m-Provise is a text-based simulation used to teach business communication to undergraduates at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
In higher education circles, we often talk about "meeting students where they are." Where many students are is in the magic circle of games. Card games, board games, video games, role-playing games...they all share a set of characteristics. And what I learned by studying games is that higher education shares many of those characteristics, too.
Gamification has shown to improve student engagement, motivation, and feelings of autonomy in education. Since systematically incorporating game elements into my own course, I have witnessed positive effects: Student attendance is more regular and the quality of their attention is better. Although students are allowed to leave writing workshops at will, many students use the entire block of time to work on their assignments. Student comments on course evaluations suggest that they feel greater autonomy about their learning experience and less anxiety about the grade they will earn. Best of all, questions about assignments tend to take the form of “What do I need to do to get this paper to ‘excellent’?” rather than "Why did I lose points?" (Motivation remains an elusive goal, though. Many students are still focused more on points than on developing mastery of professional communication skills, and students complain that the grade contract is too difficult to understand. A likely explanation is the format is just different than what they have come to expect and uncertainty makes them uncomfortable.
Using the ADDIE instructional design model and incorporating game elements into the course have forced me to become more reflective and deliberate in my choices. Designing the course with an attitude of making learning fun has made teaching fun. The experience has improved my own engagement and motivation, which can be difficult to sustain after teaching the same course for many years.
This site is an archive, a sandbox, a work in progress. You may notice things changing around here from time to time. The instructional design process is one of continuous improvement: designing a class, taking notes and getting feedback while we teach, and then revising it before we teach the class again. On this site, you will see some of the products of my design process.
You may also notice that this site uses a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike license. My own courses benefit from the ideas that other people are willing to share at conferences, online, and even on social media, and I'm a wholehearted believer in paying it forward. All I ask is that you give credit if you use something you find here, don't try to sell my documents, and share any derivative materials using the same terms.
Since my most recent work aligns elements of game design with instructional design, I am using the hierarchy of game elements (Werbach and Hunter, 2015) as the organizational scheme for the materials.
Dynamics are the internal structure of a game.
Course Learning Objectives
Design Document and Course Map
Mechanics are the rules of play.
Syllabus
Holistic Grading Scheme
Components are the user interface.
Sample Assignments and Rubrics
Other Incarnations of This Course