Describe a simple game or gamification strategy that you might implement in your classroom. Explain in broad terms how the game might work, or how the gamification strategy might be used in your course. For bonus submission, outline the steps that will make this game or strategy work and any tools or pieces that you might need to construct or create. If you are currently employing gaming strategies in your classroom, describe what you do and how successful it is. Describe anything about the strategy or game that you might want to modify.
10 Bonus Points: Comment on another player’s post sharing ideas that might enhance their game or strategy.
Charla
Robin
Val
Lee
Marian
Ann
Dave
Mary
I like the Team-Based Learn (TBL) Readiness Assurance Test (RAT). It’s a simple multiple choice test that students take at the beginning of a class. First they take it individually (the iRat) and earn a certain score – in a TBL classroom, they actually use scratch cards for this. Then, they retake the test with their group or team -discussing and perhaps, revising their answers. The team comes up with group answers to the RAT. This is more of a cooperative gaming strategy. Learning from mistakes, coming to a group decision…. all good stuff. I work with faculty who use TBL. We are also looking at moving TBL and the RATs to online courses – it’s pretty straight forward in synchronous courses. One of my instructors would like to do the RAT process in an asynchronous distance class. I am still struggling with that one. If you have ideas, let me know!
I agree with Robin that there may be solutions easily available for asynchronous discussion. These could include Google Hangouts, AdobeConnect, the tools available in Bb to collaborate/chat, or even Facebook pages that the students can create and moderate (this happens spontaneously for many of my class team projects and I only find out about them after the fact). Then the groups can report their findings back to you and maybe provide you with transcripts if you want to be more closely involved.
Hi Lee,
We have done this in some of the nursing classes instead of just weekly online quizzes. First students take a quiz about the readings that should have been completed prior to coming to class. Then, they take the same quiz with partners and record their answers on the scratch off card. If they get a question wrong, they can make another selection but don’t get as many points for that answer. Then they get an average score in Bb that comes from both the individual quiz score and the team based quiz score. This how we are trying to implement collaborative learning
I wonder if you could use a wiki or google document to facilitate the asynchronous RAT where each student in the group would be making a contribution to the team effort in a shared space (page).
Good suggestions!
I liked doing the scavenger hunt to really take a closer look at the Faculty Learning Corner. I found stuff I had never seen before that I will use now that I know it is there.
I am thinking about using a scavenger hunt at the beginning of the semester to get students to read the entire syllabus and navigate through course content, start here, etc., in Blackboard.
I’m pretty sure I got this idea from Mary and Kathi when I took ED593. Thanks gals.
I did not get a chance to participate in the scavenger hunt yet but your comment makes me want to make sure I take a look at it. Fun stuff!
I like the idea of a scavenger hunt at the beginning of the semester so they can see what is there and where to find things. Students new to online classes sometimes struggle trying to find things.
I use an HR Simulation game from a third-party provider in BA361 Principles of HR Management and given a recent survey asking students if they would recommend it again, 88% said yes. Of those, 17% suggested some modification to make the game more transparent and less frustrating (e.g. smaller teams, non-competitive). The game was described as the following, “real world”, “very educational”, “very effective”, and “fun and enjoyable.”
Specific testimonials:
“Before this class, I didn’t think HR had much to do with any of the company’s performance… now I know it does!”
“I wanted a 3rd year!” [the simulation covers two years in an 8-week time frame with one week representing one quarter]
“The simulation was way more involved than I expected and required a lot of work, coordination, and late night emails. This made it exciting because it was our living breathing project.”
The simulation involves breaking the students into small groups and they have access to company material, newsletters, and operational reports. Each week, a “special decision” comes up that must be made related to an HR policy or procedure (who to promote? the wrong decision results in law suits; how to spend the budget? each instance could relate to employee surveys, safety programs or wages; how to deal with unexpected federal regulation? cost of Obamacare). They can then see the impact of their strategies and decisions on the bottom line (quality index, cost per unit, morale, grievances, attendance, budget, etc). I will be using it again with modification. These modifications will include smaller groups and a defined winning strategy in advance.
This sounds like a really interesting way to get groups to work together on a real world problem. How did you facilitate the group work? Were they using a discussion board or wiki to collaborate? I like your idea of having a “defined winning strategy in advance”; it would help to stimulate competition.
They came up with their own methods to communicate:
* weekly conference calls
* email exchange
* facebook page
I believe that those teams that relied strictly on email experienced the most frustration with the assignment, despite my suggestions to make sure they tried to communicate synchronously (although some teams successfully used this approach). The one team that used the Facebook page (their idea) reported high satisfaction with that method of communication. The teams with weekly scheduled calls made that project a priority and had a high level of engagement.
To accompany the post above, here is a link to the simulation game that I use:
http://interpretive.com/rd6/index.php?pg=hrm
I have a whole set of what I call ‘Review Resources’ that are basically content material contained in games such as ‘concentration’, ‘flash cards’, ‘crossword puzzles’ etc and I believe I mentioned these before.
I also have added ‘jeopardy’ to end of PowerPoint presentations so that students can answer questions about the topic just presented and ‘win’ points by answering questions of different values. It helps reinforce that they learned the information and met the objectives – sort of an informal post-test.
PS This ‘jeopardy’ is a free downloadable slide format that can be inserted right into your existing PowerPoint
I’ve used jeopardy before and it makes it a lot of fun. These ideas you suggest sound very engaging!
I’m going to use the matching game in the simple games for the elements. I have weekly discussions and some of them revolve around elements. I assign them a number from 1 to the number of students in the class and they take the corresponding element and write as if they are the element and give them a character. The next week, they add the number (of students) to their original number and do the next element. This takes 5 or 6 discussions to get through all the elements. I reward creativity with extra points but maybe I will have the students vote each week on the best description and award points accordingly. Then they would have to read all of them. Does anyone have any ideas on how you could record their votes easily? Is there a program or something? Then I could use the matching game where I could take some of the best posts (of all time and not necessarily just from this group) by students and have them match the element to the description. I like that you have a limited number of items to match.
I really like your idea of matching the elements to the all-time-best descriptions. For tracking votes, maybe you could use SurveyMonkey or the survey tool in Bb? If their feedback doesn’t need to be anonymous, you could also break the students into groups and then each group could discuss and pick their favorite. Each week, the most votes wins. You could also ask them to openly critique each descriptions (or some defined number) in a forum. I hope that makes sense!