- The onboarding task of a Flipgrid video introducing yourself made a great, if partial, photo-based faculty and staff directory. In a school where many teachers are the only person teaching their subject, this undoubtedly helped open doors for relationships and conversations.
- Physical artifacts created as part of the game, such as the "Who is at your table?" Thanksgiving dinner party wish list, were displayed and were read by the faculty. The desire to be a part of something "fun" was evident when additional staff members found their sheets that had not been submitted to the game designers' mailboxes and hung them up themselves in the display. More physical artifacts earlier in the game would surely raise participation levels.
- We began by making all tasks have a digital element. As a school, we are embracing a blended learning experience and wanted to model the use of technology tools to enhance learning experiences. Doing so created a barrier to entry for some of our staff members. We learned that we needed to create non-digital activities and display products/results in a physical format.
- In some instances, we found we put the tool before the intention. This caused for some tools to sit in isolation and not be revisited. We have become more intentional about the process in which we select tools. The tool must enhance engagement and interaction with the game, similar to how the teachers should plan a lesson for students.
- The spreadsheet (Tracker) is very complicated due to continually adding on. Moving forward, the tracker needs to planned out ahead of time to simplify the formulas used and create more automation.
- Momentum is proving difficult to maintain, possibly because we intentionally did not tie the game to specific school or district requirements. This decision was made so that nobody would feel as if they had to participate, but it also meant that it may have cost us some people who were on the fence and would have joined up with a little more external pressure. If we run the game again, we will probably try to make the initial onboarding task even simpler so that the barrier to entry is lower.