Games can be a fun way of addressing content in education, but at its best gamification can lead learners for engage more deeply with the ideas and concepts. Scott Nicholson found that more rewards-based gamification like leaderboards and giving learner video game-style experience points could be confusing and less effective than adding a meaningful narrative layer or allowing students to define their own learning path (2013).
Application: I am planning a session on communication planning for the NDSU Extension Support Staff conference. In order to familiarize participants with key concepts in communication planning, I will design a digital Breakout Edu game. Breakout Edu games are inspired by escape rooms. They allow teachers to create content-based puzzles that learners must solve as a team. These games are intended to cultivate creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. These elements will be important in practicing good communication planning, as support staff will need to be creative, be clear and collaborate with others.
I will break the participants up in small groups to work on the Breakout game. Groups will apply clues related to communication planning to real world problems in finding the combination to digital locks that will lead to a new set of clues and eventually to “breaking out.”
The winning team will receive a small prize.
Assessment: Student Generated Rubric (Barkley & Major, 2016, pp. 370-375)
I plan to assess this activity by asking the participant groups to use what they learned about communication planning to create a rubric to assess news releases, brochures and other communication materials based on the elements of good communication planning.
I’ll provide some examples of communication materials for groups to look at while considering their rubric.
References
Barkley, E. F., & Major, C. H. (2016). Learning assessment techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Nicholson, Scott (2013). Exploring Gamification Techniques for Classroom Management. Paper Presented at Games+Learning+Society 9.0, Madison, WI. Retrieved on February 21, 2018 from http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/gamificationtechniquesclassroom.pdf
Tate, M. L. (2012). “Sit and Get” won’t grow dendrites: 20 professional learning strategies that engage the adult brain. (2nd Ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.