I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog …

@Raul: Sorry that I kind of left it up to you to watch the video. I have a myriad of crazy ways that this can be applied swimming around in my head. The problem is that I think applications depends on specific context. I’ll try and do a bit of a series on actual implementation soon. For now I just want to get across the fact that video games are a reasonable place to turn when looking for better teaching strategies.

I know that you spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage your students and that is awesome. I think though that video games could offer good heuristics for those not willing to invest that time or effort.

@Jeff: I agree completely. I think the motivation to want to play the game comes from how it is framed. If WoW was framed as “a game where you run similar but slightly different missions over and over again with minimal rewards for each run” nobody would want to play it.

I love your post on education. It speaks to my notion of side quests! As for needing the whole system to change… I don’t think so. I think the best way to do it is lobby those above, while slowly helping the professors and staff at ground level to change as much as they can in order to provide the best environment for their students.

@Cory, yeah Evoke itself was not what I imagined it to be. My point around Evoke was simply that if you try really hard you can make it look like doing research and blogging is actually a fun experience.

@Nicole I’m very much on the same page. All it would take would be some creative curriculum design and maybe a WordPress plugin or two, lets see what we can do over the summer…

On leveling up: I think one of the reasons games work so well is that they provide some _real_ incentive to perform those repetitive tasks. Leveling up an MMO character allows you to win battles, which is fun. Who doesn’t like winning? It also lets you to fill your role (warrior, healer, etc.) better, and a lot of the enjoyment in MMORPGs is from filling a role. It’s a pretty nice feeling to be needed and appreciated by your peers.

On storylines: It’s true that games usually involve epic quests to solve problems of enormous magnitude, but in my opinion, this is not what makes the story entertaining. It’s the setting, and the interactions the characters have with each other that make a good story. I couldn’t care less whether I’m saving the world from Darkspawn, or advancing a civil and sustainable society. As long as there are interesting companions with compelling stories, I’ll be entertained.

On EVOKE: I signed up for EVOKE the week it started, and was really disappointed. Now, I can be a cynical guy sometimes (buzzwords make me gag), but I was willing to put that aside and really get into the game as long as it provided a fun ARG experience. I was imagining puzzles, or an online scavenger hunt with clues that the community could work on.
Instead, it asked me to go study “social innovators”, then come back and blog about it. My “reward” would be a little badge on my profile.
… That’s not fun! It’s not challenging, and it’s not what I would call a “game”.

Anyway, good thought-provoking blog post.

I would argue that another point you might’ve missed is that you WANT to have to play the game.

There are also too many people who I argue aren’t in university to learn, but to simply get the degree and move on. If we can change that mindset, it’d be a huge plus.

I recently did a post on education you can read here. http://bit.ly/coLbgx

My last point is that it would take an entire community to make this move forward. There are some professors that openly admit to having taught the same way they did years ago.

That has to change.

I’ll have to admit that while I really really liked this post, having to watch the TED talks to get the point across left me wanting more of your ideas of how we can change the system.

In my own teaching (at UBC too) I have tried to vary the repetitive tasks. I have worked hard to engage my students with learning online technologies (and I have YOU to thank for some really great suggestions).

My question to you would be – what are the lessons YOU have distilled from McGonigal’s TED talk (and the other video, which I’m about to watch).

I’ll be also very honest in that I’m 350% skeptical of any TED talk. Despite the fact that people seem to see TED talks as “mind-blowing”, most of the time, whenever I’ve seen a TED talk, I’ve seen very little that blows my mind. I suppose that’s the skeptic in me

Thanks again for this post, it’s very refreshing and sparks some thoughts for the teacher in me. I *adore* teaching. And I want to be a better educator, every day. Your post challenges me to think about ways to become a better professor, and for that, I thank you.