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

Friday March 24, 2023 at 1PM

Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator

Participants: Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO), Lilja Nielsen (KCC BIO), Tom Lavazzi (KCC English), Victoria Somoygi (LaGuardia ELA), Irina Newman (KCC English), Caroline Jedlicka (KCC Library), Monica Joseph (KCC Allied Health), Kathryn Giamo (KCC College Advancement)

• We began with Introductions and what participants have been working on/ are interested in.
• Participant interests include:
  • Working with Tale Blazer to create augmented reality games/ tours for classes and orientations
  • Using Kahoot! to create collaborative experiences by having students work in pairs.
  • Creating small games and activities for online classes
  • Getting ideas for games that aren’t “technology heavy” and will be accessible to students who may not be comfortable with computer programs or have access to wifi or other technology resources.
• Kathy introduced herself to let everyone know that there may be grants available to develop games at KCC and for GBL research. Please reach out to her for resources and ideas.
• We spoke a bit about augmented reality games and the Tale Blazer (taleblazer.org) app.
  • The block coding language is new and can be difficult to master.
  • Augmented reality games can have challenges with multi-floor indoor spaces, since X, Y coordinates are used, the Z-axis can be difficult to distinguish.
  • Tom suggested that perhaps having a different mini-game for each floor could help.
  • Caroline mentioned that Meta is has augmented reality and virtual reality software that could be helpful for her interests and non-programmers.
  • Kathy mentioned in the chat that wayfinding issues on campuses might be helped by augmented reality technology.
• We discussed net tools especially manipulatives.
  • Manipulatives can be used particularly with concepts that involve categories.
    • Classes of microbes
    • Types of tissues
    • Building a menu or treatment plan
    • Organizing an essay or part of speech
  • Flippity tools have an advantage that no coding or html is necessary, and they are free to create and use
  • Each time a student clicks the link to the flippity activity a “fresh” version is shown, which can make asynchronous collaboration and saving of their work difficult.
    • Students can upload screen captures to share their work
    • Possibly post on a class discussion board or show in an in-person class
    • Other flippity tools can be collaborated on at the spreadsheet level. For example having students contribute to a Mad Libs story or flashcard set by editing the source Google sheet together.
  • We also discovered that by putting an image url in the flippity manipulatives Google sheets space, the manipulative “card” can be a picture.
  • Grace demonstrated how manipulatives can also be made using Google Jamboard and “sticky notes”.
• Discussed the use of simple mechanics like role playing to make a lesson more game-like.
• We went around the “room” to discuss our “why” and “how” for using/creating games for our classrooms. Responses included:
  • Reinforce lessons in a fun way
  • Teaching a lesson with a game, followed by an assessment activity/game
  • Want students to be able to experiment with different styles/solutions to a prompt or problem
    • Randomizers can be helpful for this
  • Low stakes exercises
  • Keep students awake/engaged with each other in new ways
• Victoria shared an activity she made for her ESL classes with flippity manipulatives using sentence structure.
• We found you could include images in flippity manipulatives.
• Lilja shared her use of Jeopardy! Style trivia games.
• Irina shared card games website.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.