Games Based Learning MOOC

Take a look at the Assignment Bank in ds106. Any assignments there that are games based or immersive? Do you get any ideas for your class? If so please share.

I looked at the Visual Assignments. There are a lot to choose from and although they look fun and engaging with lots of choice I don't see it as gamified. In order to be gamified I would need the feel of accomplishing one or some of the assignments for a purpose. Maybe to unlock other assignments or to master a skill or set of skills.

Now I only glanced in there so maybe I missed something in terms of the assignments being games based. I'm also not seeing where or how the assignments are immersive. How do I interact with others? There is an option to create tutorials to help others do the assignment and assignments are rated up to five stars.

I'd need to explore more deeply to get any ideas for my classes.

The whole concept behind DS106 seems gamified, with the implicit goal of "how much creative stuff can you do?" Both the Assignment Bank, and more directly The Daily Create support this with new challenges. The Daily Create is a bit more direct (and, I think, a bit more interesting) with an implicit goal of "how many days can you keep going?". The Assignments are a little less direct, but the star rating allows for "players" to try more difficult assignments as their abilities increase.

A direct way this my be useful in education is for ideas on assignments. The assignment bank is, as expected, kinda hit or miss. Some of the assignments look really neat, and others not so much. But, there are definitely some ideas there that could be turned into assignments for a variety of subjects. (Make a video about a science experiment, write the tweets of a famous historical figure, etc.) The Daily Creates could also be used as assignment ideas in a lot of cases.

Less directly, one could try to model the overall system used by DS106. If you're going to provide students with options on assignments, you could set something up like the assignment bank. Students could choose assignments to work on, and the "star" ratings could be used for both difficulty and "points" for completion. (So something with a 5-star rating would be very difficult, but also worth a lot of points. A 1-star might be very easy, but not worth many points.) You tell students what points they need to get a given grade, and let the choose how to get there.

The Daily Create idea could also be used in class, by having students do regular creative assignments. This could be something they do the first 15 minutes of every class, or once a week, or whatever. This is kinda what I've attempted to do with blogs, but could be even more structured by using class time, and with a set time-limit. (You have 20 minutes to come up with a game idea and pitch on "red". Go!)

I can see how doing as much creative stuff as you can, as a goal, is game-like, blueAppaloosa. And I like your idea for using the star ratings. I'm expecting to get a lot of ideas from my students to improve my own program. I will take their ideas and suggestions and incorporate them.

Having a daily create or even a create as much as you can type of project could serve as a year-long project or quest that kids can work on whenever they want. Giving them the choice to do it whenever they feel like or whenever they feel creative seems cool.

In looking at the assignment bank, I looked first to the Writing Assignments, only a total of seven have submitted assignments in the areas other than Poem Made with Twilight Zone Episode Titles, and there were seven in it. So these are, ". . . not the droids was looking for.

However, the one assignment, Write Your Way Into History, "Think of a historically significant event, and write a journal entry as if you traveled back in time to take place in it," would work well in my [i]Introduction to Chicano/a Studies class, or the Cultural Anthropology class or the Anthropology of Religion class.. I think in the Chicano/a Studies class it would be more effective if it was not a time but a time and a historical character interaction. I would love to see what my students would write if they sat down and had a drink with Zapata, on was in the court of Montezuma, or if they were talking to one of the lawyers on the Hernandez v Texas, a class apart, pivotal Mexican-American civil rights Supreme Court case.

In the Visual Assignments I can see myself doing the These are a few of my favorite things in any class.

In the Web Assignments, Significant Objects, it is as if it was "stolen" from my "Urban Archaeology Field Trip" as it is related to anthropology, I didn't have my students create a web page, but we did a Facebook album of this experience. In anthropology we would call this, "independent invention."

Here is what it says for the WEb Assignment, "Significant Objects, a literary and anthropological experiment devised by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, demonstrated that the effect of narrative on any given object’s subjective value can be measured objectively." The project involved finding low cost objects at garage sales and thrift stores and creating stories about them that might enhance their value, as proven in auctions on eBay.

See if you can replicate a web page of the same kind that includes both the artifact, a story, and make it look like some kind of auction site. "

Here is a link to look at the public Facebook album about my own project:

Urban Archaeology, Spring 2013

#8140577 EducatorAl wrote:

Now I only glanced in there so maybe I missed something in terms of the assignments being games based. I'm also not seeing where or how the assignments are immersive. How do I interact with others? There is an option to create tutorials to help others do the assignment and assignments are rated up to five stars.

I'd need to explore more deeply to get any ideas for my classes.

I didn't see any game based either, but like you I have not explored all the categories yet.

#8142357 EducatorAl wrote:

Having a daily create or even a create as much as you can type of project could serve as a year-long project or quest that kids can work on whenever they want. Giving them the choice to do it whenever they feel like or whenever they feel creative seems cool.

I kind of like that daily create, but I teach semester classes, and I might let them work in what I call "pods" that is a row of three students, we are in a computer room, to let them be creative on some kind of a project, this is one that I will need to think about more before I could really formalize an idea, but you got me thinking.