December 1, 2008
Professor Turns His Online Course Into a Role-Playing Game
David Wiley says that teachers can learn a lot from online video games — the kind where players pretend to be orcs and wizards and work together in teams to slay dragons. So Mr. Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, has decided to turn an online course he’s teaching next semester into an online role-playing game.
That’s right, Mr. Wiley will invite students who sign up for his spring course (which is about online teaching methods) to be an artisan, a bard, a merchant, or a monk and go on learning “quests” together.
Although he’s using a game metaphor, Mr. Wiley says that dividing students up into teams and asking them to work on group projects are time-tested teaching techniques — ones that the best video games happen to make use of. “If you reverse-engineer a popular multiplayer game, they’ve somehow encoded all these things about what good learning ought to look like,” he argues. “Instead of just learning how to kill orcs, we can use these really effective techniques for honest-to-goodness educational content.”
And Mr. Wiley is inviting anyone to play along. Although only students at Brigham Young who enroll and pay for the course will get official credit, Mr. Wiley is inviting anyone else to participate informally free. And he’ll send homemade certificates of completion to the unofficial students, just as he did in a previous experiment.
When asked whether the playful approach might somehow dumb down the learning experience, Mr. Wiley defended the course. “I challenge you to find a meatier class in terms of the kind of skills students have to develop and the kind of project they have to pull off in the end,” he said. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Monday December 1, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Interesting theory but how do you put together a course using a online game and how will students be graded since some students work very hard in groups were others just skate by.
— Kenny Michaels Dec 1, 08:31 PM #
Mr. Wiley and others should investigate what some call the “creepy treehouse effect” — my students concur that teachers forcing them to join web-based projects is indeed “creepy”
— jk Dec 1, 10:36 PM #
It’s an online course, silly. No one is forcing anybody to join.
— Nona Dec 1, 10:53 PM #
“some students work very hard in groups were others just skate by”
How do you handle this when you do group work face to face? Peer evaluations are one way. It is probably easier for the professor to observe group interactions online than in person.
— Bill Dec 2, 07:08 AM #
If you take a look at the syllabus for the course, it is clear that there are many substantial graduate-level activities and outcomes expected of the individual learners. This is definitely NOT fluff group work.
— Anthony Dec 2, 08:39 AM #
Let’s see. Last week I had three staff meetings, four committee meetings, one student organization meeting, and one family conference. I think some of those in attendance were just skating by, but we all got the blame or credit together. Hmmmm. Sounds like a silly game to me.
— Betty Stevens Dec 2, 09:50 AM #
I don’t mean to steal Mr. Wiley’s thunder, but I’m doing very nearly the same thing (MMOG) in my Intro Sociology courses next semester. Great minds think alike. We’ll let you know how it works.
— Thomas Brown Dec 2, 11:20 AM #
This looks like an impressive course. I’ve used World of Warcraft in one of my courses this past semester with mostly positive results.
— Shaka McGlotten Dec 2, 12:33 PM #
Thomas Brown, this approach to instruction is quite innovative. Please consider letting us know how it works by submitting it as a case study for publication consideration in Innovate (http://innovateonline.info)?
Thanks!
James L. Morrison
Editor-in-Chief
— James L. Morrison Dec 2, 08:42 PM #
RE Kenny (comment #1)
There is a link to the syllabus in the story which explains the structure and grading of the class.
— Don Dec 4, 03:20 AM #
The University of Manitoba recently ran a MMOG on the ed theory “Connectivism”. Over 2000 students participated worldwide (24 for credit.) You can find the post class material here:
http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/
It was a hoot – good conversation about the theory and application of the course. Read the Moodle forum for a taste of the class.
B-ob
— Bob Bell Dec 7, 06:28 PM #