Gaming techniques to keep students focused
What gaming techniques are available to keep students focused on their studies.
Awesome idea! This gives me a few ideas for our video productions classes. Ideas such as creating actual video gameshows, or having someone operate a camera and zoom into the correct answer on the board!
Hi Jane,
You have a number of great ways you are getting the students into the material and then having them use it over again with the quiz game and then the final. This will help the content to stick in their working memories at a much higher level.
Gary
I like to break my lecture down into 10-minute "chunks", and then have the students break into teams and write test questions based on the material -either from the lecture or the reading. We do a "sudden death" style quiz game, and then I choose a few of "their" questions to actually go on the final exam!
I find many great ideas at a site called Merlot located at merlot.org. You sign up and then can browse so many games, exercises, tools, etc that you usually find something useful. Also it is set up to browse by course type so that makes it even more useful.
Hi Scott,
Sounds fun and helps to advance the learning of students. This is a win win for everyone, not to mention the social development that has occurred as well.
Gary
One of my FAVORITE games to play during heavy download sections is to get the content onto a single slide on Powerpoint, then break the group into teams.
I will develop a game for that particular slide of information and tell them the rules.
Whats nice about this 'game', is that they all get to break away from the typical learning and get up and move around. At the same time you are covering a lot of content and not losing them during a download section
When you bring the group back, and you go over the answers, you have the entire classes attention because they are waiting to see if their answers were correct.
Plus its pretty neat to see large groups of students all at the front of the class conversing about the material on the wall!
Hi Mark,
This is a great example of creativity in education delivery. I haven't heard this one before. The use of the bike gives the students reinforcement at all levels plus enables them to show what they know through a game format. Thanks for sharing this with us. I know you are going to get other instructors thinking about how they can wire up a game board using medical or business devices.
Gary
being that we work with motorcycles, we made a jepordy game where the students buzzers were hooked up to the clutch levers
the students were split up into teams and 1 person from the team sat on the bike and had to release the clutch to get their light to light up
we even had the students in our electrical class help to design and hook up all the relays, switched and solder the wires together.
I often struggle with this myself, since a lot of game situations seem a little "beneath" college students sometimes. Perhaps that's my own impression, but when I do use games in class, I actually note this idea ("this might seem a bit silly, but let's put aside our college hats for a bit ...").
One "game" I use without such a caveat is to assign each students one or two terms from the entire course that needs to be mastered by the next class period -- which is usually toward the end of the term. In the next class, I show a film that seems to embody the course's ideas, and as we watch the film, the students need to interrupt the film when they seem their terms being modeled. For example, in Organizational Communication, I show the movie _Office Space_, with the students looking for things like "emotional labor" and "vertical communication." They know they have to find and explain their terms or they don't get their points for the day. And although these points are fairly small, it's enough to keep them focused and interested in how the terms relate to their experience.
Brad:
I am trying to develop a version of Jeopardy for my class to see if they really have retained the information in the first part of the class. It is difficult making the time to make it both informative and fun.
Gary's suggestion of a Family Feud style of gaming is one I am going to incorporate. Talking to each other about the answers is a great way to foster the community within the class.
One could even try a Survivor or Apprentice style game.
Hi Brad,
I use Jeopardy a lot as well as Quiz Bowls with competition between teams as we review for quizzes. Family Feud is another game format that the students really like because they get to confer with each other as they give answers to questions I have created for the review.
Gary
