This semester we had the opportunity to work with five new instructors at the University of Michigan to make their courses gameful. We asked each to share a bit about how they got started with gameful learning, and what they hope to see over the course of the semester. We’ll be featuring their responses here on our blog over the next several weeks.
Joanna Millunchick, College of Engineering:
MATSCIE 220: Intro to Material Science Engineering
What got you interested in gameful learning?
I heard about this approach from Barry [Fishman] and Mika [LaVaque-Manty] and was intrigued. But what got me to try it was something else entirely. My colleague Steve Yalisove has been employing some really exciting teaching methods in his introductory MSE course. While I am certain that his approach is excellent for really getting students to engage with the course content on a deeper level than we typically see, I’m not convinced that all students want or need to get that in a 200 level course. So I thought I’d see what would happen if students had a choice between the kind of activities we typically offer (exams, graded homework, quizzes), and the kinds of activities that get students to engage more deeply (annotating the text, homework reflections, etc).
What are you excited to see this semester?
I can’t wait to see how the students choose to go through the course material.