Group items tagged

Organization "brings together game design, rigorous research practices and strong interdisciplinary partnerships to create, study and promote game-based materials, strategies and systems as critical tools for personal and social development."

This graduate program at NYU's Steinhardt School of Education offers an MA in Digital Media Design for Learning, a PhD, and an advanced certificate in Digital Media Design for Learning. There is a lot of emphasis on games and gaming and the primary focus appears to be K-12.

Shared because there are likely affinities between some of the students (or faculty) in this program and our own interests.

"Based at New York University, the Institute brings together 14 game designers, computer scientists, and education researchers from 9 partner institutions, including Columbia, City University of New York, Dartmouth, NYU, NYU-Poly, Parsons, Chile's Pontifica Universidad Catolica, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Teacher's College. "

Posted by dskmag on the blog Design for Learning, May 28 2011. This blog is written by Dean Groom, who has an interest in "embedding new pedagogical classroom practice to create authentic, realistic and relevant learning for today's learners." This post describes ways to make LMS (and online courses) more engaging, following a gaming/Xbox model.

By CC (Community College) Times, published April 21 2010. This article reports on Bill Gates's visit to Foothill College to observe the Math My Way program. From the article, "Math My Way groups cohorts of students who have similar math skill levels." Students then work in small groups, and one-on-one with instructors, as well as using both computer and paper drills and games.

Headed by Amy Bruckman, Associate professor at Georgia Tech, this Electronic Learning Communities center engages Ph.D. level students in studying the application of constructionist social learning online. They are doing some fascinating work, such as developing software to support leaders of learning communities, offering young A-A males the chance to be game testers and to use that experience credential as a route into computer science studies and careers, etc. These are but two research examples; there are more.

Published by Institute for the Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute, 2011. Rather than predicting actual careers or job types, this report looks at Six Drivers of Change, and the resulting 10 Key Skills needed in the future workforce, including Virtual Collaboration.

The authors find similarities between gaming and virtual collaboration and posit that, to be successful, virtual collaboration must include "immediate feedback, clear objectives and a staged series of challenges [in order to] significantly drive participation and motivation."

2011 Horizon Report is a collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. Report focuses on six technologies to watch for future adoption. On near-term horizon (within next 12 months): electronic books, mobiles. 2-3 year horizon: augmented reality and game-based learning. Far term (four to five years): gesture-based computing and learning analytics (data-gathering tools & analytics to study student engagement, performance and progress with goal to adapt curricula accordingly).