Video games for teaching and learning present a tremendous opportunity to increase overall student engagement. Additionally, there is the potential to capture the attention of students that might otherwise struggle to stay focused, if what makes games fun could successfully be merged with learning materials. That’s the tricky part.
A well designed game will entice players into learning the game’s mechanics in order to be able to interact with the material. Sometimes these mechanics are deeply complex (e.g., memorizing lengthy button combinations, detailed inventory management, etc.), but if the virtual world and it’s inhabitants are inviting enough the player will gladly step up to the challenges. If one could successfully integrate assessment and study “mechanics” into this design without sacrificing the fun, you’d have cracked the code to gamified learning. NYU IT’s Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) department has been exploring these ideas for the past year and a half. Not just in theory, but through a series of projects that grew out of faculty requests to leverage gamification in their teaching. We would like to share some the lessons we’ve learned since starting in early 2016.
Video games for teaching and learning present a tremendous opportunity to increase overall student engagement. Additionally, there is the potential to capture the attention of students that might otherwise struggle to stay focused, if what makes games fun could successfully be merged with learning materials. That’s the tricky part.
A well designed game will entice players into learning the game’s mechanics in order to be able to interact with the material. Sometimes these mechanics are deeply complex (e.g., memorizing lengthy button combinations, detailed inventory management, etc.), but if the virtual world and it’s inhabitants are inviting enough the player will gladly step up to the challenges. If one could successfully integrate assessment and study “mechanics” into this design without sacrificing the fun, you’d have cracked the code to gamified learning. But finding the time to explore such innovations can be a challenging prospect, given the need to control the cost of higher education understandably being prioritized. Despite this, NYU IT’s Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) department has been exploring these ideas for the past year and a half. Not just in theory, but through a series of projects that grew out of faculty requests to leverage gamification in their teaching. We would like to share some the lessons we’ve learned since starting in early 2016. The experience and knowledge we hope to provide for discovery session participants will include:
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Viewing and playing some of the gamified software we’ve built.
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Techniques we’ve discovered for developing games, while accounting for limited time and money.
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Ways for development team building and software building infrastructure.
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Methods for merging learning materials with game principles.
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Download access to our 2016 language learning game for iOS and Android.
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Q & A session.