Gamification 3 - CAP 115

After working with 2 pairs of library student assistants, I made a few changes: students will only find 1-3 relevant articles, each team will keep track of their own score, and then score another team as evaluators. Scoring for relevance: 5 points for each article on topic. The students indicated that extra credit points are the most motivating.

More on higher education teaching and learning theory: this is a game (problem solving) in which students collaborate (work in teams) to apply concepts (advanced searching techniques) to get relevant results. They will negotiate meaning (provide each other feedback). The professor will track deep learning afterward by monitoring the follow-up transfer of learning to new situations (students will search their own topics, a.k.a., secondary research questions, both in databases and in Google).

Gamification 2 - CAP 115

After talking the scoring over with Kyle Felker, & understanding that the items which are the most important should have the most points, here are the changes in scoring the game:
Scoring:

• Relevance of 1st 10 results: 1 pt for each article on topic = 0-10 points
• Target number of articles closest to (to be determined by students) X = 0-5 points

1. 3 points: within 3-5
2. 2 points: within 6-10
3. 0 points: more than 11 away from the target number

• Used Boolean Operators AND/OR/NOT = 0-5 points
• Used limiters such as truncation or wild cards, date range, quotation marks for phrases, language, or scholarly or peer reviewed (1 points for each type of limiter) = 0-5 points
• Used subject headings/words/terms (1 points for each box) = 0-3 points
•  Used Advanced search option = 0-2 points

Total: 0-30


Next steps: try it out with the student assistants & ask them about the target number of articles, about which rewards will have the most effect, such as extra credit points, etc., for winning.


So, what makes it a game? Rules, decisions that players have to make to get points, and the points themselves.

Gamification - CAP 115

For the Advertising and PR (CAP) 115 course session on database searching, I decided to work with Kyle Felker to try to "gamify" it. I'm also reading Shirley Booth's article "On Phenomenography, Learning and Teaching" in Higher Education Research & Development, v.16 no.2, 1997. The basic principles are:

• teachers must draw out learners' understanding, connect to prior knowledge (can also serve as icebreaker); 
• learning is coming to understand something differently after engaging in a learning task, relating examples to the big picture/theory, and reflecting on its meaning; 
• the tasks must be relevant to the learner's world. 
• The teacher has to figure out how the tasks can lead to new perspectives (aka learning). 

So, I will introduce the session with the description of the course, its objectives, the learning outcomes for the day (drawn from my instruction plan for this major) to set the big picture, then do a pre-task quiz to draw out current knowledge (I may use Socrative as a polling tool).

The  Game:
Be the team to find the best (closest to the target number and most relevant) articles for a secondary research paper on "Which cereals do university students eat?"

Rules:
1. Must use databases from the CAP 115 Subject Guide
2. Work in teams; teams score each other
3. Professor and librarian check scores and resolve differences of opinion

Scoring:
Target number of articles closest to (to be determined by students) X = 0-2 points
Relevance = 0-3 points
Used Advanced search option = 0-1 point
Used Boolean Operators AND/OR/NOT = 0-3 points
Used subject headings/words/terms (1 points for each) = 0-3 points
Used other limiters such as truncation or wild cards, date range, quotation marks for phrases, language, or scholarly or peer reviewed (1 points for each type of limiter) = 0-5 points

For a follow-up application of theory to a new problem, I'll have them apply this to Google individually with their own secondary research question.

I'm going to try this out with a couple pairs of library student assistants to try to work the bugs out before classes start. Wish me luck!

Chincoteague Island

The marshes, mudflats, forests, channels, & ocean are gorgeous. We had rain, mist, & sunshine during 3 cool days here. I hiked the Marsh, Lighthouse, & Woodland trails, & we drove all over. Visited both "nature centers." Ate high tea at the Channel Bass Inn (enough for 2 meals with thin smoked salmon & cream cheese sandwiches, tomato & sharp cheddar sandwiches, 4 different kinds of scones with clotted cream, butterscotch pecan tart, & a mixed-dried-fruit pastry. Drank gallons of tea.) Ate shrimp & crabcakes at both Don's (!) & Etta's.  

New birds for the life list:
Bobwhites, Willets, Dunlins, American Oystercatchers, Lesser Golden-Plover, Black Skimmers, Virginia Rail, Ruddy Turnstones, Glossy Ibises, Great-crested Flycatcher, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Laughing Gulls (which remind me of Kookaburras in their crazy laugh).

Also seen: Great Blue Herons, Green-backed Heron, Tricolor Heron, Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Cattle Egrets, Bald Eagle, Osprey, Black Vultures, Common Terns, Semipalmated Plovers, Loon, Brown Pelicans, Double-crested Cormorants, Barn & Tree Swallows, Purple Martins, Indigo Buntings, Hummingbird, Yellow Warbler, & Amy saw Summer Tanagers.

Oh, and did I mention ponies? And more ponies? Oh yes, and ponies.

Ravines wildflowers

Blooming on the GVSU Ravines trail (behind Calder and the dorms):

• Buttercups
• Virginia bluebells
• False rue anemone
• Wild ginger
• Wild geranium
• Jack-in-the-pulpit
• Mayapple
• Marsh Marigolds
• Paw Paw trees
• Wild Phlox
• Redbud trees
• Spring beauties
• Violets:

1. Canada
2. Common purple
3. Downy yellow
4. Sweet white

March 25 Wildflowers

The warm weather has brought an abundance of wildflowers to early bloom. We spotted the following in Aman Park yesterday:

• bloodroot
• cut-leaved toothwort
  
• Dutchman's breeches
• early meadow rue
• false rue anemone
  
• hepatica
• myrtle (Periwinkle)
  
• spring beauties
• spring cress
• trillium
• trout lilies
• downy yellow violets

Nonfiction about the Amish

If you are inclined to read about the Amish, everything by Donald B. Kraybill is excellent. I also enjoyed Richard Ammon's Growing up Amish, Visits with the Amish by Linda Egenes. Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal, by David Kline, is one of my all-time favorite nature writings. I'd like to read Kline's Scratching the Woodchuck: Nature on an Amish Farm and Letters from Larksong: An Amish Naturalist Explores His Organic Farm.

Why I Left the Amish: A Memoir by Saloma Miller Furlong will break your heart--it describes in detail all of the bad parts of a closed culture, as does Ira Wagler's Growing Up Amish: A Memoir. On the other hand, I found David Wagler (Ira's father) to be long-winded and egotistical. Joe Mackall's Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish was fine.

Weaver-Zercher, Valerie. Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels. 2013. Amazing book about the topic. Interesting that I do not fit the typical evangelical reader, however. Although reading this genre as a way of trying to maintain hope and faith in the difficulties of a hypermodern world and life does describe me.

To read:  
Miller, Marlene. Grace leads me home. 2011 memoir of becoming Amish.
Nolt and Meyers. Plain Diversity: Amish Cultures and Identities.
Hurst and McConnell. An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change....
Other books in the Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies series.

To avoid: Olson, Anna Dee. Growing Up Amish: Insider Secrets from One Woman's Inspirational Journey. Badly written memoir from a vanity press.



Green means best in my opinion, purple means I have it, yellow means I would like to have it (a.k.a. wish list), turquoise means look for it to read.