Creating meaningful learning isn't about aspiring to some ephemeral concept of "academic rigor." Determine what skill(s), process(es), or knowledge your learners should come away with and use those to craft your experiences. Inserting arbitrary difficulty spikes, busy work, or tasks designed to "weed out" learners is actively detrimental to, you know, helping people actually master the material. And it's often…
DISCLAIMERS: I was extremely fortunate to not need to take nearly as many loans as many of my peers for university. The loans I did take I’ve paid back, and I currently work for a community college. With that out of the way… There's been a lot of talk recently around forgiving student loan debt. Hold on! Before you click…
We know games can change behavior.We know games can make arguments.We know games can promote learning.We know games can expose us to new ideas.We know games can share narrative.We know games can change our thinking. So take that all together, and here's my question. Can (and if yes—how can) we create games that are -specifically- designed to cultivate wisdom?
Interactive online learning is not the same thing as engaging online learning. If your learning experience is interactive in the sense that there's more junk for the learner to click on...they're just as bored, but now for longer 'cause you made them jump through hoops. Adding stuff like drag and drops just for funsies isn't good learning design (especially if…
The past year and half has been a case study in how people react to unprecedented levels of uncertainty. Games, in all their forms, are fundamentally -about- reacting to uncertainty. Whether that comes from the systems of the game, information you are (or are not provided), other players, or your own skill level. One of my favorite games of all…
Be grateful for your teachers. And not just the ones at the front of a classroom (though certainly those too). The author who wrote that book that changed your life is your teacher. The hosts of your favorite podcast and YouTube show are your teachers. The artist of that song that moves you to tears is your teacher. Your bosses,…
There's a variety of reasons I love Dungeons & Dragons. It's a shared narrative experience, its problem solving, creativity, and a social context. It's just all around great. But I never really stopped to think about just how much we as a society owe to D&D. Pretty much everything can be and is gamified these days. And the core of…
So, I’ve been struggling to stay motivated (and consequently have been writing extremely poorly) as I approach the end of my master’s program. This then translates into procrastination, as I literally see word counts shrinking from week to week as I edit, and it’s just frustrating. To the point where it’s become difficult to sit down and make myself work…
Well designed games have incredible potential—maybe more than most other art forms—to expose us to new perspectives and to reframe our thinking in meaningful ways. The combination of player agency (i.e. being put in a position to directly interact with ideas, rather than just passively consume them), relatively fast feedback cycles (you see what effects your actions and those of…
I'm an instructional designer studying Educational Design and Technology, so people are often surprised at how often I recommend non-electronic solutions to their learning design problems. Paper is technology. Books are technology. Pens are technology. All technology is, is just applied science. Integrating tech responsibly into any learning experience means understanding the affordances and constraints of the tools you are…