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Led by Lauren Davidson and the Learning Lab Team
Games! In this time of remote teaching, it’s not surprising that games have much to offer us as teachers working to motivate and challenge students online. After all, game designers have been thinking about a version of this design challenge for a long time. Most of us, however, haven’t taken the time to analyze the tools game designers use to motivate players-- mechanics such as adaptive challenge level; continuous, often low-stakes, feedback; timers and races; opportunities for strategizing and risk-taking, to name a few. Through these mechanics, games offer teachers a toolkit for designing (virtual) classroom experiences. While we won’t explicitly design games in this seminar, over the course of six weeks we’ll build our own toolkit of game mechanics and principles for incorporating into our assignment and course design. We’ll focus primarily on how we might deploy game mechanics during in-class activities. In particular, we’ll compare and contrast how we might implement them in online versus on-campus courses, so you leave with new activities to try both now and in future classes. This seminar is designed for new and experienced TFs from all disciplines. No prior background in gaming is necessary.
Please note: Seminar times listed are in Eastern Time (US).