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Features
2006 Campus Technology Innovators: Gaming
7/22/2006
The product list is extensive:
- Autodesk’s 3D Studio Max and Maya
- BodyPaint 3D from Maxon Software
- Daz Productions’ Bryce
- Adobe’s Dreamweaver, Flash, Flash Communication Server, and Photoshop
- Apple’s Final Cut Pro, Garage Band, Motion, and Soundtrack Pro
- Peak from Bias
- PHP
- Microsoft SQL server
Most entertainment games allow players myriad gameplay choices, but REGEN focuses its players on a central mission. The players are given optional paths to explore their micro-world, but not unrestricted roaming or multiple side missions that could potentially distract them. The game environment is retained at all times; students are not required to leave the game to work on academic problems.
Next Steps
After the initial course offering this coming fall, the team will conduct assessments of student performance and design a research project on gaming effectiveness. Further, they’ll incorporate learning objects from the game into other courses and begin to create a second course based on gaming technology.
Brown comments on the potential for gaming: “Games will be the next big advancement in education, because educators are going to learn how to tap into the power of gaming to motivate and teach students. It will require a tremendous change in thinking by educators. Most of us enjoy teaching by lecturing. The classroom is a stage, and we’re all performers. But if we value learning more than teaching, we’ll start to adopt gaming techniques.”
Advice
The team’s best advice: Estimate the time and effort you think game development will take, then double it. Better yet, triple it.
:: Innovator: Southern Adventist University
Challenge Met
Two years ago, when Dan Lim was hired by Southern Adventist University (TN) and charged with revamping the institution’s online learning programs, finding a way to engage students in learning was a big priority. But so was helping faculty embrace technology. What Lim brought with him from the University of Minnesota-Crookston was a lot of experience in working with faculty on learning technologies—and seven years’ development of Flash Learning Games Generator. Both skill sets would allow him to help faculty easily create online games in multiple, interchangeable formats.
Now dean of the virtual campus and director of online learning and faculty development, Lim explains his mission at Southern Adventist: “I wanted to bring about some culture change among the faculty. I wanted to convince them that teaching and learning drives technology; that we can build technology around how faculty teach and how students learn.”
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