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

Friday, Oct 30, 2020, 12:40pm via Zoom

Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator

Participants:    Kelly Amoroso (KCC CTR ECON WKFRC DEV), Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO), Christina Colon (KCC BIO), Amy Haas (KCC ENG), Daniel Kane (KCC TAT), Anna Karpathakis (KCC BEH), Lorraine LaPrade (KCC LIBR), Tom Lavazzi (KCC ENG), Lilja Nielsen (KCC BIO), Kathleen Offenholley (BMCC MAT), Mary Ortiz (KCC BIO), Michael Ortiz (KCC BEH)

Meeting began at 12:40pm.

1. Grace welcomed everyone.
2. It was mentioned that soon Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash as of 01/2021. Some online simulations and games may no longer work.
3. Grace shared “What if” that she does on Discussion Board using joints. Students have a joint, say how it moves and what it does.  Then they have to say how it would be affected if the joint were changed.  Example: Ball and socket joint à hinge joint.  She also uses this with skin: find a product at home, state its claim, and state if you think the claim is valid and why.
4. Kelly introduced herself and shared that she is looking for ideas to keep groups engaged in her accounting class.
5. Grace was requested to and did show everyone Kahoot. There is a free basic option, or you can pay a fee for the deluxe version.  The cost to students is $0.  Grace shared her screen with Kahoot.  She has done this synchronously, but this semester she is doing it asynchronously.  Students compete and use an alternate name generated by Kahoot (the names generated by Kahoot are different each time for each student).  We saw Grace’s home screen called, “My Kahoots”.  There is an option with ready-made Kahoots.  There are Accounting ones, so Grace selected “Accounting 101”.  You can duplicate this, so it appears in your Kahoots.  Editing can be done, and it is easy.  Grace showed us how to use this (add questions, add pictures, add graphs).  When you are done, click “Done”, “Share”, “Play Now” or “Assign”.  Then test it.  Grace has the students send her a screen shot of their results.  In “Create”, you can see what students had differently.  Grace has received positive feedback from her students.  You can experiment with this.  You can send the link to the Kahoot you create in an email or in assignments.
6. Grace showed us “Treat Trivia” Kahoot she created to demo with us. It took her ½ hour to create.  There are quiz questions, a word cloud, and sorting questions.  You can use these to teach synchronously and/or with teams.  The Classic is individual.  To join, use the PIN with Kahoot.it.  We all got in and played the 10 multiple choice questions.  Feedback included: Fun, Cool, Excellent.  You can use this to teach synchronously or assign it asynchronously.
7. Grace shared her Discussion Board game. For example, for the unit on skin, choose a product in your home that makes a claim, discuss the ingredients, and relate to the structure of the skin.  Student responses must agree or disagree.  Have an aspect of choice and challenging another answer or use role plays.  Give students an example to help them.
8. Kathleen shared a game she uses in her math class. Students must find something in their home to do with fractions (ex. collection of 8 perfumes) or find something in the shape of a triangle and measure the sides or find something with the Golden Ratio (Fibonacci).
9. Grace does something similar where she has the BIO50/51 students find something made with microbes.
10. Grace shared iNaturalist for identifying plants/animals Christina Colon has shared in another FIG.
11. Amy shared that she uses YouTube videos. Students view them and then comment on them.  She creates a table for the students to put their answers in to help them respond.  Discussion followed.
12. Grace shared Up Goer 5. It uses simple words to describe hard concepts.
13. Grace suggested keeping the number of new things each semester low to prevent confusion among the students. A discussion of Discussion Boards followed.
14. Amy has students create a business with a name, product, etc.
15. Next meeting: Fri Nov 20, 2020 at 12:40pm via Zoom.
16. We discussed Molleindustria, who makes the McDonald’s Game, and “Coffee Shop”. The web sites are: https://molleindustria.org/mcdonalds/ and https://coolmathgames.com/0-coffee-shop
17. We also discussed “iCivics”, an easy to use activities website for educators (was shown at the CUNY Games Conference).
18. There will be no CUNY Games Conference this year.
19. Grace will post a video on the Commons on how to do an Escape Room (the first one she did took her 8 hours to put together). She made an Escape Room called, “KCC Clinic”.  At our next meeting, she will go through her clinic with us.  She did it briefly with us today. It is a Virtual Escape Room.  Here is the link for the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiKkmRdQ8ac

20. At our next meeting there will be more discussion on Escape Rooms.
21. Meeting ended at 1:20pm.

Notes respectfully submitted by Mary Theresa Ortiz, KCC Bio

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