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

Wednesday, September 28^th, 2022 at 12PM

Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator

Participants: Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO), Mary Ortiz (KCC BIO), Thomas Lavazzi (KCC ENG), Marta Cabral (CSI Curriculum and Instruction), Victoria Somogyi (LGA ESL and ELA), Felix Yusupov (KCC Flex Math)

Meeting began at 12:00PM.

1. Participants introduced themselves briefly.
2. We discussed how participants have used games in their classes, and what they would like to discuss in the FIG this semester.
   • Mary spoke about a game in her statistics class, where she gives students a scenario and they work as a team to determine if it meets the conditions for a binomial distribution.
   • Victoria spoke about how she uses progressive stories (where one student adds on to another’s work) to practice grammar. Each different, classes are very engaged in the game, but each class is different.  Games she uses work well in both online, hybrid and in person.
   • Marta spoke about how she organized her class into a semester long narrative “adventure”, based on a presentation by C. Stallard at a previous CUNY games conference. Her students seem motivated by competition and the narrative, which resembles a quest involving developing a curriculum in early childhood education.
   • Felix introduced us to KCC Flex and the immersion program, with math remediation no longer being a separate course. He is looking to use online games and tools to supplement his course and help students practice math skills.
3. We then discussed using a “big” vs. “small” approach in using games in a course.
   • The small approach uses a game to demonstrate or explore a single concept or group of set of learning goals.
   • Larger approaches might include introducing a multi-level quest, or gamification of the class by accumulating points or having earned certificates or badges to measure student progress.
4. Victoria shared the use of “Mad Libs”- type activities in her course. These are also available as an online activity using tools at flippity.net.
   • Blanks and stories are easily altered to explore writing mechanics (verbs, adjectives, present tense, etc), or other subject matter by asking the players to contribute numbers (for a quantitative problem or scenario), or vocabulary words. You might then ask students to read the story back and decide if the story makes sense as written, and then “correct”, improve or “solve” the story.
5. We discussed student-generated content, which can range from creating a Kahoot! or Nearpod game, or creating a portion or entire game to be played in person. Marta has used these strategies in her classes.
6. The meeting ended at 1:05PM and we decided on the following future meeting dates (please contact Grace for Zoom information, if you are interested in joining a future meeting.
   • Wednesday, October 26^th at 12PM
   • Wednesday, November 30^th at 12PM

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