We really appreciate the enthusiasm and energy that you all put into playing the 10 Day Faculty Challenge with us! We hope it was worth your time. We learned a lot by designing, managing, and keeping up with all of your amazing posts. The plugin we used for points and badges didn’t work as well as we had hoped but we were able to keep track of your progress manually.
Now we’d love to hear from you. In particular, we’d love to know:
- What did you like about the game?
- How we might improve the game if we tried it again in the future?
- Did playing the game give you ideas about gamifying your classroom?
- Do you think you’ll change your behavior as you teach in the future because of anything that occurred during the game?
In general, we’d love to hear any reflections you might have about the 10 Day Faculty Challenge. Everyone, players, cheerleaders and lurkers– please tell us what you think. Thanks again for joining us!
Charla
Robin
Val
Lee
Marian
Ann
Dave
Mary
I was only in the game a few days, but found others’ submissions and links interesting.
I don’t see actually having students compete in my class. This didn’t sell me on gaming as a competitive exercise, but if, and it’s a big if because it would take so much time, I were to redo my class, I now see that turning the whole class into a progression to survive cold water would add another interesting dimension to it.
I agree with Marian, the other submissions were interesting, and I too am not enthralled with the competitive nature of this format. I was talking with a professor who does a lot of gaming and his first words were about cooperative rather than competitive games – which teach more skills that are applicable in the workplace and world as I want to see it.
Maybe it’s me, but I am a bit unclear on the learning objectives/intention for this challenge. It seems to me that points were awarded for participation and posting early, not so much for content. This is easy to do, and I suspect that the assumption is that participation leads to learning. More complex awarding of points would need rubrics and clearing objectives. That would take a lot work.
It’s been an interesting experiment, though, and I applaud Kathi and Nicole for stepping out and giving it a try. My connection with them kept me in the game.
I agree completely. And my connection to them also kept me in the game. 🙂
This whole time I have been worried about the score keeping logistics for them!
My initial thought when this was announced was that I would never have the time to participate and that it was terrible timing. But as it turns out, it is the perfect thing I need to take a break from finals and grading. I am mentally referring to my play in the game as productive procrastination. And it totally was! And I needed a creative outlet. I was also not enamored with the idea of gamification and this is really giving me a new perspective. I’m so glad I gave it a try… I appreciated the replies to my comments and other thoughtful engagement by my peers.
And here are the answers to the specific questions above:
* What did you like about the game? great badging options – I was surprised they motivated me but they did; there were some things that I was surprised to see that I was already doing but other badging requirements forced me step up my game a little bit and I appreciated being pushed.
* How we might improve the game if we tried it again in the future? there needs to be more engagement… if there were 5-8 faculty that were really playing on a consistent, that would be just the right size. Also, 10 days seemed to be a little long. Maybe Wednesday through Friday (for 8 days) or Friday through Friday (for 6 days) plus that would give the weekend to work out administrative kinks. Of course, this timing was really not ideal at the end of the semester… consider October or February and these could even have a seasonal theme (Halloween, Valentines Day).
* Did playing the game give you ideas about gamifying your classroom? Yes. While maybe not formally gaming, I got some great ideas for my classes. I really liked the question about responding from a different perspective and I liked being asked to download an unknown app to use and critique. And while I use reacting to the past with an official Harvard Business case, I realized that I can easily create one of my own that may not be so grand in nature. Of course, it would be distance and that is much easier said than done. Lots of things to think about!
*Do you think you’ll change your behavior as you teach in the future because of anything that occurred during the game? Yes. This exercise has reminded me not to give up on being creative. I always want to be willing to try new things and I want to remain passionate about creating a fun, interesting and rewarding learning experience for my students. Thank yo for the reminder!
Hi Charla, I was also surprised at how the challenges and badges motivated me. I was also surprised at how getting to a point in the game that I did not feel I could keep up (finals week!!!) made me want to just give up completely because I felt so ‘out of the race’. I think this is a nice way to keep students on track, but I did not like that I felt I could not catch up when I got behind. And let’s face it, students have a life too and sometimes they have to put school on hold until the days they have set aside to participate – especially if they have more than one class. So I guess, this really made me feel like a student who has to juggle so many things in life – because it was finals week, I am finishing 2 of my own distance courses through UAF for this semester this week, I had other community based commitments this week, and I had extra fires to put out r/t student issues. Whew! I really could feel their anxiety!
1. What did you like about the game?
I enjoyed the break from other things I was doing. I also liked reading the postings from other players.
2. How we might improve the game if we tried it again in the future?
Some of the tasks were a little too complex for the amount of time I had to spend on this activity.
3. Did playing the game give you ideas about gamifying your classroom?
I did find some good ideas; however I don’t think that I would have called them games if the ideas had been presented in another format. I was skeptical about gaming in the college setting and how I would apply it to what I teach, but I have come away from this experience with a new respect for gamification.
4. Do you think you’ll change your behavior as you teach in the future because of anything that occurred during the game?
I could definitely see adding some fun games into my online courses.
What did you like about the game? I liked how it helped you keep track of what you needed to accomplish – this would help students keep track too. It was motivating to get assignments ‘checked off’.
How we might improve the game if we tried it again in the future? Do NOT have it during finals week – wow – that was really bad timing and was a real – DE-motivator. It also inhibited success right off the bat because you couldn’t meet one of the challenges to recruit other players. Then you felt like you were foolish to try to add something like this on to this week as well and it might’ve been saner to just not accept the challenge.
Did playing the game give you ideas about gamifying your classroom? yes – but I want to go back and review cause I didn’t have time to absorb them effectively.
Do you think you’ll change your behavior as you teach in the future because of anything that occurred during the game? Yes – but again was very frustrated that I couldn’t get completely immersed due to finals week!