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Meeting Minutes 11-20-20
Game Based Learning (GBL) Faculty Interest Group (FIG) – Notes from Meeting
Friday, Nov 20, 2020, 12:40pm via Zoom
Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator
Participants: Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO), Christina Colon (KCC BIO), Amy Haas (KCC ENG), Anna Karpathakis (KCC BEH), Lorraine LaPrade (KCC LIBR), Kathleen Offenholley (BMCC MAT), Mary Ortiz (KCC BIO), Michael Ortiz (KCC BEH)
Meeting began at 12:40pm.
- Grace welcomed everyone.
- Grace discussed her Escape Room for Microbiology and how her students enjoyed it and learned micro at the same time.
- Kathleen shared that she did a Kahoot! with her class and had a good experience. It was more of a lesson and less like a quiz. Because it was a game, students paid attention to why they got something wrong. She did it live. The students are begging her for games.
- Grace shared “Sets”, where you must categorize things.
- Christina shared that she uses a game where the students are put into the role of fisherman. When the student is the fisherman, their mindset changes, and they deplete the ocean before the game ends. They do not realize what they are doing when they are doing it. Christina asked if there is a way for students to be in breakout groups to do this. It was mentioned that if they had a Google Doc, they may be able to do this. Grace googled over-fishing, and the Cloud Institute came up (but it runs on Adobe Flash, which will soon no longer be supported). Role playing can be a real eye opener for students. Grace mentioned going over HTML5 next semester as a possible replacement for Adobe Flash. There is no easy solution.
- Michael shared using Goldfish snacks in class and learning patience.
- Christina shared she likes to give students activities to do that they can do with their families. These can provide new learning opportunities for all ages.
- Grace has her students play at home. She asks them what happened and has them share out.
- Kathleen shared how a friend of hers uses Monopoly to teach about inequality. Christina mentioned an SNL skit on Monopoly.
- Grace shared that we can modify a game for our lessons. We can also rig a game to demo a concept (ex. bankruptcy to demo inequality). We can also use roles to solve problems (ex. Medical Clinic with the professor as the patient and the students play the roles to diagnose and treat). Discussion followed.
- Kathleen shared a game: https://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle . It is a challenging daily puzzle that tells you why you are wrong. It is collaborative. She did a demo. Some of us tried it.
- Another related game was mentioned: Google Sets with Friends. This one does not tell you why you are wrong. Start with easy games. “Brain Warm Ups”
- Grace shared labeling games: purposegames.com . She demoed with a motor neuron. It is timed and a good warm-up. She also showed one with the carbon-oxygen cycle. This is like the “Do Now” exercises we did in high school.
- Michael shared using Jeopardy in class.
- Grace mentioned this is the last meeting for this semester and asked about interests for Spring 2021. She will gather resources in the winter. Christina asked for more focus on games that teach things we cannot learn otherwise. We also talked about making an Escape Room tutorial and learning by doing.
- Kathleen mentioned that the CUNY Games may do something over the winter. Join the CUNY Games Network by going on the CUNY Commons to find and join it. The CUNY Games Conferences were discussed (they are great; “What’s Your Game Plan?” – a game to learn how to make games by Joe Bisz, who is planning to do this online – should be interesting)
- A library in Pennsylvania has a Hogwarts Escape Room (it is Google Docs based).
- Everyone thanked Grace for facilitating this FIG.
- Grace will send out the end of semester survey. Please fill it out and return.
- Meeting ended at 1:40pm.
Notes respectfully submitted by Mary Theresa Ortiz, KCC Bio
Meeting Minutes 10-30-20
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.
- Grace welcomed everyone.
- 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.
- 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.
- Kelly introduced herself and shared that she is looking for ideas to keep groups engaged in her accounting class.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- Grace does something similar where she has the BIO50/51 students find something made with microbes.
- Grace shared iNaturalist for identifying plants/animals Christina Colon has shared in another FIG.
- 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.
- Grace shared Up Goer 5. It uses simple words to describe hard concepts.
- Grace suggested keeping the number of new things each semester low to prevent confusion among the students. A discussion of Discussion Boards followed.
- Amy has students create a business with a name, product, etc.
- Next meeting: Fri Nov 20, 2020 at 12:40pm via Zoom.
- 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
- We also discussed “iCivics”, an easy to use activities website for educators (was shown at the CUNY Games Conference).
- There will be no CUNY Games Conference this year.
- 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
- At our next meeting there will be more discussion on Escape Rooms.
- Meeting ended at 1:20pm.
Notes respectfully submitted by Mary Theresa Ortiz, KCC Bio
Meeting Minutes from 9-25-2020
Game Based Learning (GBL) Faculty Interest Group (FIG) – Notes from Meeting
Friday, Sep 25, 2020, 12pm via Zoom
Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator
Participants: Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO), Christina Colon (KCC BIO), Daniel Kane (KCC TAT), Tom Lavazzi (KCC ENG), Elizabeth Mulligan (KCC BIO), Lilja Nielsen (KCC BIO), Kathleen Offenholley (BMCC MAT), Cynthia Olvina (KCC MENTAL HEALTH), Mary Ortiz (KCC BIO), Michael Ortiz (KCC BEH), Nancy Rowland (KCC SURG TECH)
Meeting began at 12:00pm.
- Grace welcomed everyone. We did introductions because we had some new people join.
- Grace summarized from the pre-semester surveys what we all hope to get out of this FIG. Basically, we want to find ways and get ideas to engage and inspire our students.
- We discussed Kahoot, a low stakes game we can use in class.
- Daniel shared eSports, a competitive (for scholarships) game (like Fortnight).
- We discussed that many of us are teaching asynchronously so it is hard to do games online. We should try things, and if they don’t work , we don’t have to do them again.
- Tom shared a game he uses called McDonald’s Game (https://molleindustria.org/mcdonalds/). It teaches market structure. It is from Mollein Industrial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molleindustria )
- We can use Google to search for videos and/or simulations for use in our classes. These are not games, but they can be interactive to engage the students.
- The CDC website has “Solve the Outbreak” that can be used to teach epidemiology.
- Christina has tried to come up with activities that do not require technology, such as creating an organism like Mary did in class.
- Kathleen shared a synchronous game. Count to 10. The moderator starts with zero, then one-by-one the class starts counting, beginning with one. If two people say a number at the same time, you must start all over again. It’s a great icebreaker. It’s hard than it sounds. We tried it and only got to 7. This could be modified (ex. use a Fibonacci sequence).
- Grace shared an asynchronous game she made using the Bitmoji app. She used Google Slides and imported as PDF or PPT. She did this in Google Classroom. She had a green board with the meeting agenda on it. You can make it look like a classroom in a more interactive way.
- Grace shared that next time we will look at Escape Room ( Harry Potter, Dewey Decimal System).
- Grace shared that in Microbiology she does patient diagnosis and plans to set up a virtual clinic.
- Grace shared Google Slides in Google Chrome and showed how to do this. We can set up a “classroom” with “walls” and a “floor”. She went through how to set up the slides. We can also use Google Forms with Google Slides and Google Classroom. You can set up an escape room, a virtual lab, a business, a multi-step problem, etc. with this. You can download Google Suite and it has Slides, Classroom, etc. Here’s a resource:
https://docs.google.com/presentation
Look for “google slides escape room template”. PPT Jeopardy has templates, too. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Google has a “How to make a Google active classroom slide” video. See the Google Escape Room topic in this. Discussion followed. Start off simple and then make it more complex.
- Beth shared “Badges”. How do you reward students virtually? She uses achievement badges. On Blackboard in Course Tools, go to Achievements and then “Custom”. Beth walked us through the process to create and use badges. We can use these to lighten our workload. Maybe we can put ourselves of the line by doing something whimsical if students get X number of badges, such as singing or playing he guitar, or wearing a funny hat. Discussion followed.
- Grace mentioned Up-goer 5. It can be used to explain complex concepts in common language. Discussion followed.
- For the next meeting, if we have items to discuss, send them to Grace. At the next meeting Grace will try Escape Room with us.
- The next meeting with be 10/30/20 at 12:30PM.
- Meeting ended at 1pm.
Notes respectfully submitted by Mary Theresa Ortiz, KCC Bio