Back in 2011, I wrote some thoughts on gamification that I thought I’d return to sooner. Fourteen years later, here we are. Back then my view was mixed, leaning negative. Now? Still mixed. Maybe less negative, maybe even tilting toward the positive. I would not call myself a fan of gamification, but I have found myself using it, or at least thinking about my teaching through that lens.
Read MoreBut what if we stopped treating shortcuts as failure and started designing for multiple kinds of play? When I play a video game, I am a casual gamer. I move through the story, enjoy the world, and never bother collecting all the trophies. Other players are completists, tracking down every secret and grinding every stat. Who is better? Neither. If the casual gamer enjoys the game and the hardcore gamer does too, then both are playing "right." The point was never to check every box. It was to engage.
Read MoreA few years ago, I decided to embark on a self-guided study of classical literature and history, starting with the ancient Greeks. I went through all of extant Greek epics and tragedies (Hesiod, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes), history (Herodotus) and some philosophy (Pre-Socrates, Socrates, Plato).
Read MoreStarting in the fall of 2015, the Program in Educational Technology, in collaboration with the professors and colleges at Adelphi, will be piloting the use of badges and gamification in its courses, starting with the use of badges on Moodle.
More and more institutions of higher education and workplaces are playing around with the use of badges as an additional layer of feedback and we're hoping to bring it to Adelphi soon.
I'm excited to be testing it on my course - EDT 503 - Technology and the School Curriculum, in August. I've already designed a system of badges to be used. This is new territory for me but I'm looking forward to it.
For an excellent annotated bibliography on digital badges, check out:
Grant, S. & Shawgo, K.E. (2013). Digital Badges: An Annotated Research Bibliography. Retrieved from http://hastac.org/digital-badges-bibliography.
Every spring, our students have to complete a multimedia project based on a theme that they voted on in the fall semester. Last year, the students addressed the issue of income inequality in society. This spring, they tackle diet and nutrition. Diet and nutrition impacts all of us, every day, all year round. There are thousands of websites, videos, and blogs devoted to the topic of diet and nutrition, maintained by experts ranging from scientists, nutritionists, to people with self-proclaimed expert status (e.g., “foodie”). Over the past decade, concepts and labels like gluten-free, local, organic, sustainable, cage free, farm fresh, humanely raised, grass-fed, hormone free, pasture-raised, (All) Natural, the Atkins diet, the Paleo diet, the South Beach Diet, the Master Cleanse, the Zone Diet, Weight Watchers, Mediterranean Diet, Volumetrics, Raw Food Diet, NutriSystem, and Macrobiotic Diet (just to name a few!) have permeated our vocabulary. Diet and nutrition is clearly an important topic for everyone to think about.
Over the break, the students were assigned to read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, a book that challenges us to think about where our food comes from and how we eat. In it, Pollan traces the source of four meals and looks at industrial farming, Big Organic foods, small and self-sustaining farms, and self-foraging.
Students in both our campuses (in Manhattan and Garden City) are asked to create a multimedia project based on this theme. This course is structured based on the studio-learning format, during which students will first pitch their idea, then manage it over the course of the semester. They'll do a final presentation in front of a panel of judges and audiences and talk about their process.
Stay tuned for updates.