We can all use fresh ideas for engaging students with course content. What can the games we play teach us about designing our courses? Games have kept people engaged for decades because they have systematically designed engagement practices. In this program we will explore how to recognize these engagement practices and apply them into course design. Learn how to use the games that surround us to make our courses more powerful.

Learn that the core principles of course design are very similar to the principles of game design, they will learn how to look at games for inspiration, and they will learn that it can be easy to modify their courses to make them more engaging.

Learning Goals

After this program, participants will be able to:

• Analyze an engagement strategy for effectiveness and suitability
• Gather original ideas from current games
• Take their discoveries from games and thoughtfully implement them into their own courses.

Topics Covered

• Game Design vs Instructional Design (spoiler alert: they’re not so different)
• Popular Game Engagement Strategies (narrative, fail gloriously, etc.)
• Analyzing a game (Analyzing a popular game step-by-step)
• Implementation
• Evaluation (Did it work? How to ask the right questions)