Deepening+Learner+Understanding+via+Games+and+Simulations

company called e4ten TN initiative to develop and deliver online courses for the state Taping this presentation

teachers develop content and then pass off to artists and online developers do beta testing with students before go live with the courses have 3 live and 15 in beta purchase content in the mean time

Learner to take charge of their learning - include games in their courses to engage learner Definition of what games and simulations are they coined the name Computer Based Learnng Activities Include animated virtual coaches, custom graphics, and others

have passive and active CBLAs. More passive at this time

[|www.e4tn.org]

Intertactive can be either prescribed interactive (scripted responses) and exploratory Related to Bloom's Taxonomy ducplicate, interpret, unravel, answer, decipher, solve for presscrbed type Infer, deduce, surmise, synthesize, and evaluate for exploratory type Exploratory moves farther up the taxonomy

Doesn't try to "wow" them with the interactives that they create. Matter of impact vs. time spent developing Not getting to the gaming aspect in the session. Interactives shown that they developed can either be done easily in SoftChalk or found online for free. Exploratory has students apply prior knowledge to a new situation. Got to the gaming near the end. Games they developed. Check Labor Supply and Demando on their website

Preliminary data showed that use of the simulations did not improve scores on a unit test and but did on the final exam. Appears that helped them retain the knowledge.

Bruce's Contribution: [|www.e4TN.org] David Gayle
 * This organization grew out of Tennessee's intention to have their own internally developed courses
 * Currently have 3 courses live, 15 courses in beta testing, and more in development
 * Simulation and games have the benefit of increasing the involvement of the students -- online learning has been too passive
 * Presentations will be posted after the conference
 * They call their games and simulations Computer Based Learning Activities (CBLAs)
 * Animated virtual coaches are part of the design
 * CBLAs can be either passive or active
 * Passive CBLAs are only at Bloom's level of comprehension
 * Part of these people's work is based in themes for the course, such as the newspaper editor who teaches content in English, but these are still passive
 * So now they are working largely with INTERACTIVE CBLAs, which can be categorized as either PRESCRIBED or EXPLORATORY
 * Prescribed Interactive CBLAs mostly involve duplicating, interpreting, etc
 * Exploratory Interactive CBLAs require students to infer, deduce, synthesize, and evaluate
 * The essence of this discussion is that there are multiple ways to design these simulations and games depending upon the intention of the instruction AND the degree of freedom allowed the learner. The choices the designers make are based on the intended instructional purposes.
 * Gayle's observation is that kids will not engage with some simulations when the payoff in learning requires repetition to derive meaning.
 * At the site mentioned at the top, you can actually try these simulations and watch the powerpoint