Today was the second day of the DELTA Summer Shorts series, and Claire and I presented on Panopto. It was a lot of fun. I was able to watch two sessions, and now want to go back and review the recordings of the ones I missed. Tonight, we watched a session from the 2021 Lilly Conference Online entitled: “Game On! Increasing Student Engagement Through Gamification” by Drs. Nephy Samuel and Pooja Patel from Texas A&M University. They began by talking about disengagement and approaches to engage students. Their learning objectives were to outline the benefits of gamification, evaluate how it was implemented in a course, and to discuss methods to incorporate gamification. They defined gamification as a way of “transforming your classroom environment and regular activities into a game” and includes “point scoring, competitions, teamwork… to drive engagement.” The presenters mentioned that gamification helps improve engagement, motivation, and creativity. They also explained how teamwork involved in gamification increases collaboration. They implemented gamification in a 110 student second-year pharmacology course on two campuses. The presenters emphasized that it is a skills-based course. The presenters described how they used simulations and created a “non-adherence game: the language used by instructors was very clear. Participants can unlock rounds by completing challenges/puzzles. Students were satisfied with the activities according to poll results. The last game they described was 90-minutes long and students could look up drug information. They did a sorting exercise with prescriptions and descriptions. Toward the end of the presentation, the speakers suggested video platforms and collaborative software and documents for engagement. Samuel and Patel concluded that:
- gamification has many benefits including engagement and skill development
- start by identifying the outcome for the activity
- don’t forget to use reflections for students and facilitators to self-reflect
- contact IT to determine resources and technologies available
What caught my attention from this presentation was the virtual sorting activity. It aligns with the objectives and skills Samuel and Patel wanted to develop. The H5P tools we have been exploring including sorting activities. The point scoring could be trickier to establish, though I imagine there are ways of doing it with H5P activities!
