This four-week seminar introduces participants to the basics of game-based learning (GBL) and gamification. Lecturers often struggle to make learning and assessments (especially low-stakes, formative) assessment both engaging and didactically sound. Learning is serious business, and elements of "fun" are oft-perceived (and many times are) extraneous to the process of learning. However, an increasing body of scholarship in the field of ludic pedagogy demonstrates how the incorporation of fun and game-based principles cannot only facilitate student engagement, but when properly designed, can enable students to develop and apply the knowledge and skills we seek to teach.
Accordingly, this seminar introduces participants to use educational games and gamification principles to enhance student engagement and support student learning. As a participant, you will experience GBL from various stances. You will actively participate in basic educational games to gain experiences you may wish to create for your students. Then as a group, we will cover some the theoretical principles of GBL and debate the uses, value and appropriateness of games in teaching, learning and assessment. Then, the "serious fun" will begin where you – either as an individual or (preferably) as a group – will apply these principles by creating drafts or a series of low-stakes educational games for your students.
This seminar is open to PhD students, faculty, and qualified staff of OSUN-member institutions who are novices to GBL but passionate about learning and who want to learn the basics of how to introduce GBL into their teaching learning and assessment.
- Instructor: Irene Lubbe