When a major video-game company created a new Web site that lets visitors create their own simple games online, it invited Ian S. Bogost, an assistant professor of literature, communication, and culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, to be one of the first to try it out. So Mr. Bogost, who is known for his work creating video games that address social issues, made one about lecturing.
The goal of the game, called Honorarium, is to assemble lectures by moving Tetris-like shapes onto a screen at the front of a lecture hall. Successful players win virtual invitations to travel and speak at other institutions.
“It’s subtle, and autobiographical,” wrote Mr. Bogost on his blog, “and its themes include work, colleagues, family, distraction, longing, goals, and regret.”
Mr. Bogost noted that many people creating games on the site — which is run by Electronic Arts, the same company that makes the popular game The Sims — are using it for personal expression rather than to create the next classic video game. One game posted there, for instance, is about a teenage girl sharing her crush on a celebrity. It’s called IM ,kissing JOe JOnas! —Jeffrey R. Young
7 Responses to Professor Creates Video Game About the Lecture Circuit
cwilli - May 8, 2012 at 8:11 pm
This works for humanities too. Eg. I give students 2-3 questions about the meaning or the implications of a reading (from Plato most recently) and they have to bring to class their printed responses. First thing in class, they divide into groups and compare, discuss, scribble in improvements in their printed responses; then we have a general discussion about the issues. Typically (not always) each group comes up with significant improvements. If I want to see what they thought before the group and class discussion, their printed responses show that, their scribbling shows changes, usually for the better.
Robert Talbert - May 9, 2012 at 6:19 am
Good point — peer instruction works really well in non-STEM disciplines too as long as you have some way of measuring baseline performance and improvement. Thanks!
sciencegrad - May 10, 2012 at 6:11 pm
This is great. I had to undergrad professors take advantage of PI: one in chemistry and one in circuits. I never saw how effective it would be in that class because they would just call on a single person to answer the question.
Not only is it useful for learning the material, but it also has to do some good to have students try to argue why they believe their answer is correct, even if it’s not. I know that if I’m stuck on something and I ask someone for help, I often have a eureka moment where I can detect my error in my thought process when speaking.
Doug Smith - May 12, 2012 at 10:48 pm
Interesting stuff. I’ve been using PI with my grade 11 and grade 12 physics classes. We’ve been using sms messaging and polleverywhere but I’d like to move on to something more streamlined for PI. How big are your Calculus 2 classes? I’m wondering if Learning Catalytic is suited for smaller classes. I love the idea of how the software facilitates partnering up, as I find this to be the one of the biggest problems with PI: the students are reluctant to get up and find out who knows what. I’m not sure I can Web enabled devices for the kids though, so I may look into clickers.
Robert Talbert - May 13, 2012 at 9:20 am
Doug, my Calc 2 class has 27 students in it, and that’s pretty typical for Calculus 1, 2, and 3 classes at GVSU. I’ve used PI with classes as small as 8 before. I’d say the usefulness of PI drops off once you get past 12 students.
The issue of what to do if students don’t all have web-enabled devices is a tricky one. I got lucky this time in that only one student in the class didn’t have such a device, and my department has an iPad available for faculty checkout — so I just check it out at each class meeting and loan it to her. If I had more than one student in that situation, I’m not sure what I would do.
Doug Smith - May 13, 2012 at 7:39 pm
You’d think that some of the clicker software could he designed to do this same thing. However, given that the Harvard group pitches this as a new thing, makes me believe that in actual fact the clicker software is no where close. It’s worth a look though.
Do you find the grouping/pairing to be useful?
I think it’s possible to get a grant or gift for a class set of clickers at $40 a pop. But tablets at $200? Maybe I should contact RIM!
Robert Talbert - May 13, 2012 at 7:54 pm
I think the grouping and paired discussion is what makes the whole thing work, at least for my students in their specific situation. With a smaller class (< 15) it probably makes less sense to do paired discussion and more sense to have a whole-class discussion.
If we couldn't do web-enabled devices for the whole class, my Plan B was to use Learning Catalytics to author the questions and display them to the screen and then have students use regular clickers to give their responses. Kludgy, but it would work. One other possibility is that we do meet in a computer lab for 1/4 of our meetings, and at that point everybody can use LC (via a regular web browser on the computer).