Why Use Games in your Teaching?

1. Why Use Games in your Teaching? • A game (Wikipedia) is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. • Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction • Without interaction it’s a puzzle! • Easy to create if you have the right tool; can be created and shared by students and/or faculty • Game should be web-based for ease of student creation and access (course wiki or Bb if game not already in the cloud) • Low risk; great place to start with technology • Learning is active and can be collaborative; depends on how you structure the activity (7 Principles) • Have students create and share their games • Funfor students; ECAR says students like games and simulations • Provides formative feedback to students (7 Principles); prompt feedback without professor grading • Excellent tool for beginner learning (recall and understanding); games are GREAT for learning/reinforcing facts • Wide array of applications; Can be used in-class or outside of class, individually or competitively • Hotpotatoes, free download, has 5 different games; can post to Bb

2. How Students Like to Learn with Technology ECAR 2010 Shannon D. Smith and Judith Borreson Caruso, The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2010 (Research Study, Vol. 6). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2010, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

3. Let’s create a crossword • Go to: Justcrosswords.com (Sample) or http://crosswordlabs.com/ • Identify an area of your teaching that has as a goal Bloom knowledge acquisition (recall and understanding) • List 5-10 terms or words for your crossword • Create the descriptor for each term • Optimize your crossword • Copy the URL for your crossword or bookmark it

4. Bloom’ Revised TaxonomyAnderson and Krathwohl, 2001 Knowledge Acquisition (Beginner Learning) – Recall games like Crosswords, Millionaire or Jeopardy ● Remembering - recognizing, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding ● Understanding - interpreting, summarizing, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying Knowledge Deepening (Intermediate Learning) – Simulations like Quandary ● Applying - implementing, carrying out, using, executing ● Analyzing - comparing, organizing, deconstructing, attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating Knowledge Creation (Advanced Learning) ● Evaluating - checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing, detecting, monitoring ● Creating - designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making Anderson, L.W., and D. Krathwohl (Eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: a Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Longman, New York.

5. Who Wants to be a Millionaire? • Create 3-4 questions using template • Hit “create game” key at bottom of page • Play your own game • Great for “drill and practice” review • Web-based, just send your students the URL or place link in Bb

6. 7 Principles of Good Practice(Our definition of “better teaching/better learning”) Good practice in education: • Encourages student-faculty contact. • Encourages cooperation among students. • Encourages active learning. • Gives prompt feedback. • Emphasizes time on task. • Communicates high expectations. • Respects diverse talents and ways of learning. A.W. Chickering and Z.F. Gamson (1987), AAHE Bulletin, 39 (7), 307. Link to full article

7. Let’s create a Jeopardy gameSample • Go to: http://jeopardylabs.com/ for overview and to create your own game • Create your five categories and one or two questions under each category • Don’t lose the URL, bookmark/copy it for future use • Game creation can be a collaborative learning activity for students; faculty member can create the template(s) and share URL(s) with students to create questions

8. Quiz Bowl Using Polleverywhere • Go to: http://goo.gl/YZN9N • Indicate your academic rank • Go to: http://goo.gl/PfROY • Select your preferred option for the poll response • Use to create teams or sort responses by some demographic (e.g., men vs women, P1 vs P2, etc) • Done in Polleverywhere using segmentation tool (not available in free version)

9. Quandary – a branched maze game • The user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it. On choosing one of the options, the resulting situation is then presented, again with a set of options. Working through this branching tree is like negotiating a maze. • Quandary (freeware for creating branched-option games or simulations) • Free download for both faculty and students; opportunity for student game creation • Go to: http://goo.gl/U10Z8 • Take 5 min to play the CASTAWAY game

10. Examples of Ways to Use Games • Self-assessment of preclass assignments (instructor creates, e.g. crosswords or Millionaire) – out of class • Read/view the assignment and then complete the game; instructor created; self-assessed • Exam review – out of class • Have students/student groups create crossword, Millionaire or other games over assigned review topics; student groups post their game or URL to wiki or send to you for posting to Bb; students use multiple crosswords (or other games) to review; give participation points for game creation (???) • In-class review and self-assessment, e.g. Jeopardy or Quiz Bowl (instructor creates) • Divide class into teams, have various teams compete • Deeper Learning (higher Bloom) – branched maze games, Quandary (e.g., case studies, simulations) • Students can evaluate consequences of poor choices/decisions • Creation takes time; student project to create simulations and then share with classmates; software download is free