October 22, 2008
Professors Use Game-Show Format to Help Students Review for Exams
Salt Lake City — When it’s time to review for an exam in her entry-level computer-science course at Montgomery County Community College, Patricia Rahmlow divides the students into teams, hands each team an electronic buzzer, and cues the Jeopardy theme music.
Thanks to a software program that can display a series of questions in a style similar to the popular TV trivia game show, she turns review sessions into competitions. Ms. Rahmlow, an assistant professor of business and computer science, and two of her colleagues at the college described their experiences with classroom games in a session at the League for Innovation in the Community College’s annual technology conference this week.
She said that students now look forward to what used to be a drag. Before she started using the software, she said, “I had never had students ask me, When are we going to do the review?”
For the presentation, she divided session participants into teams and demonstrated the game, using trivia questions on the history of computing, U.S. presidents, and other topics. The buzzers were simple, with just one button. Their wireless signals told the software which team buzzed first.
One drawback of the technology quickly became clear: Winning sometimes just depends on who can click the buzzer fastest. One team always seemed to buzz in first to keep others from getting a chance to answer. Still, everyone in the room seemed attentive and eager to win, even though there were no prizes. (For her courses, Ms. Rahmlow gives the winning team ten points extra credit on the test.)
The demonstration used a system called Gameshow Prep. But presenters also pointed out alternatives, including some that are free online.
Several attendees said they were already using game-show-like approaches in their own courses. One of them was Bill Yarrow, an English professor at Joliet Junior College, who said he had given the midterm for his Shakespeare class in the form of a Jeopardy game in which each student answered individually rather than as part of a team. He used a feature built into the Angel course-management system that his college has installed on campus. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Wednesday October 22, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Has any research been done to ascertain whether these games actually help the students learn?
— Question Oct 22, 09:14 AM #
Welcome to the ‘edutainment’ era where gimmicks and games replace work ethic and intellectual curiosity.
— Rob Oct 22, 09:31 AM #
Yes, please, let’s make education even more entertaining so the rest of us will appear even more boring! And thanks to PBS for fooling pre-schoolers into expecting real school to be fun and more fun.
— fg Oct 22, 10:05 AM #
Who needs technology? I do exam reviews by drawing a Jeopardy grid on the chalkboard, dividing the class into two teams, and giving each one a bike horn to honk when they want to answer. Mix of light and heftier questions, enough to at least jog their memories of what we’ve read and discussed. And nothing wrong with a little fun when the little darlings are so stressed out.
— JB Oct 22, 10:23 AM #
Boss: Let us review the content for the meeting with a very important client.
Employees: Oh Boy!!! Now we get to play Jeopardy. “Alex, I’ll take How we Dummed Down America to $200, please”
— claygirl Oct 22, 10:40 AM #
I don’t see the harm in adding a little fun to a test review. Practice is practice, no matter the format. I am not a big advocate of games DURING learning for most topics (simulation-type games in many science/social topics are the exceptions), but for practice/review, I think it’s a great idea.
I remember a spelling test my husband gave back in the 1980’s, when one of the words was “RELIEF.” How did the students spell it? You guessed it: “ROLAIDS.” Best illustration of the value of technology-based practice (in this case, unintended) that I’ve ever seen. When we can get students to spend more time focusing on the (real) content, it seems altogether a good thing.
— MDR Oct 23, 07:44 AM #
MDR – I agree. What is wrong with a little fun in learning if it motivates students? I too would like to see some research but until we start to try the ideas, how will we know.
To FG (#3) what is wrong with education being fun? You sound as though education SHOULD be painful. Get real, our goal is to motivate students and excit them to want more knowledge. I don’t know about you but that is not what most of my college professors did and that is not what I see today from many who teach. What is wrong with a little motivation and fun or should we instead give tasers to all faculty and let them zap students when they get the wrong answer?
I am a little miffed at the Chronicle for this article however because this is not new but very old. People have been using powerpoint jeopardy for a long time and there are many games out there that are used. Why all of a sudden is this important? I do expect the Chronicle to enlighten me with NEW ideas not rehashed ones.
— Bill Oct 23, 08:34 AM #
Excuse me, but since when is “review” something that should take up (presumably valuable) class time? Has the K-12 spoon feeding approach really gone that far?
— Old Fogey Oct 23, 08:55 AM #
Oh, claygirl, please tell me you were going for irony there with your spelling of “dumbed”… although if not, you’ve certainly proved your point.
— Susan Oct 23, 08:56 AM #
I’m with Bill (#7). Why do so many who post on these forums (fora?) seem to want education to be as dull and boring as possible?
My high school German teacher (whom no one EVER accused of dumbing down or pandering) gave extra credit for oral recitations of memorized poems and dialogues based on how fast we did them. This was in the “edutainment era” of the 1960s.
I remember a pair of students in an intensive beginning language class I taught who devised an “Olympic track” with stations where they reviewed different vocabulary words and grammatical points.
Isn’t the point of being a teacher that we find out how students best learn and adapt our approach to increase their learning? I don’t believe it is possible to “stoop too low” if it means my students learn. And I’ll put my students’ character and work ethic up against anyone’s anytime.
— drj50 Oct 23, 09:00 AM #
Old Fogey (#8): In detail-oriented courses (like a beginning course in a classical language), review of vocabulary and grammatical froms is precisely what MUST happen in “precious” class time. I have done the same in other factoid-oriented courses and I can well imagine that an introductory computer science course fits this sort of model. (By contrast, it might be silly for 18th century British poetry.)
This is part of the wisdom instructors bring, not just what to know but how to help students learn it. Disciplines are different, require different kinds of knowledge, skills, learning, and review. Helping students learn how to learn my discipline is part of my job.
— drj50 Oct 23, 09:17 AM #
A group of middle school students recently visited our institution on a day off from school. Talk about a difficult audience!! In hopes of getting them to pay attention to a short powerpoint presentation regarding community colleges and the importance of education they were each given a “BINGO” card. The cards included words/phrases included in the presentation. The students were told that anyone with a “black out” would win a prize. The students very diligently paid attention and marked their cards. All of the cards contained identical information, and all of the students received the prize. The point, however — they focused on the presentation and the information. Mission Accomplished!
— Karalin Oct 23, 09:20 AM #
Most of the comments are way off. Since when did learning have to be boring, rote, and dry to be effective? There is no – repeat, no – evidence to support the claim that memorization and rote learning are effective. In fact, the research is clear – when activities are fun and engaging, people learn more. Period.
So, for the respondents Question and Rob: if you are instructors, I feel sorry for your students. I had history professors like you in college and learned much more about history from the discovery and history channels and reading books on my own (stimulated by intellectual curiosity) than I ever did from you.
— PS Oct 23, 09:57 AM #
BRAVO, PS!!! A little excitement goes a LONG way :-) I’m of the philosophy that you do whatever it takes to get the material across to the learner. As long as the content is not compromised and standards not diminished, I say GO FOR IT!!
— Karalin Oct 23, 10:22 AM #
Hm, yes: I expected comments along the line of “good idea, but old hat,” since I’ve seen people using Jeopardy, chalkboard- and PowerPoint-style, since the 1990s. Instead I see all this curmudgeonly weirdness. Sometimes it’s important to memorize things, but it’s never easy or interesting. A game show makes it a bit more bearable and encourages student camaraderie. What could be wrong with that? Of course these instructors aren’t making every class into an episode of MTV: give me a break!
— Eliza Oct 23, 10:44 AM #
The first time I did the Jeopardy review in my intro to computers class (back in 1998), my department chair popped in for my ‘observation’. We had uneven ‘teams’, so I made him sit in and play. He had so much fun that I got an “Excellent” rating!
There is nothing wrong with bringing interactive activities into a class to help promote learning. We cannot continue to stand up and deliver monotone talks to a group that has not been trained to learn that way. A Darwinist approach would suggest that we need to adapt to a changing environment, or else be replaced by those that have.
— Frank Page Oct 23, 11:10 AM #
I suspect that the ‘curmudgeons’ are also ones who poo-poo the concept of using different learning styles and ensuring classes utilize universal instructional design, because it would cramp their lecture style that they’ve used for 25 years, along with those crusty old mimeographed handouts. Post-secondary education is becoming increasingly diverse – you can either try to educate all of the willing through innovative methods, or pretend it isn’t happening and watch your retention rates fall. No, college isn’t supposed to be all fun and games, nor is it supposed to be torture, memorizing and regurgitating minutiae irrelevant to their daily lives and future work. Memorizing irrelevant facts is the domain of professors :)
— Linda Oct 23, 12:33 PM #
I’m rather confused about how this is news, unless it’s just the technology itself. I’ve had teachers use this style of review from middle school in the 1980s to graduate school in the 2000s. It’s generally a highly effective exercise, but one that can be done just as easily with sheets of paper taped to the blackboard.
— Ibid Oct 23, 01:00 PM #
Adroit instructors realize that students have varied learning styles and have updated their courswork to refect that diversity. Incorporating as many of the senses as possible in learning increases all students’ opportunity to learn.
— mk Oct 23, 02:46 PM #
I was horrified by the first five or so comments to this story. Thank goodness the following comments mostly expressed appreciation for the value of student participation in the learning process. It’s not about having fun or being entertained; it reinforces what they’re learning.
— anon Oct 23, 03:22 PM #
I’m actually conflicted on this one. My first reaction was “It is nice to know that some college professors are catching on to what secondary school teachers have been doing for many years.” At the same time, I wonder if having to use a game show to learn facts is a symptom of something else – students who do not have a strong interest in the subject. Is that due to students who just want to get through college or professors who don’t inspire or challenge those students?
— Vinnie Oct 23, 06:18 PM #
To #3 fg: Why can’t school (and learning) be fun? If education is presented as a chore to endure, students will see it as a chore to be endured. Do we want our students to view learning as some boring thing they “have” to do, or do we want students to develop a lifelong passion for learning? If using games and other “fun” methods help students make connections, learn the material, and grow academically — Hurrah! It is a success worth celebrating!
— kitty Oct 24, 02:29 PM #
To #21: In this case, the prof. wasn’t using the game to “teach” the students, but to review what had already been taught. We use eInstruction clickers and the MindPoint QuizShow software for this. Every student answers each question, and the team with the most right answers gets the points. This way, everyone actually has to answer. Otherwise, they often just listen to someone else answer and fool themselves into thinking “yeah, I knew that” when they really didn’t know it.
Needless to say, I agree with all the posters who advocate being creative with our teaching. Just because we were taught one way doesn’t make it the only “right” way to teach.
— Sheila Oct 28, 08:19 AM #