I found this article very interesting. I felt it combined a lot of stuff I already knew about best practises for teaching & learning with a lot of stuff I did not know about the framing of things using new technology.
For example, when I first started a job as a sales person, my manager told me not to think about my annual target. He was fond of posing this question: "How do you eat an elephant?" The answer of course is "In bite sized chunks". Delivering a course or completing a project works in a similar way. And I found it interesting that I was reminded of this when reading about how game technologists design games so that players get frequent wins before moving on to a more difficult level.
In the current project which I am using as the topic of my research in this module, in hindsight I would have followed more of this framework and built in more frequent follow ups than the 2 drafts which were built in. Although that in itself was an improvement on when the course was delivered last semester.
The other point I thought of when reading the article was that game technology is primarily focussed on the individual player. My project is a group project so my real interest is in identifying how to utilise game technology theory to enable groups to collaborate effectively together.
It seems to me that this is a rich area for future study anbd action research
Hi Andrew,
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed reading your post. Just curious about how feasible you think it would have been for you to build more than the two drafts you mentioned into your course. The thing about games is that you can essentially build in an infinite number of 'encounters' for the players. However, if your personal input is required with each 'encounter', then the limitation will be your time available.
Cheers,
Dean
Hi Andrew,
ReplyDeleteYou pose some interesting questions. I too engage my students in a long term project and, having read the article and your post, wonder if I could use more regular rewards/feedback/staging, as I do feel that one can lose motivation or direction in such long term endeavours. At the same time, one of the purposes of such projects is to allow qualities as self-directedness, open-ended, subjective problem solving, so a balance between appropriate guidance and pragmatic leaving alone is needed.
Neil
Hi Andrew,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great story to help us remember to focus on each step along the way to our target! Thank you for sharing that!
I also enjoyed this article immensely and wished I had read it before I designed my project! It's way too late now, but maybe next time you could incoroprate some kind of peer review survey in Survey Monkey in which students design the parameters they'll be evaluated on, and then let them evalluate each other's project presentations. I was just thinking that it might be less labor intensive for you and more rewarding for them if they are working to impress each other.
Best of luck!
Donna