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Meaningful Play 2018 at Michigan State University

Paper Information

TitleActive Learning and Gamification in Game Design Courses
Presenter(s)Jeffrey Yackley, Bruce Maxim, Stein Brunvand and Adrienne Decker
SessionTeaching Game Design
TimeFriday, October 12, 1:00p-2:00p
LocationMSU Room
FormatPaper Presentation
DescriptionEngineering instructors often rely on the traditional lecture model where they lecture on a topic, with or without a slideshow, to a classroom of students. Student engagement is low or non-existent with students neglecting to engage with the material until an assessment (i.e. an assignment or examination) is due. Further, students often do not get much practice soft-skills that are critical for successful professional interactions in industry practice and future academic work in lecture only courses. However, there have been alternative approaches proposed to help address the engagement and skill gaps. We describe our experiences in revising two game design courses at the University of Michigan - Dearborn where we replaced a traditional, lecture-heavy, course delivery model with one involving active-learning, role-play, and gamification. We track a cohort of students through a two-course game design sequence and report our findings from daily and term assessments.

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