Marlene Brubaker

As in everything in the educational setting, formative assessments and summative assessments are essential in determining student growth and acquisition of new knowledge.  Student scores in the game are only but one clue, and that can be attributed to a number of things, especially in remote learning, where there are many opportunities to game the system.  

Development of educational games seems to be quite nuanced.  I am glad they included a few sources for developing games from the ground up.  Once a semester, I have my students design their own games to teach a chapter.  Maybe I will use these resources (instead of them just adapting games to incorporate the subject matter).  

The social aspect of gaming is huge.  I see the difference between Blooket and Kahoot! when I use these two games, the conversation in the room is outrageous during Blooket, crickets with Kahoot!.  That's because in Blooket they can steal from each other.  I don't know which is helping them master the content better, but in a class where students don't want to communicate with each other, especially online, the social interaction provides a type of icebreaker.

I have been using Kahoot! Blooket, Quizlet, and Quizziz a lot.  My students LOVE Blooket, because of the outrageous competitiveness in acquiring points, yet I think for that very reason, it isn't reinforcing information acquisition and retention as best as it could.  Some of the rules of the game are difficult for my adult learners, they often ask their children to help.  Kahoot! has been good, but due to the nature of the peer creation, caution is the word, as many are careless in providing correct answers.  Quizlet and Quizziz are not as dynamic but are certainly focused on reinforcing… >>>

I agree that sometimes students use the 'scoring' as the focus, and they are not interested in learning the underlying content.  I give my HS students extra credit for being in the top 5 score level.  But I cannot do this with my adult learners.  So, I usually get 100% participation with the HS students, and about 25% participation with the adults, since it doesn't do anything for their grade.  I also find that the amount of time taken to prepare games exceeds the amount I use to prepare a lecture.  So, from an educator's perspective, is it time well… >>>

Many of these issues cropped up this last session.  Over-confident students, people who wanted to talk about their religion instead of the coursework, others who procrastinated, or just never finished the work.  Now I have a little more in my toolbox.  

I was surprised to learn that the bulk of the online instruction should be asynchronous.  I would have thought that synchronous was the primary.  I also will spend more time responding to individuals via email, instead of in class.  

Some people might think that they are boasting by telling the students about their credentials, but in reality, they are setting the framework for mutual respect.  Finding various modalities to share professional credentials and learn about each other on the human-to-human level in an online setting is a paradigm shift from the in-person classroom.  

I ask this question, because I have had the privilege of teaching for Educate Online a few years back, and their online tutoring program was amazing.  I wish it was still available.  Students were tested and given a 'prescription' and their learning was tightly scaffolded.  The promise was we could increase their grade level by 1 year in 36 lessons.  If they did, they could keep the computer.  If not, their sessions would be free until they tested one grade level up.