This week the major obstacles to be overcome were a variety of not very bright insects, and a golem. There was really no choice but to confront the insects (we tried ‘sneaking past’ them twice before it worked), but we finessed the golem by not attacking it. It actually helped us by attracting the attention Read more about The GOBLIN learning experience, week 4[…]
A recent New York Times article reviews research on effective teamwork, concluding that two main factors distinguish effective teams from failures: effective communication, and social trust. Effective communication means everyone being able to get their ideas out, and heard, but not necessarily agreeing. A pre-requisite is the building of social trust, or the feeling that Read more about Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others (NY TIMES article)[…]
In the third week of the course we met the Blannelid, but only after we had exhausted ourselves defeating the Troll and its spider sidekicks. In fact, it looked very much as though we met the Blannelid b e c a u s e we were on the point of defeating the Troll; the Troll Read more about The GOBLIN learning experience[…]
In the second week of training we thrashed away at a new set of monsters, and began to learn about our Active and Passive skills. The simulation brought out the importance of learning o t h e r team member’s skills. Also strategy was decided by consensus, with good results. I wonder how these translate Read more about The GOBLIN learning experience[…]
I was slightly appalled (codeswitch warning: the last phrase is British English) by the examples of allegedly successful teamwork in the first paragraph of the ‘Team Learning Overview’. Both examples are from all male or sex segregated games. Really, people, this has got to go. Educators in 21st century universities have NOTHING positive to learn Read more about My life as a Berserker (cont.).[…]
I hate video games. So taking the GOBLIN training puts me a long way outside my comfort zone. I am one of the main authors of a teaching game about Galileo Galilei. During that process I worked with people who built ‘Call of Duty 3’ and ‘Lord of the Rings: The Fall of Isengard’. So Read more about The GOBLIN training experience[…]
One of the big benefits from GOBLIN training is that it gives you names for things you were already doing, but didn’t have a label for, like ‘scaffolding’. In my course on the Cold War, I originally designed a ‘General Knowledge Quiz’ to weed out unprepared students. The test asked for well known names and Read more about A general idea for scaffolding[…]
