Teaching and Learning and Games and Gaming

In this 9 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Rachel Smith, Vice President of NMC Services for the New Media Consortium. The interview was recorded at the 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing Conference where Rachel Smith presented two session, "Games for Learning" and "The Role of Play and Preparing for a Changing Student Population".

Students are arriving on campus with a set of expectations and behaviors that differ from those of previous generations, including the faculty, who are faced with engaging them in the process of learning. Students' experience with new kinds of games and media has shaped their view of what learning is and how it occurs. This conversation will explore the changing way that young people approach playing, learning, and working and will examine how the concept of play can build bridges between traditional and emerging student populations.

Sex, commerce and stalking.  In recent discussions on our campus on the use of Second Life as a learning environment, these were some of the first things people noted as concerns.  Sex was a problem just because it was there to contend with - whereas it is not much of a factor in our current LMS!  It was also thought that some of the economic arguments about Second Life being an "authentic" environment (because of the real economy) were questionable; i.e. what is so "authentic" about commerce, and is that the kind of "authenticity" we want to emphasize in our courses.  And stalking is a bad thing, of course...

I did not share these concerns about Second Life.  In ways I find both reassuring and depressing, sex, commerce and stalking are all part of life on campus anyway, and in these regards Second Life does not differ much from life on our offline, physical campus (except that real sex is better and real stalking is worse than Second Life sex/stalking).

In this podcast of the presentation " Cognition, Learning, and Literacy in Virtual Worlds," Constance Steinkuehler, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, discusses the intellectual practices that constitute gameplay in virtual worlds (for example, collaborative problem solving, informal scientific reasoning, computational literacy, and digital media literacy) and the way these coalesce into a form of cosmopolitanism found in the least likely of places, in context of pop culture.

In this podcast of the presentation "Generation G and the 21st Century," Richard Van Eck, associate professor of instructional design and technology at the University of North Dakota, discusses the theory behind the effectiveness of games in teaching and learning; what the past can teach us about if, how, and when to implement digital game-based learning; and what this will mean for colleges and universities.

This was presented as a general session at Immersive Learning Environments: New Paths to Interaction and Engagement, the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's Spring 2007 Focus Session, held at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation in Raleigh, North Carolina, March 27-28, 2007. Additional resources from the event, including session recordings and audio interviews, video, presentation materials, and photos, also are available online.

How can immersive learning environments (ILEs)—virtual reality, games, simulations, and the like—be used to support teaching and learning? Find out at the ELI Spring Focus Session 2007, March 27–28 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The session will cover:

• The effective pedagogical uses of ILEs and their impact on learner engagement 
• The interactive capabilities of ILEs that encourage the development of creative thinking and problem-solving skills through direct engagement
• Implementation issues, such as design challenges, technical constraints, curriculum integration, and faculty development

View the program and speaker list. 

NOTE: EVENT NOW SOLD OUT.