{"id":5005,"date":"2015-07-15T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/?p=5005"},"modified":"2015-07-20T09:25:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T15:25:21","slug":"8-part-series-on-gamification-as-reigeluths-post-industrial-paradigm-of-instruction-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2015\/07\/15\/8-part-series-on-gamification-as-reigeluths-post-industrial-paradigm-of-instruction-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Part Series on Gamification as Reigeluth’s Post-industrial Paradigm of Instruction: Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Doing vs Listening and Watching<\/h1>\n

\"Picture5\"As much as possible, students should spend their time learning by doing rather than listening to lectures, reading textbooks, and watching others. Sometimes teaching via lecture, assigned reading, or video is appropriate, but it is far too easy to simply choose a textbook and then follow that chapter by chapter. We need to focus on what students can do – beyond writing exams – to demonstrate their mastery of the subject matter. Assignments (quests) should focus on what students can do to demonstrate mastery of the material rather than simply being able to repeat what they\u2019ve been told.<\/p>\n

In my approach I give them a variety of things they can do – some big, some small. Many of the small things are actually things they will need to do to complete the bigger things. This way they have an opportunity to build up their knowledge and skill while earning points.<\/p>\n

Because this is a gamified design, I decided to use game terms for the quests, although, I do not insist that they ‘play along’ either. If they want to call them assignments, that’s fine – I still know what they’re talking about. This is an important aspect of my gamified design: I will not insist that they adopt the game lingo or pretense. There are courses where overlaying some sort of narrative might make sense (an English class, for example), but it is not a necessary component. The ‘trappings’ of games (language, narrative, adoption of characters, etc.) can be a lot of fun, but if you don’t have everyone in the class on board with it, there’s a really good chance that all you will do is swap one group of disengaged learners for a different group of disengaged learners. I don’t see that as progress.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I have found that attaching new terminology to old learning tasks can sometimes be freeing – it allows me and my students to look at it in a new light. I end up getting more interesting submissions than I would if I stuck to the usual terminology.<\/p>\n

Back to big and small tasks: here are a few examples. In each case, I will give the usual meaning (in games) and then the way that I use it in my classes.<\/p>\n

Timed Quest<\/p>\n