I wanted to share an interesting article with you that Nicole unearthed written this week. It’s from Inside Higher Ed and is titled A Gamified Approach to Teaching and Learning. It states that Mark Carnes “offers evidence that an immersive gamified pedagogy can significantly increase student engagement and motivation.” In this article the author, Steven Mintz claims that higher education is “in the midst of seismic shifts in curricular design, pedagogy, delivery modes, and instructional activities and assessments.” Are you? Carnes continues to state the reasons faculty are modifying their teaching strategies including:

• High numbers of socially isolated and depressed students
• Student engagement too low
• Time to degree completion too slow
• Graduation rates too little

We are running the 10 Day Faculty Challenge Game to begin a conversation about changing, modifying, and infusing curriculum with strategies that might help to combat some of these issues and concerns. And if you aren’t “playing” with us, you are missing out! It’s not too late to join us.

It’s only Thursday, but already our enthusiastic group of “gaming” faculty have come up with some amazing resources and ideas. Seriously. It’s not too late to join in the conversation. Just reading and commenting will get you moving up on the leaderboard.

Are points a turn-off? Is the word “challenge” or “game” a turn-off for you? Leslie uncovered a really interesting article which she shared yesterday (click image to right to read) which she posted alongside her submission challenging herself and us to rethink how we use words. If we can reframe our assignments or our learning concepts using terms that are less scary or daunting to students, perhaps they would respond better. She suggests that “research” and “submission” can sound overwhelming, where “find the answer to a puzzle” or providing clues to a scavenger hunt might provide students the same outcome. You might have an interesting response to her post– join us and join the conversation.

Charla posted several amazing infographics and Robin shared an article from Scientific American titled “Fact or Fiction?: Video Games Are the Future of Education” by Elena Malykhina. In her post, Robin notes that the research is still out on the impact of using gaming for education but there appears to be a positive connection with low-performing students and students struggling or unmotivated. Here’s one of the infographics shared by Charla, titled “The Case for Games in the College Classroom” that she shared. Click to view details.

Margie shared a chapter by Jo-ann Archibald in “Indigenous Storywork” where she relates how a story can be used in a classroom more than once because each time the story is heard, the audience has changed and can apply different perspectives and brings different understanding to the story. Margie shares how she is using “Case Mysteries of Pathophysiology” in her pharmacology course, building on the same case study as her students gain more and more information. Sounds like a winning approach Margie!

Val shared Edudemic’s 23 Best Game-Based Education Resources for 2014 which is pretty fascinating, Lee shared a Mooc Gamification: The Course which starts in January. There was even more shared by our exceptional faculty, by you but I can’t list everything. Mostly, I wanted to highlight for those who aren’t following the game, that this isn’t about the points (well, for some people it is!) but this is about what we can learn from each other and how we can apply it to our classes to make a difference for our students. Yesterday’s posts already tell me that people are rethinking how they might apply some different strategies, yes, we’re calling them gamification strategies, whatever you label it, it’s reshaping and rethinking higher education. I’m proud to be working/playing with this exceptional team of faculty. Won’t you join us?