Desinging To Learn

Let’s face it, in any given day of the week there could be plenty of down time that has the potential to be a learning moment rather than wasted in the mundane. Waiting in line for coffee or lunch, on the commuter rail, or otherwise waiting on something. Most of us reach for our phones in these moments and check emails, Facebook notifications, Twitter feeds, or perhaps play games. Since I started graduate school at University of Colorado Denver a year ago, I now tend to reach for Canvas, Twitter, and our course blogs on my phone or iPad. These platforms for social learning are all part of the Information and Learning Technology courses and learning ecology at CU Denver . I have yet to play mobile games as part of the requirements for the courses, but I imagine it would be well received, and highly possible to fit “playful” moments in the learning experience at CU Denver. In fact, I decided to take a Games & Learning course this term due to my own interest in the subject. ...

What are Play Journals? As part of the Games and Learning course and study with University of Colorado Denver Information and Learning Technologies Master’s program, students will participate in both shared and individual play sessions. These play sessions are part of “learning by doing” and reflection necessary to understand what it means to be a learner through playing games. The play journals are a synthesis of scholarship and reflection on play per the chosen game. Playing Hearthstone Hearthstone is a single player, card, turned based, strategy game that can be played against an artificial intelligence (AI) opponent, in “Solo Adventures.” It can also be played against other players over the internet including friends on your Battlenet list. Hearthstone is available on a computer and most mobile devices making it very accessible, and it’s free to play! Playing the game in solo mode will initially unlock cards and other heroes. This serves as a sort of tutorial that mus...

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 stud...

(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...