Inspire Blog Category: Games

Games as a Model for Motivation and Engagement, Part 2

Narrative and World-Building For this post, I will focus on two simple strategies you can use to improve motivation and engagement in your online course, narrative and world building. These terms are used frequently in games, as well as in literature, film and other domains. They are a powerful tool, easily applied to your existing course material or as you develop new content. If you want some background about where my thinking is coming from, check out my last blog post, Games as a Model for Motivation and Engagement, Part 1, where I take a deeper dive into gaming and Self-Determination Theory. I would also recommend a post by Dr. Meghan Naxer, Self-Determination Theory and Online Education: A Primer. There … Games as a Model for Motivation and Engagement, Part 2

Game Design as Pedagogy (Project-Based Learning)

Many educators have contemplated the use of games as way to engage learners, or maybe thought about using some elements found in games to engage learners. A big hurdle for integrating games into a course is the amount of work it takes to build them to use in a course, even if you have the skill-set. Of course, you could always take the easier route and try to integrate an existing game into a course. The hurdles there involve cost and finding a game that supports the content specific to your course. There is another approach to bring game concepts into the learning environment that does not necessitate a huge investment of time, combining game design with problem-based learning. Create … Game Design as Pedagogy (Project-Based Learning)

Walking through multimedia

A “multimedia developer” at Ecampus typically creates three or four interactive web pages or animations each quarter. Here is a walkthrough of how one cool project was created which shows the variety of tools we often leverage.

We can revisit and revise multimedia

Recently, we added 24 new birds to this “silhouette shape recognition” interactive for FW312. This was the 3rd time we expanded this interactive tool, and it serves as a nice reminder that Ecampus can continue to help improve your course materials year after year.