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Meeting Minutes 05/06/2022

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

Friday, May 6th, 2022, 1:50pm via Zoom

Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator

Participants: Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO), Lilja Neilsen (KCC BIO), Mary Ortiz (KCC BIO), Tom Lavazzi (KCC ENG), Amy Haas (KCC Business)

Meeting began at 1:50pm.

  1. The CUNY Games Network hosted a second, “First Fridays” Idea Exchange event immediately prior to this meeting.
    1. The next event is on June 3rd, 2022 at noon. You can get information by joining the CUNY Games Network mailing list.  More information can be found here: https://games.commons.gc.cuny.edu/  and here: https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/games-teaching-and-learning/ .
  2. We continued to work on our collaborative escape room in our privately shared google drive.
  3. The discussion focused on the settings for branched decision making and giving targeted feedback to a player, based on their response using a Google Form.
  4. Amy shared an Escape Room she created for her accounting class, and we worked on troubleshooting the settings so students would be sent to a particular section, or back to the main room when needed.
  5. Discussion of topics for next semester include:
    1. Continuing with Escape Room Design
    2. Working on ideas for Student-Generated games for formative or summative assessments.
  6. Post semester surveys were sent via email.
  7. An example of an escape room generated using Google Forms and Slides can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/y5ry2zdy
  8. Meetings will resume in the Fall of 2022. Please contact Grace for more information.

Meeting Minutes 4-08-2022

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

Friday, April 8th, 2022, 1:50pm via Zoom

Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator

Participants: Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO), Lilja Neilsen (KCC BIO), Christina Colon (KCC BIO), Tom Lavazzi (KCC ENG), Amy Haas (KCC Business)

Meeting began at 1:50pm.

  • We began with a review of how the semester is going:
    • The James Goetz Memorial Photo Essay Contest is now open for entries.
    • Amy mentioned she found a good online tool for making crossword puzzles, that students can do entirely online.
      • https://crosswordlabs.com/
      • Is free, and very simple to make a crossword
      • Students can submit a screenshot of their work for credit
      • Has response validation so students know when they have the correct answer
      • Fun review of vocabulary
      • Can also collect clues from students to make a student generated crossword, or have students make a crossword for their classmates to solve.
    • Tom mentioned that he is working on a new tool to help students become immersed in sentence diagramming.
  • We worked on how to set up Groups in Blackboard for a more collaborative environment.
  • We continued our work on Escape Rooms, working on the folder in Google Drive (contact Grace for the link).
    • Discussed using Escape Rooms in teams. We think it might best work synchronously, rather than asynchronously when working as a group.
    • Went through set up of the “room” or Google Slide to include links to “locks” or Google Forms, as well as instructions for players of your “room”
    • Instructions can be made as a Google Doc, another slide, or even a fun video that goes with your theme or lesson.
    • Not all clues/locks need to be Google forms.
      • Ciphers, webpages or videos can also contain information or clues to unlock your room.
      • You can make fake text messages, newspaper articles, or even receipts using tools available on the internet, and these can serve as clues or devices to add drama and interest to your room.
    • We went through an example of a branched choice with feedback in Google Forms.
    • Some effective escape rooms may be entirely in Google Forms without a slide “room”
    • For our next meeting, each participant has been asked to try and make a “lock” in the Google Slide, or Google Forms. It need not be elaborate, and at our next meeting on May 6th, 2022, we will put the locks together to make our final “door” to escape the room.
  • Meeting ended at 2:50PM

Meeting Minutes 03-18-22

Game Based Learning (GBL) Faculty Interest Group (FIG)

Friday, Mar 18, 2022, 1:50pm via Zoom

Grace Axler-DiPerte, Facilitator

Participants: Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO), Lilja Neilsen (KCC BIO), Mary Ortiz (KCC BIO), Christina Colon (KCC BIO) Victoria Somogyi (LGA; ENG), Olga Kagan (SPS), Tamika Twiggs-Jennings (KCC Continuing Education)

Meeting began at 1:50pm.

  1. Recap of the CUNY Games Conference 8.0 which occurred on 1/27 and 1/28/2022, via Zoom. The program can be viewed here: https://games.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cgc2022/
    1. Highlights included a rapid version of “What’s Your Game Plan?” designed by Joe Bisz, Designing for HyFlex, and Universal Design in Gaming. There were also idea exchanges surrounding virtual escape rooms, and mini-games.
    2. The CUNY Games Network will be hosting “First Friday” Idea Exchange events. The theme will be “Bring What’s Broken” on April 1st, 2022.  Bring your “broken” classroom activities and discuss with others on how to “fix” them using game mechanics. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqdu-grzwsHtFriR56YgdvoFGvJYiqznn5
  2. Tamika shared ways she uses games like Minecraft to teach elementary students sustainability. Playing in create mode to design, with unlimited access to resources, followed by survival mode can help determine if the design was sustainable, and also encourage community and collaboration among players.
  3. Victoria shared about her experience using mini-games to develop story writing in her students.
  4. Discussion about the use of cooperative games like Forbidden Island, Angry Dragons and Fish (https://fishgame.cloudinstitute.org/).
    1. Some games do not translate the same to online gaming, as people sometimes behave differently in person than they do online. Certain lessons and nuances of the games may be different depending on modality.
  5. This semester the FIG will explore online escape rooms. How to make, and how to assess whether students do, and learn from them.
    1. Today we went through the basic structure of a simple escape room we will work on together this semester in the Google suite of applications.
    2. Discussed how to gauge participation and collect responses.
  6. Meeting ended at 2:50PM