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Showing posts from January, 2016

What Does Game-Based Learning Mean for Many Adult Learners?

As part of the graduate course work in INTE 5320 at University of Colorado Denver, and continued scholarship in games & learning, I am commenting and critiquing an article that piqued my interest last week I originally discovered on Twitter:  Game-Based Learning Has Practical Applications for Nontraditional Students ,  By Marguerite McNeal Jan 20, 2016. What's so interesting about non-traditional adult learners? I was initially drawn to this article about non-traditional students and how game-based learning can apply to these types of students. I wanted to know how the article and study defined “non-traditional” students, and as I had hoped, the article defined them through a range of possible scenarios, but of most interest to me was how this definition applies to undergraduate and graduate students. Such as, students who work full-time, and go to school, who are also juggling family responsibilities. This is fascinating to me because I am one of these students,

A Life of Play, A Personal Introduction to Games Based Learning

(Kirk Lunsford - Pixelated) Spring semester, the juggling act of teaching part time, working part time, and taking graduate courses at it’s finest. Which sometimes manifests itself in a game-like fashion! I’m an adjunct instructor at Front Range Community College , and I also work as a freelance designer , and I’m a graduate student at University of Colorado Denver studying Information and Learning Technologies . I’ve taught CAD and Interior Design courses since late 2012. Some of the classes I’ve taught focus on asset creation for video game-like scenarios. I’ve never used games in the classroom (in the way I would really like to use them) because it would break the requirements of the course provided by the state guidelines (CCNS) . But my CAD students are incredibly interested in games. I often wonder if my students would learn more if they were tasked to create assets for a game of their own through one of the free to use engines such as Unity 3D ? Instead of course instructi