I think it is awesome that a session on failure was included in the course of this series. Many people fail (LOL) to account for failure when discussing the topic of learning. I remember a Nike commercial featuring a voiceover from Michael Jordan that basically talked about all of the failure that he had over Read more about GOBLIN: Week 3, or How Failure is Important to Success[…]
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[…]
Last spring I taught a gamified Comp II course. It was something I had been thinking about for a while, but had planned on proposing and enacting the following year. I ended up rushing in to teaching it for various reasons, and the final result was unpleasant. There were many great things I learned from Read more about Grading K.O.[…]
Now is a good time to reflect on my experience with the Goblin program. I have come to the conclusion that the lessons of Goblin are most likely to influence my design of incentive and grading systems for my classes. I am not as likely to t…
The past 4 weeks have been wonderfully engaging and enlightning; I expect the last week to be the same. I am actually saddened that this is coming to an end! I’ve enjoyed myself immensely, and I feel that I’ll be able to take some of the concepts and ideas we’ve learned this week and apply Read more about Things to take away from my GOBLIN course[…]
I play EVE Online, and that was the advice I got when I asked more experienced players how to get better at player-vs-player combat. Regular failure is simply part of the game, so much so that one of the tutorial missions for players in their first week is a suicide mission where success requires flying Read more about Go Die a Hundred Times[…]
I have experimented with using a table-top role-playing game to develop vocabulary, grammar, and language skills in an ESL classroom. From this experience, I am not sure whether there is a place for this kind of game in the classroom, but I intend to revise and retry this experiment in a future course, and maybe Read more about An Experiment in Game-Based Learning in an ESL Classroom[…]
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)[…]
For the past few years I’ve been reading here and there about games in the classroom. The most provocative example I’ve found is Reacting to the Past, a role-playing game designed at Barnard College that has students inhabit historical events. The idea is that the game inspires students to prepare much more thoroughly than they […]
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[…]
