Kingsborough Community College

The City University of New York

Game Based Learning (GBL) Faculty Interest Group (FIG) – Notes from First Meeting

Thursday, March 30, 2017, 12:40pm, M391

Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator

Participants:    Grace Axler-DiPerte, Loretta Brancaccio-Taras, Mimi Fierle, Janine Graziano-King, Mary Ortiz, Shoshanna Marcus

1. Grace gave background on how this GBL FIG came to be:
   1. Grace and Mary had attended the Game Conference at CUNY Graduate Center.
   2. Grace’s original idea for a computer game simulation.
   3. At the CUNY Graduate Center conference we saw analog games.
2. Grace posed the question, “Have you used games before?”, and everyone contributed to the conversation:
   1. Janine – No, she teaches in an IS link and is focusing this semester on “Fairness, Justice, Forgiveness”. She wants to make the class engaging and creative.
   2. Loretta – has a friend in Wisconsin who has created a nitrogen cycle game, but it is too complex.
   3. Mimi – uses games a lot in every class. She has Recreation Therapy, Physical Education and Sports Management students. She uses applied learning and ice-breaking activities. She places course content questions on a beach ball and the students toss the ball and answer the questions. This can be used as an icebreaker. Think how you can fit course content in. Her classes are 1, 2 or 3 hours.
   4. Shoshanna – has never used games, but wants to incorporate them into her classes. How can you put course content into a game? She explained the game “Sets”.
   5. Grace – used games in BIO11 with nerves similar to the game, Sets.
3. Grace shared a list of links with the group.
4. Grace shared the Joe Bisz cards and explained how to use them to create a game.
   1. Mimi uses role-playing for “come to my camp”, a game where students have to convince parents to send their children to a particular camp.
   2. Grace shared that Carlton College gives prizes of geodes in the Geology Department.
   3. Janine uses team-based learning prizes (ex. pencils for last place team, pencils and erasers for next team, pencils and erasers and pen for the second place team and pencils and erasers and pen and post its for the first place team).
   4. Shoshanna wants to do a “reading programming” game.
   5. Janine talked about fairness (equity vs. equality). Maybe have two teams with opposite views and have a referee to score. Maybe have more than one referee. Give one person a scenario to act out and students guess the motivation. Needed: a well-ordered problem, how to score, how to end the game.
5. Grace – games are and active learning tool. She explained how Apples-to-Apples works and went through how to use the cards.
6. Mary – provided the clock-chiming problem and told about the game “Rush Hour”.
7. Games – how long should they be? How complicated? They can be simple.
8. Our next meeting: Thursday, April 27, 2017 at 12:40pm in M391. Bring a concept for a game.

Notes respectfully submitted by Mary Theresa Ortiz