Should games be used to enhance academic instruction? While some debate exists over the use of games in the college classroom, several professors are successfully using games to teach and reinforce complicated material.
Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Drexel University , created the EduFrag project ( http://edufrag.wikispaces.com ) to house games he uses to teach organic chemistry at Drexel. He uses both a first-person commercial and first-person non-weapon and non-commercial version of Unreal Tournament 2004 to teach complicated chemistry concepts to undergraduate students. Students participate in "races" to earn extra credit and prizes (costly textbooks or a video iPod). In addition to Unreal, Dr. Bradley created a game called "Wheel of Orgo." He provides the instructions and downloads for these games on his wiki at http://edufrag.blogspot.com and additional materials can be found on his blog at http://edufrag.blogspot.com If you are interested in using or modifying his games, please contact him at jeanclaude.bradley@gmail.com .
Beth Ritter-Guth uses both versions of Unreal to teach basic grammar to developmental writing students at Lehigh Carbon Community College . Using the tutorials provided by Dr. Bradley, she built a game on comma usage and a game on dependent and independent clauses. She is in the process of writing a Choose Your Own Adventure game. Her materials are also available for free use and distribution on the Edufrag blog and wiki. If you are interested in using these games or need more information, please contact her at bguth@lccc.edu Since she is local, she is willing to come to campus to help Lehigh faculty develop and implement games.
Overall, the games are easy to make and do not require any programming or game design knowledge. For the educational version of Unreal, the download is free and the "doors" are created in Paint. The game can be adapted to any discipline. While "Wheel or Orgo" is specific to organic chemistry, the concept of the game can be adapted to any discipline.
Should games be used to enhance the college classroom? This is a debate best left to experts, but, in reality, they do help students learn basic or complex topics.
For more information about the uses of gaming in college, please watch any of these screencast presentations:
http://edufrag.blogspot.com/2006/08/lvaic-edufrag-screencast.html
http://drexel-coas-elearning.blogspot.com/2006/04/educational-gaming-results-from-webct.html |
About the Author
Beth Ritter-Guth teaches English and Women's Studies full-time at Lehigh Carbon Community College and part-time at DeSales University. She uses wikis, blogs, podcasts, screencasts, video podcasts, and gaming to introduce course material to students. She has presented at over 30 international, national, and local conferences on the use of technology and service learning in the humanities. Beth is currently completing her PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric with an emphasis on scientific discourse at Texas Tech University. |
