Category Archives: game design

Ed Tech must reads – column #20

First published in Campus Morning Mail 1st Feb 2022

How not to write about HyFlex or online learning from Bryan Alexander

While most academic discourse follows intellectually rigorous conventions, there is one area that seems resistant to them. Commentary about technology enhanced and online learning, particularly from those who are new to it, often reveals a lack of understanding of the field and dwells instead on anecdata and laments for the good old days. Bryan Alexander steps through some of the most common flaws in these kinds of pieces in this entertaining post that calls for better conversations about this space. 

Reverse engineering the multiple-choice question from The Effortful Educator

Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are invaluable for making assessment at scale manageable and providing learners with quick feedback about their understanding of material. As learning tools though, they can be superficial and rarely reflect authentic uses of knowledge. The alternate approach to MCQs laid out in this post asks students to craft questions that use provided answers instead – the Jeopardy! approach to quizzing perhaps. While it may be more labour intensive to assess, this adds a richness to these kinds of questions.

Framework for Ethical Learning Technology from ALT

As the education technology market has grown and usage has become the norm, valid questions have been raised about factors beyond learning and teaching benefits. What are the drivers for businesses and university leadership in using them? How do we ensure that the focus stays on what learners need? The UK’s Association for Learning Technology (ALT) is developing a framework in four quadrants – Awareness, Professionalism, Care and Community and Values – to help guide thinking in this brave new world.

Contemporary Approaches to University Teaching MOOC 2022 from CAULLT

Many universities offer some form of educational development to their teachers, but if yours doesn’t or you would like to supplement it, this MOOC developed by 10 Australian universities under the auspices of the Council of Australasian University Learnings in Learning and Teaching is a particular rich free course to consider. Enrolments for the 2022 offering (28/2 to 29/7) are now open. It covers everything from Teaching your first class to Collaborative learning and The politics of Australian Higher Education.  

Best puzzle games // 10 indie puzzle games you need to try from Cutie Indie Recs I’ve long believed that education can learn a lot from game design in terms of creating engaging and enriching learning experiences. This nine minute video from Cutie Indie Recs showcases some of the incredible variety and creativity that can be found in PC and mobile games now. I’m not entirely sure how to convert these to teaching but maybe inspiration will strike.

Ed Tech must reads – column 18

First published in Campus Morning Mail on 18th Jan 2022

On Reading the Syllabus: A Pedagogical Thread from Twitter (@ec_leininger)

Academics often complain the students never read the unit outline, and from time to time a story will crop up about someone adding something quirky to get their students’ attention. Late last year a senior academic at the University of Tennessee posted a photo on Facebook of an unclaimed $50 note in a locker that he had included the code for in a boilerplate policy section about not making allowances for COVID. Better educators like Dr Liz Leininger were underwhelmed by this and shared this helpful thread about getting your students to read your syllabus by making it engaging and interactive instead.

Online Program Management Firms Are Thriving. And These Democrats Want Answers from The Chronicle of Higher Education

OPMs are third party providers that are increasingly partnering with Australian universities to build, deliver and administer their online course offerings. This article is American in focus so there are undoubtedly differences in systems and context but it does bring to light some questions that are being asked in the halls of power about these relationships.

We know why you hate online learning – and it has nothing to do with quality from Edugeek Journal

Nearly two years into the pandemic and we are hearing a growing chorus in some circles of people who are just tired of everything to do with online and remote learning and want to return to the old ways. These discussions are frequently wrapped up in rhetoric around the superiority of in-person teaching. Matt Croslin from EduGeek Journal dove into the research literature and spent a little time exploring the validity of these claims.

Learn programming in a codable music video from TikTok

This is a basic tool in some ways but I’m a sucker new interactive applications of coding and video in the service of better learning and teaching, so here we are. The latest music video from Doja Cat for her new song Woman allows people to change a number of variables coded in CSS, Javascript and Python at different points that change the appearance of things in the video. It’s a fun way to introducing programming structures and concepts to a new audience of learners. The joy of the person discussing it in this TikTok video is something that needed to be shared as well.

How to win at Wordle using linguistic theory from The Guardian

I recently saw Wordle described as the sourdough starter of the Omicron era – the new craze people are latching on to as a social distraction from the world. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a simple, free, one-a-day word puzzle with elements of the old Mastermind game. The addition of a simple share function that lets people show their success without spoiling the answer has led to an explosion of Twitter posts with grids of green, yellow and white squares. This article from David Shariatmadari explores some handy linguistic strategies for Wordle success.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 11

First published Campus Morning Mail, Oct 26th 2021

Team-based quizzes on no budget from Amanda loves to audit

Australia’s favourite lecturer on auditing, Amanda White at UTS, integrates technologies into her teaching to inspire and engage her students. In this post, she shares her approach to creating weekly branching quizzes that are taken firstly individually and then in small groups to create opportunities for collaborative learning via multiple attempts. She discusses how she has created a solution that bypasses LMS quiz limitations but which retains accountability.

Support Designer-Teacher Collaboration in Educational Game Design Using Learning Science Principles from Ma and Harpstead, CHI-PLAY 2021 proceedings

A common concern held about educational technologies is that the tech is prioritised about the pedagogy. This work in progress from Ma and Harpstead (Carnegie Mellon University), presented recently at the Computer-Human Interaction in Play conference outlines their work on educational game design support frameworks linked closely to evidence based learning science principles. Given the potential of educational games to create rich, authentic learning experiences, this work shows great potential.

Vale Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from Jane McGonigal (Twitter)

For people with an interest in learner engagement, motivation and productivity, the loss of Csikszentmihalyi last week was a sad moment. His 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience developed the idea of a ‘flow state’, the sweet spot between challenge and skill where people find themselves fully absorbed in an activity. This has been highly influential on education and game design and games in education. The comments below this tweet from McGonigal, an influential figure in serious game design thinking, offer a taste of the impact his work had.

UTS Video Meetup #10 Podcasting, Live-streaming and designing educational media Tues Oct 26, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm (AEDT)

This video meetup this afternoon features academics and learning designers from a range of organisations presenting about using educational video (Mark Parry, AISNSW), live-streaming on Twitch (Jamie Chapman, UTAS), Learner generated digital media (Beverley Myles, OpenLearning) and podcasts as learning and teaching resources (Fidel Fernando, Macquarie Uni).

Towards a taxonomy of assessment types – webinar/workshop Thurs Oct 28th 12 noon (AEDT)

Hans Tilstra (Keypath Australia) leads what should be a lively set of activities intended to lead towards a meaningful taxonomy of assessment types in modern tertiary education. This is the final ASCILITE TELedvisors Network webinar for 2021 and caps off a stellar year of these events.

Gamification – a better approach to leaderboards

Linda T Darcy has written a decent overview of using game mechanics in the classroom without relying on technology in her post at ASCD Express – No Technology required to gamify your class.

If you have an interest in gamification, this won’t cover a lot of new ground but I was quite taken with her approach to using leaderboards. She proposes using them to measure only individual improvements (e.g. Jenny improved her grade by 15%) rather than setting up purely grade based competition. This enables lower performing students to feel that they still have a chance to “win” and avoids the demotivating effect that leaderboards can sometimes have.

Having said that though, if a high achieving student performs consistently well, there is no room for them to show improvement – unless they game the system by deliberately underperforming at the start – and less recognition of their achievements. The leaderboard may well be seen as something of an “everybody-gets-a-trophy” prize than a true game mechanic.

So I guess what might work is a leaderboard that uses both direct performance but can incorporate improvement – or perhaps just two separate leaderboards?

Have you had any experience in using leaderboards in education that worked well or failed horribly (I mean, that provided a valuable learning experience to you?)  Please feel free to share it in the comments.

(Don’t you hate it when you change your mind about an idea as you write it down)

Penny Arcade – Extra Credits – The Feeling of Agency

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-feeling-of-agency

Extra Credits is launching into a lengthy discussion about the meaning and importance of choice in games and game design. This first episode explains exactly what choice is and what meaningful choice is and how they are important and unique to games.

http://youtu.be/6tvSN2pezNA

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