I loved the dance video! When I looked at the code you posted, my eyes glazed over and I felt immediately bored. But very quickly with the dance video I could tell what was happening! I think that if I were a student in a class learning that, I would be more interested in sitting down and studying the code after I saw what it could do.

I don’t think that many college students would be too embarrassed to do something like that in class. Maybe a few would be shy, but I think if the professor made a friendly environment in the class, everyone would be excited to participate! I think humans have an innate love of doing fun and even silly activities.

I think your analogy between teaching and Information Systems is an interesting one and you are very correct- teachers need to know both the material AND how to teach, and these two things are not the same thing! I got my undergraduate degree at a liberal arts college, where teaching quality was very important and I must say, the teachers there were better than the teachers I have had in grad school! My grad-school professors were clearly more interested in their research than teaching (most of them, anyway). I am completely baffled why universities hire people to do a job when they have little to no experience or skill at that job!

I really like what you said about honesty being an important quality in a teacher. I think students can often tell when teachers are not being honest or authentic and it makes it harder to relate to the teacher. I always appreciated honesty in teachers and I’m sure your students do, too!

*Little Big Planet, actually, not Little Big World. I forgot what it was called.

I also really liked this week’s readings. Of course, different types of assignments will work for different people and in different fields, but we can start thinking about how to apply modern tools and ways of learning into our own disciplines. I also love playing video games and would have loved to have had more aspects of games in school as a kid/teenager/college student. To respond to a few comments above- game design does not always have to involve coding (see for example in the video where kids create “Little Big World” levels- no programming was involved, because the tools to build levels already exist). Also, my dad told me that some of his classes in high school used board games to teach concepts. Board games are also super captivating if they are well-designed, social, and often require a lot of thinking and strategizing. So, for people who don’t like video games or who don’t have the resources to have students work with video games, these could be a great alternative.

Thanks for providing all of these awesome examples of role-playing in the classroom! Role-playing and simulation really do seem to get people engaged and feel connected to what they are learning. And maybe, since it feels like play and since we are sort of acting like someone else, it helps us get over fear of failure or of giving the wrong answer too? I was a really quiet kid and teenager, but I remember being really active during a mock trial in the 8th grade and some other similar activity in AP Government, as well. I think I was more willing to be brave as the lawyer defending human rights than I was as myself!

Thanks for sharing the video, and I love your ideas about making learning more fun! It would be great to see education move more toward project and play-based learning. What if, instead of sitting through an hour and fifteen minutes of lecture, teachers/professors gave a short lecture, and then let students explore the ideas on their own. Some subjects would lend themselves very well to this type of learning.

I am not from an arts field. But I actually think that in a way, it’s fantastic that those who are in the arts fields are forced to think about these things, because all fields really should think about it. I’m in econ, and in all assignments and exams there is a clear “right answer.” And as a second year PhD student, we have to take a qualifier exam to continue on in the program. This qualifier exam is not open-ended. It doesn’t make us think creatively about how we could use our knowledge to do research or solve any meaningful problem. All of the problems have a right and a wrong answer. So, I guess that those in charge think that one of the most important things for an economist to be able to do is to take a timed exam on problems that ultimately have nothing to do with our interests or future careers…My point here is that, by being able to fall back on easy forms of assessment, my field has not bothered to think about what good or meaningful assessment might look like. And it does us a disservice, because doing research is totally different than taking our classes and exams. So I think it’s great that fields in the arts have to think a little harder and more critically about how they are doing assessment!

I have been thinking about this same issue, as I am in a math-based field, as well. Now, it’s been awhile since I’ve taken linear algebra, but I do remember having some assignments that seemed more lab-based, where we were given a more general problem and asked how to use the tools of linear algebra to solve it. I wonder if math classes could alternate- a class period or two of learning some skills, and then interesting problem sets or discussions where students could creatively use those skills. I think that you are right in that sometimes, there is a right answer and there is stuff students should know that will help them in the future. Assessments may even be beneficial for students because it tells them what they know, from this set of skills. But maybe, in the structure of the final grade, quizzes and exams could take up a smaller portion of the grade, while other assignments could make up the bulk? That could be a relatively easy starting point that would get students more engaged in critical thinking and give less incentive for cramming material the night before a test.

I have had many of the same experiences! For me, I had to very consciously tell myself I didn’t care about my grades in order for me to be able to focus on the learning and not the A. I wonder what school would have been like with pass/fail grades, or I had adopted this mentality earlier… I wonder how much more I would have learned and enjoyed myself!