Reflections upon course design 1: Game On!

I have lost count of the number of courses I have designed over  the span of 30+ years.... career track courses, transfer courses, undergrad, masters, and doctorate - face-to-face, hybrid, broadcast, and fully online.   I have developed my own process, my own "way of doing things."

This time it is different - I am designing a course with a colleague...and the course focuses on a topic about which we knew very little a year ago but have been teaching ourselves: Gamification.  I have co-written a book before, so this process is somewhat familiar.

Pre-Planning

CATHIE

This process started years ago......

I have worked in the past with animated pedagogical agents (see earlier blog post), using them in a simulation to allow human services students the chance to practice  their listening and responding skills, and I learned then that online interaction can be measured and scored, and even teach how to make empathetic responses. I started dreaming then of creating my own simulation in which my leadership students could practice being community college and university leaders. I started delving into instructional design and using games in the classroom, and I discovered the field was clearly divided into two camps: instructional designer  vs game designer....and neither liked the other.

Fast forward 10 years to when I rediscovered gamification. New term, but I immediately knew its meaning. I quickly immersed myself in the research, trying to learn more about this topic with the desire of eventually applying it to my online classes. I began by downloading every journal article I could find regarding gamification and education/workforce training - pros and cons, descriptions, examples, instructional design...... I ordered a plethora of texts on the topics of game design, game mechanics, and games....  I played more games to get a feel for the mechanics, the narrative, the level of engagement, trying to put my experiences to use.

Now, it is time to begin the design of a fully online course on Gamification for Business and Education.

Description

After a year of reading about gamification and game design, I had definite ideas of topics to be included in crafting a course to about gamification, and my colleague and I had been keeping a running list of topics to include. Our first step was to determine which topics to cover and in what order, understanding that this order may evolve and that some topics my be integrated throughout. Because this is a graduate course, rigor is important, and content must be based on the peer-reviewed research. Students will need to read the direct research rather than unsubstantiated blog posts.

Just a little light reading . . .

It's good that I have been collecting and downloading research articles for a year...

We also decided to work in my course sandbox. I volunteered for the first module on the history of games, and Jenny is working on the language of games. Jenny set up an Evernote account with which to share links and information, and I began uploading peer-reviewed research articles into our LMS so we could then easily pull them into the various modules for reading assignments.

We  think we have identified two texts: For the Win and Gamify Your Classroom, but they may well change.  We are creating content and supplementing with readings..Who knows....we may well discover we need to write our own textbook for this course.  THAT would be fun!

Feeling

Settlers of Catan game board

Getting started feels so right!

Finally!

I have been collecting information and digesting it, and I feel as though I have almost  lived gamification for the past few months, sometimes applying the terminology to various life and education events....even analyzing game play when the family is playing a rousing game of Settlers of Catan...

Regarding course design, I feel as though I have made progress in determining the various topics to be covered under the history of games and in beginning to identify specific readings, but this part goes a little slower than I would prefer as I build content.  A loose format is in place although that will likely evolve and shift as other modules are developed, and we search for a standardized approach. I cannot really delve into activities (although they are in the back of my mind) until the content is built so I am ready to finish content development. I will definitely add more reading as I find appropriate articles.

Course design has some definite similarities with game design...more on this in a future post.

Evaluation

Evaluation at this point is difficult as I would have preferred to have more time to develop and create before evaluating the process and accomplishments. I have just started the creation process and plan to spend the weekend continuing to develop.   At this point I have one page of content and one reading assignment...and so much more left to do before this module is ready!  It reduces to time.   I need more time to work on this.   What I have accomplished pleases me...  I have an outline of the module, created content holding pages, and I have a forum assignment in mind.   I want another activity but do not yet know what that will be. I need to finish the content first.

I enjoy working Jenny and we tend to work well together, each having different strengths.

Analysis

I am not sure there is an opportunity for analysis at this point, other than I wish we had started building and designing this course last semester...particularly if the goal is to have a fully finished course by May. Actually, we did begin this process in the fall as we created and shared a variety of documents and plans, so we know where we are going.....  Pre-planning is an important component, so I am glad we at least accomplished that a few months ago.  I just need to create.

 Conclusion

I am not really sure what I could have done differently. Once our proposal was approved, we set up a time to meet on Monday to organize and plan out tasks, and we have set up a meeting time for next Monday.   I think it is just the timing of this blog post as Monday pm to Thursday pm has not provided with me a great deal of opportunity to work. Next week's tasks should flow better. 

 

Action Plan 

The plan at this point is somewhat simple:  build content and continue to locate readings.  We meet again on Monday to evaluate our progress together and make whatever accommodations/adjustments are necessary. We will also want to dig into each other's modules as testers......

 

and now......off to work on the History of Games! 

NOTE:  Here is Jenny's take....

References

Farber, M. (2014). Gamify your classroom: A field-guide to game-based learning. Peter Lang Publishing:  NY.

Werbach, K, & Hunter, D. (2012). For the win: How game thinking can revolutionize your business. Wharton Digital Press: Philadelphia.