Tag Archives: wcldportfoliopilot

Thoughts on HCI Design Innovations in Entertainment Software

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Found this in the methodology section of the paper listed above:

“First, we played the games, both as individuals and groups, and kept diaries of our game playing experiences. Second, we held group analysis sessions for each game, where we cataloged its interaction techniques, critiqued its interface, and looked at each main element of the game’s design. Third, we observed (in person) how players other than ourselves used the interfaces, and watched (on-line) the text conversations of groups playing on-line games. Finally, we collected game reviews and discussions from review sites.”

Sounds like one way of getting more experience capturing information. From my perspective to move forward in this group, we need to have more hands on experience with games. Thoughts?

Reflection 3/28/11-4/1/11

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For this year, my plan is to reflect on each week.

This week I felt like I was finally coming up for air.

I found myself tying up loose ends on courses that are running for summer. Glad to meet with John Buckwalter to discuss these items. Looking forward to a great summer semester! Some of the tasks included:

  • preparing the course announcement pages for courses running in summer
  • setting the peer evals for summer courses

I also had a chance to spend more time with the Pearson Learning Management System. I was charged with looking at some of the administrative aspects of the tool. I was glad to have the assistance of Seth Morgan to help with items that I couldn’t test. This LMS appears to have many great characteristics that help to track student progress.

Another reason that I was able to exhale is that I got a chance to reflect more on the past year. This was a productive year for me; I hope to build on that by reflecting more on what I’m doing and where I’m going.

The Gaming, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds group is reaching a milestone. We will soon have the white paper completed. It was been an informative start to what I hope to be an exciting new phase to my design career. Adding these elements to courses is not only exciting but can make a better teaching/learning experience for students.

This week marked the end of the revision of AGBIO 520: Agricultural Biosecurity: Protecting a Key Infrastructure. I enjoyed this process because I met with the instructor on a weekly basis face-to-face. Many times working in a virtual world I don’t get this opportunity. I learned alot about the topic but also I was glad to have the chance to see the instructor’s enthusiasm for the subject. I’m looking forward to more collaboration with this program.

Finally, I met with the Business Literacy Development Group (BLDG). This meeting was a step forward because we had the opportunity to build more relationships and learn more about what others are doing in the organization. I plan to place comments on Patty’s blog about this.

Mission Turfgrass

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The following: http://elearning-examples.s3.amazonaws.com/MissionTurfgrass/player.html (Thorn, 2010) was mentioned on the LD Lounge listserv, so I thought that I’d take a look and reflect a bit.

Summary of the game: This game is about lawn care.  It provides the player with the setting of being on a recon mission to protect lawns. There are 4 objectives:

  • Types of Grass
  • Types of Weeds
  • Tools and Equipment
  • Lawn Care and Maintenance

Before the player goes through each section, they receive some sort of item for his/her rucksack. Then, it’s time to go through a training. The types of grass section has different types of grass with characteristics and properties included. The types of weeds section requires the player to select the correct weed from its name. The tools and equipment includes images of floating items with their description. The lawn care and maintenance section covers a few tips on how best to take care of a lawn. Upon completion of the training, there is a review section that allows for the printing out of a certificate of completion.

Reflection:  The overall functionality of the training was great but there were a few items that I would adjust to make the game better. After going through each section, I automatically was given praise even though I was reading and not doing anything or making any decisions. Also I didn’t find a strong purpose for the items in my ruck sack. If I were to revise this activity, I would make an activity as the center of  the training rather than making the training the center of the learning. If the player has the opportunity to make decisions, they will have a stronger sense of how knowledge about each of the categories applies to lawn care and maintenance.

To see other thoughts about this game go to this blog post: http://www.articulate.com/blog/find-out-why-kevin-thorn-earned-the-2010-silver-guru-award/

Nuggethead Studios (2010). “Mission: Turfgrass (online course).” Thorn.

TLT Symposium 03.26.11 – Keynote Clay Shirky

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Cognitive Surplus, Collaboration, and Social Learning

Excellent Keynote! Here’s a video of his presentation

Clay’s point: Being embedded in any community is greater than just an egocentric act.
My reflection: There are so many who are plugged into the community, but might it not be for egocentric reasons?

Clay’s quote: “Mixing of the serious and frivolous is something that we need to get used to.”
My reflection: This really hit home for me. Before come to World Campus Learning Design, I wasn’t much into the social media scene. When I got here, I got a facebook account and a twitter account. Facebook is definitely more manageable for me. I stopped even looking at my twitter feed because it was so difficult for me to stay on top of it. I started to feel like I need to adjust my filter. How much am I throwing away just because of a few irritating posts.

Clay’s quote: “Publish then filter.”
My reflection: This short statement says so much with so little. Putting out a small statement allows for the community to add to make a complete statement. I struggle with this, and it holds me back from capturing ideas.

Clay’s quote: “It’s not about adding a few tools to the ecosystem; it’s about changing the ecosystem.”
My reflection: This is something that is so difficult to do. The past and legacy often inhibits us from starting fresh. The items of legacy need to be rethought. But removing the past can make for so much more work. Not sure how to learn from the past without taking along the pieces that hold us down.

Reflection on EGC Brownbag on Educational Puzzles

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On March 17, 2011, I attended the session on educational puzzles.  Here is a link to the EGC to provide a bit more info: http://gaming.psu.edu/node/1082

As you can tell by the date, I’m a bit behind…

Definitely an interesting session that introduced puzzles as a way to make bland assignments much more interesting. 

One idea that resonated with me was how puzzles could be used in science and math to help students understand that it is okay to make mistakes. In many science and math courses, the idea is that the instructor as the master go through problem after problem, perfectly manipulating the expressions to come to a specific answer. In real experience, problems aren’t necessarily that straightforward and may require some lateral thinking to come up with a possible answer. Puzzles could be the perfect solution to this dilemma.

TED Talk: In Praise of Slowness

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I attended the TED Talk recently to view the following video:

Definitely worth watching!

The pace of our lives tends to be too quick.  It’s hard to reflect, learn, and enjoy our lives.  The story about the bed time stories struck a cord with me.  I found myself more purposely taking my time to enjoy reading bed time stories to my kids after watching this.  I’m hoping to be better with this as I move forward.

Name one thing you are taking away from this pilot experience

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This post is in response to a note sent out by Patty Gruneberg,

“Name one thing you are taking away from this pilot experience or talk about your plans for using your ePortfolio.”

One thing that I’ll take away from the pilot is the need to reflect.  After graduating from college, I got a Franklin Planner.  In it, I would place my appointments, but I spent quite a bit of time journaling.  Within a few years, I moved to a more electronic solution of calendaring and had also dropped the journal piece.  This pilot has reminded me about how important it is to reflect.  I’m hoping to bring that with me past the pilot.

How Much Does a Teacher Mean?

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I have been meaning to post a blog for several weeks but have been so busy.  Finally today, I realized that I just need to do it. 

There has been quite a bit said and written by just about everyone with an opinion about teachers and education.  There is so much evaluation going on to see if students are learning.  But I want to talk about the intangibles.  Things that cannot be measured.  Here is a story about a recently deceased teacher of mine and how he impacted my life even though I haven’t actually had contact with him for more than 20 years.

At the beginning of Feb, I was notified by a facebook friend that my 5th grade Math/Social Studies teacher and later JV baseball coach Mr. Hege had passed away.  Here’s a link to his obit:
http://obits.pennlive.com/obituaries/pennlive/obituary.aspx?n=stephen-k-hege&pid=148277853

Notice that it says that he was a teacher for 39 years and had just retired after last school year.  If you visit the guest book, there are 68 entries.  He will be missed. 

Mr. Hege was a mountain of a man with even a larger heart.  This was especially true for elementary age kids.  His 6’4″ large frame and bellowing voice made an impression on all of us.  But what was his lasting impression on us? 

As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Hege taught math during an important part of my school career.  He used traditional methods, but he also sent us to the board to work out problems so that he could give us pointers.  He also played math games with us, and they helped to improve my confidence.  Later in life, I went to college to become a secondary math teacher and did that for 15 years where I impacted and was impacted by numerous lives.  That little seed that Mr. Hege planted led to so much. 

Mr. Hege also brought history to life.  We always enjoyed his class and it led to bigger and better things.  When I graduated from high school, I received the History award as the strongest student in my graduating class. 

Is this just a coincidence? 

Almost everyday in 5th grade at recess after lunch, Mr. Hege played 1-3 basketball with myself and 2 other of my classmates.  The three of us won our share of games and so did he.  We were always impressed at his ability to dunk, only to find out later that the rims were only 8 feet tall :).  In Middle School and High School, I played basketball and ended up as a co-captain my senior year and won the defensive player of the year for my team.  Later, I coached 7th graders. 

How much of an impact could a 5th grade teacher have? 

In high school, I played baseball as well.  As a freshman and sophomore, I played on the JV team coached by Mr. Hege.  There were about 10 second baseman and I was one of them.  I’ll never forget the day as a freshman that Mr. Hege let me pinch hit which gave me my chance.  I ended up tripling and breaking the starting line up.  As time move on, the other coach of the team felt it necessary to yell at me constantly to make me better.  My teammates and Mr. Hege knew this wasn’t the best way to motivate me, so they intervened.  I specifically remember hearing the other coach saying that he wanted to pull me from the game, but Mr. Hege believed in me and kept me in.  By the end of my time as a JV, I set the record for hits.  Without Mr. Hege’s belief in me and encouragement, I would not have been able to accomplish what I did.  To this day, I love baseball and am passing this on to my kids and hope to coach them someday.

Mr. Hege’s impact went beyond the class and playing fields.  He also participated in local play productions.  My first memory of Mr. Hege was when he played the Giant in Jack in the Beanstalk when I was in 3rd grade.  I later played a part in the school production as a 5th grader.

So how does a teacher mean?  I don’t think that there is a test that can measure the impact that Mr. Hege and the rest of the teachers that I had had on me.  I’m just so glad for all that they did to build the future

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.