Monthly Archives: January 2011

Reflection for Educational Gaming Brownbag: Evaluation of a Purposeful Game for Risk Analysis Education

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Today, I attended a session on gaming.  Here is a link to information about the program: http://tlt.its.psu.edu/about/news/2011/egcbrownbagrisk. 

Excellent session!  So glad that I attended.  They even provided lunch!  Too bad I didn’t realize that :(.

The game itself was a card game that can be found and purchased here: http://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/fault-tree-poker-2.1.

My purposes for going to the session were:

  • Involvement in gaming, simulations, and Virtual Worlds Research Team for World Campus Learning Design
  • Position as Instructional Designer for IST World Campus classes
  • My personal interest in probability and statistics

Here are a few points that I’d like to share:

  • I was interested in how much Dr. McGill was positively influenced by the IRB process that he had to go through, especially since we have been discussing this very topic during our Gaming, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds meetings.  At the least as before we have students user-test our games, we will have the opportunity to reflect on what we are trying to accomplish.
  • The game didn’t perform as well as the lecture in terms of students’ performance on the post assessment.  This makes sense to me for several reasons.  I don’t think that games alone or lectures alone or any teaching strategy alone will accomplish the most.  It is the interweaving of appropriate strategies by a savvy instructor that accomplishes this.  My guess is that the assessment was more of a traditional assessment that lends itself to assessing what has been shared in a lecture.  If the assessment had been a real-world assessment, then my guess is that there may have been different results.
  • Dr. McGill talked about a “weekend effect,” wherein students who played the game as a learning strategy did better on an additional post-test that had been given the next session.  It was as if students had mysteriously gained more knowledge.  A student from the course who had also attended the session gave us a clue about why this had happened.  After the class, students from each class began to talk.  Students who had attended the lecture were curious about the “fun” that the other class was having.  During these discussions, ideas were clarified that resulted in higher scores for the game players.  This is another point for constructivism.  Students learn socially and need to reflect on their work.  It is during this time that real learning happens.

What’s Really Behind the Answer?

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I had an interesting teaching and learning opportunity with Simeon, my 5 year old son, last night at dinner.  We were in a discussion about families.  And Simeon was confusing his aunt’s relationship with his mother.  He was calling his aunt, “Mommy’s Mommy.” 

My wife and I attempted to clarify the relationship.  And I as the teacher/instructional designer started to assess whether our attempts were effective.  I asked him to complete an analogy: 

Mommy is to Aunt Devy as You (Simeon) is to…

It took Simeon a moment or so and he said, “Noah.”  Honestly, I didn’t think that Simeon would get the right answer and was preparing to clarify further.  Not even sure why I chose to assess him at all let alone use an analogy.  But on instinct, I told him that he was right and asked Simeon how he got his answer [Guess that’s the math teacher in me looking for steps;)]  Simeon’s answer to that question was revealing, “Mommy and Aunt Devy are both girls and Noah and I are boys.  And Mommy and Aunt Devy are big and Noah and I are little.” 

As the teacher in this scenario, I was biased and expected that if I received a certain result that it would because of a specific cause.  It was a great reminder to me of how important it is  to move beyond the answer to questions.  Digging deeper to find out  what a student is really thinking must happen in order for the teacher to know the student and adjust their own thinking to be more effective.