Friday, July 7, 2017

Put me in, Coach! – Gaming, e-Learning, and Web 2.0


Today, as I was looking for articles on game-based learning, I started thinking about our class discussions. The idea of Web 2.0, from what we’ve explored so far, seems like it lends itself to online education in a really brilliant way. User-generated content, discourse communities, networking - so many of the foundational elements of engaging online classrooms are at the heart of Web 2.0. 

But what about gaming strategies?

Although I work closely with instructional designers, I don’t have a background in e-learning games, and I’ll admit most of it is rather foreign to me. So far, I’ve relied pretty heavily on my training in curriculum and instruction to help faculty incorporate more competition-style learning into their online classes. I often talk about using badges, resource scavenger hunts, best/most discussions, synchronous Kahoot! quizzes – those types of activities that encourage participation and completing assignments on time. Since we have multimedia specialists, I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about using programs and apps to facilitate game-style learning, until today when I was asked some very specific questions in a meeting. 

So I did a little research. I felt like a lot of what I was finding would fall more into Web 3.0. There was a lot on adaptive and machine learning being used for educational gaming, which is really neat, but doesn’t seem to meet the criteria we use to classify Web 2.0. Most of it isn’t user-generated and it doesn’t involve authentically connecting with others. Again, though, this is not my area, so I’m curious about your experiences with the gamification of learning. 

Since we also talked about crowdsourcing this week, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to ask the audience. Do you have some examples of game-based learning that fit more into the collaborative environment of our beloved Web 2.0?


No comments:

Post a Comment