainly many viewpoints on the best way to integrate faith and learning; as well as different views on what it really means.

Some core issues for online course development and teaching online at Andrews are:

  • How does your own faith experience intersect with your teaching and learning?
  • In what ways do you encourage students to consider the course content & discipline’s philosophy from a Christian point of view?
  • What can students learn or experience regarding civic responsibility from a Christian point of view?
  • What are the Biblical foundations that intersect with your course content (as applicable and appropriate)?

What could this look like in an online course? The evidence may come in instructor-student interaction, in discussion on how the Christian worldview intersects with the content knowledge, in how students are viewed and treated as whole persons made in the image of God, in the instructor’s teaching presence. Here are some examples:

Instructor Presence

  • Hosting and encouraging student participation in an online chapel
  • Tone of your interactions with students
  • Ways that you show students you care – praying for them, helping struggling students, etc.

Writing Assignments

Another common way to explore the intersection of a Christian worldview and course content is through discussion forums, essays, and/or writing assignments.

Teaching Civic Responsibility

Biblical Foundations

Are there any natural connections between Biblical perspectives and your course content? Here are a few examples to challenge your thinking:

Note that it is important that these connections be appropriate, thoughful, integrated, and respectful of other faiths represented in your classroom.

Hopefully these ideas provide some background to help you consider how a Christian worldview intersects with your course content – and how best to assist students in their own growth and understanding throughout the process.

Talk to your Instructional Facilitator for more ideas or assistance with applying these ideas to your course.  Find these tips and more online in the Online Course Development Support Site.

 

Critical Thinking

Last week as we considered creating a Learning Community, we briefly shared some ways to encourage critical thinking in an online course. This week, let’s examine some specific instructional strategies that can be used in the online classroom.

To learn more about critical thinking, explore What is Critical Thinking? and the Critical Thinking Toolkit.

Group Work

The following examples are designed for group work, which can be supported by the discussion forum and collaborative tools such as a wiki, Dropbox, or GoogleDocs.

Writing Assignments

These writing assignment examples can be submitted directly to the teacher via the Assignment tool or TurnItIn, or shared with the class to stimulate further discussion.

Need some more examples? Browse the Reusable Learning Objects for Critical Thinking.

Ready to assess critical thinking in your class? Try the Critical Thinking VALUE rubric.

Learning Community

One of the biggest concerns of faculty and students new to online learning is the feeling of disconnection and distance. Creating an interactive learning community can make all the difference for student satisfaction in an online course. In addition, the learning community is a great way to encourage students to think critically about your academic content, to reflect on their learning, and to consider connections between a Christian worldview and the core content to be learned.

The Community of Inquiry model of online learning includes the Social Presence and the Cognitive Presence. (We will examine the Teaching Presence in depth later.) Let’s look at some ways to support the Social Presence and Cognitive Presence in your online classroom.

Social Presence

Social Presence is “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities” (Garrison, 2009).

In a face to face class, how do students and the professor get to know each other? They see each other’s faces and body language. They share their ideas in classroom discussion. They may meet each other outside of class to work on additional learning.

Online, we need to deliberately set up spaces for students to get to know each other and for you to get to know them. In high quality online programs, students even feel a bond of solidarity and friendship and are excited to meet each other later face to face.

Here are some ideas to enhance the social presence of your online classroom:

  • Create an introductions forum for students to get to know each other personally and professionally. Have students share prior knowledge and experience on the content.
  • Create general forums to support the class. Some examples to choose from include:
    • Watercooler
    • General Questions
    • Technical Questions
    • Learning Process Comments
    • Housekeeping Issues
    • Online Chapel
  • If you have a live synchronous time, always include icebreaker times. Have students share the weather where they are, or something interesting from their location.
  • Encourage students to share personal experiences to connect with the content, where appropriate.

Cognitive Presence

Cognitive Presence is the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001).

Talk to your Instructional Facilitator for more ideas or assistance with applying these ideas to your course.  Find these tips and more online in the Online Course Development Support Site.

Stimulating Learning Experiences

As you continue to think about the learning design of your course, consider this week the learning activities and student engagement in your online course.

 How will you provide diverse opportunities for engaging intellectual discovery, inquiry and creative problem-solving? What ways can you provide choices for students to meet learning outcomes?

Offline Activities

Just because a course is online doesn’t mean that the student has to stare at a screen the whole time. Here are some ideas for learning activities outside of the online classroom:

Using the Forum for More Than “Discussion”

The discussion forum is great for interaction, but what else can you do with it besides “discuss”?! Here are some ideas to bring in some variety:

Choices

Consider how you can provide choices for students to meet your learning outcomes.

Talk to your Instructional Facilitator for more ideas or assistance with applying these ideas to your course.  Find these tips and more online in the Online Course Development Support Site.

Learning Design: Thinking about Alignment and Assessment

Before you get too far down the path of building your syllabus, we encourage you to think through your learning design. We provide a Storyboard Framework for you to consider the big picture of your course. You will, if you haven’t already, discuss this further with your Instructional Facilitator in the Learning Design Meeting.

 Alignment

This week, consider the concept of alignment within the context of assessment. Alignment means that we want to create continuity between the learning objectives, the course activities, the learning materials, and the assessments.

Objectives > Activities > Assessment

Why should assessments, learning objectives and instructional strategies be aligned?

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • What are the learning outcomes for this class? Do I have clear guidance from the department curriculum?
  • Are my learning outcomes observable (strong action verbs) and measurable?
  • Are my intended learning activities consistent with all the learning outcomes?
  • Does each intended learning activity help students reach the learning outcome? How does it help them? How do I know they have met or deeply understand the learning outcome? What evidence will I have of the students’ learning for this outcome?
  • Are the feedback and assessment activities consistent with the learning outcomes and the learning activities?

Assessments

As you consider the broad strokes of your class, think about your options for assessment. What are some options besides quizzes and exams? Do any of these other options align with your learning outcomes?

Converting a course from a face-to-face format to an online format provides an opportunity to rethink and reconsider your usual teaching patterns. Take some time to think through these concepts and integrate these ideas into your plan for your online course.

Talk to your Instructional Facilitator for more ideas or assistance with applying these ideas to your course. Find these tips and more online in the Online Course Development Support Site.

Game Based Lessons: An Adult Education Experiment

By Henrietta Irizarry-Ortiz and Kimberly Gates from the Sheridan Technical Center.

In this session at USDLA 2014, Henrietta and Kimberly shared some background on game based learning, and then told the story of how they collaborated to experiment with game based education for adult learners.

They talked about why gaming gets a bad rap – violence, immersion, cocooning. However, video games can increase student engagement in real world problems. One interesting study shared was by Constance Steinkuehler on the differences in student reading for games and school reading. Watch more about it here. The main point is that interest highly influences performance. Another point was that we should use school to meet kids’ goals instead of to meet “our” goals. CHOICE: Using student interest as the main driver for their education.

Advice to parents is to pay attention to what games your kids are playing – and to help them reflect on the process and what they are learning from the experience. Self-correcting, persistence, how they are thinking.

The experiment was to have high school students design game based learning for the adult education students. They used Game Maker software and Blender.

Game Rush – Motivation and Engagement Strategies for Gamification

Thanks YouTopia.

This USDLA 2014 session was presented by Katharine Hixson and David Small from Pearson.

One helpful concept clarification was the difference between games and gamification. Gamification is all about using the principles of games.

On the games side, there are simple games such as hangman or crossword puzzles. More advanced like using Jeopardy in your class, and then the complex such as immersive learning environments.

Gamification is using points, badges, levels, timers, bonuses and narrative.

Narrative: Show, don’t tell. Why is this important? Create a scenario around the assignment to make it engaging.

The part that really catches me is the idea of narrative. What’s the story or back story for this assignment or project. David reminded us of WebQuests. Haven’t heard anyone talk about that in a while – but a well designed WebQuest sets up a narrative background for an interesting and engaging task.

They shared a taxonomy of gamification based on Bloom’s, but I couldn’t find it on the Internet, so I won’t replicate it here.

This was a good introduction to the concept of gamification and what it could possibly look like in an online course.

Photo Metaphor Learning Activity

I woke up this morning and found out we have a snow day! The arctic vortex of 2014. I was thinking that it would be fun to have an activity for students to do online on a snow day so that instructional time isn’t totally wasted.

This blog post is the first in a series of Moodle Goodies I am designing for our faculty. They will be accompanied by sample activities in a Moodle space that our teachers can import into their own Moodle courses.

Photo Metaphor

How to Use This Learning Activity: Review the information below. Select which Moodle tool you want students to use. Adapt the Learning Objective and Activity Instructions as needed. Select which Moodle instructions for students that you wish you to use. Copy the text you want to reuse and paste it into the instruction section of the tool you decided to use. If you have trouble with the links copying, try Firefox or Chrome as your browser.

Learning Objective: Students will demonstrate their understanding of a concept by illustrating it.

Moodle Tool:

  • Use the Discussion if you want them to see each other’s examples and learn from each other. This is my favorite method.
  • Use the Assignment dropbox if you want it turned in just to you.
  • Use the Wiki if you want them to be able to edit each other’s examples and learn from each other. This is a more advanced option; and isn’t as easy to grade. You’ll have to create a manual grade item in the gradebook for grading participation in the wiki.

Activity Instructions for Students:

Review the concept of _______ [you fill in here]. Then visit a photo sharing site such as Flickr’s Creative Commons, and find a photo that illustrates the concept. Write a paragraph explaining how the photo illustrates the concept. Create at least two proper citations, one for the photo, and one referencing content from an academic source (such as the textbook, an expert in the field, a published research paper, etc.). Use EasyBib How to Cite a Photograph to help you with your photo citation.

Then reply to at least two classmates. Reflect on the illustration’s connection to the concept. How does their illustration helps you understand an aspect of the concept better? Are there any components of the concept that don’t work with the illustration? Give evidence of your deepening understanding of the concept.

Discussion Tool

Setup Instructions:
Copy and paste the activity and technical instructions into the Description portion of the Forum setup. This allows the students to see the instructions while they are composing their response. Add the points for this activity under the Ratings setting.

Instructions for Students:
After you find your photo illustration online, right-click (Mac Ctrl+click) on the photo and copy the image URL/address.

Then go to the Forum and click Add a New Discussion Topic.

moodleimageiconClick the Image Icon and paste the URL of the image. If needed or desired, click the Appearance tab and change the dimensions to 400 pixels wide (put in the first box). You may also want to change the alignment to left or right so the text wraps around your image.

Click Insert. Then write your description of how this photo illustrates the concept. If you’ve spent some time writing, highlight all of your post (Ctrl A) and copy (Ctrl C) to save it to your clipboard just in case of problems. Then click Post to Forum. If Moodle logged you out, you can always post again, and paste the content you copied.

Now, Reply to at least two classmates as directed.

Assignment Dropbox

Setup Instructions:
Copy and paste the activity and technical instructions into the Description portion of the Assignment setup.

Instructions for Students:

Start a Word file.

Find your photo illustration online. Then right-click (Mac Ctrl+click) on the photo and copy the image. Paste it into Word.

Write your description of how this photo illustrates the concept and where it breaks down. In what ways does it not illustrate the concept?

Save your file. Upload your assignment here.

Wiki

Setup Instructions:
Add a new activity in Moodle and select Wiki. Give the wiki a name. Put the activity and technical instructions for students into the description. I recommend for your first time to have all the photo examples on one page in the wiki. But if you have a lot of students, you may want to have them each make their own page. Use the Collaborative Wiki mode, and give the wiki first page a name like Photo Metaphors. Tips for grading: If you need to, click the History icon to see which students edited what and when.

Instructions for Students:

After you find your photo illustration online, right-click (Mac Ctrl+click) on the photo and copy the image URL/address.

Then go to the Wiki and click the Edit tab.

Find an empty place at the bottom, and hit Enter/Return a few times to get a space to work.

moodleimageiconClick the Image Icon and paste the URL of the image. If needed or desired, click the Appearance tab and change the dimensions to 400 pixels wide (put in the first box). You may also want to change the alignment to left or right so the text wraps around your image.

Click Insert. Then write your description of how this photo illustrates the concept. Sign your name at the end of your writing. If you’ve spent some time writing, highlight your section and copy (Ctrl C) to save it to your clipboard just in case of problems.

moodlelineiconAdd a Horizontal Line after your photo and writing to help organize the wiki page. Click the Line icon.

Then click Save. If Moodle logged you out, you can always edit again, and paste the content you copied.

Now, Reply and Edit at least two classmates work as directed above. Click the Edit button. Scroll to a photo you want to comment on. Either add more text to their description (highlight in another color and sign your name); or add a comment below (with another color and your name).

Click Save when you are done. Read through all the examples from your classmates.

 

Your Turn: What supports do you provide to faculty for using Moodle? What other ideas do you have for learning activities? Any comments or suggestions for improvement this one? I appreciate your input!