"INSIDEPIDP"
My Journey, Learnings and Experiences...
Are educators the most difficult learners? In this blog I am the subject of my own research. I want to analyze myself, my posts and thoughts about being a teacher and how they change at each step with each course I take in the PIDP And I just hope I stay an unbiased, critical analyzer of my own learning.
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Resources
New Insights:
What new insights have you gained in terms of the variety of roles that adult educators play (related to your topic)?
Gamification is a powerful tool that can help create the right learning environment for adult learners.
Adult learners seek meaning in their learning and by creating games that present the content in a way that learners can live the content and virtually apply it in real life through games, can help the adult learners find meaning in their learning.
Adults like taking charge and being responsible. Games where adults can decide strategies and experience success or failures as a result of their own decisions can be highly motivating for them.
Learning games designed for learners need to provide real-life scenarios where adults can think of answers based on their own life experiences. This can create a very engaging learning environment for adult learners, as they can then connect learning to their own life experiences.
Therefore, the role of adult educators is to ensure that the games they use to aid the learning process match with the needs and characteristics of adult learners.
Most importantly I believe that educators need to make sure that the games they choose to aid the learning process are meaningful. They should not be added into the curricula for the sake of gamifying it.
Also, I personally believe that for adult learners games should be designed in a manner that they give a sense of realism and not a sense of fantasy.
Adult educators today need to be technically updated and ready to learn new technologies and systems in order to adapt to new emerging learning systems like gamification.
Games may be designed or selected as per the needs of the course and the curricula. They may require individual or collaborative practise, they may be complex or simple.
Considering all this, in a gamified learning environment the educator essentially takes on the role of the facilitator and lets his student’s direct their learning process. However, for gamification to work adult educators need to first of all know and understand technology and the psychology behind the games they choose for their learners. They need to be equipped with such know-how and skill that they can match and integrate games as per the needs of the curricula and as per the resources available to it.
Thus gamification calls for educators who can be facilitators, designers and mentors.
EDU-TRENDS
Digitalization has changed education completely. New trends and technologies are comiing up and research is showing consistently in various forms and streams how digital tools and technologies can have a mega impact on education. With time we are reaizing the power of networking. The power of the internet.
Parents and educators who once belived that games were distactors are now looking upto gaming methodolgies to create enagaging learning environments.
Trends are reversing. In this era we are slowly realizing the cons of the standardized schooling system we have always believed in.
This is the era where we are realizing the power of self directed learning, of flipped classrooms, of inverted curriculums and of allowing the 'whole' person iin the classroom.
Gamification of Education
The gamification of learning is an educational approach to motivate students learn by using video game design and game elements in learning environments. The goal is to maximize enjoyment and engagement through capturing the interest of learners and inspiring them to continue learning.
Web-Conference:
Reflect on the Web-Conference experience. How was it? What was one thing that you learned about from your learning partner?
The idea of web-conferencing is a great idea to connect learners sitting far away from each other and work collaboratively on projects. This can help learners deal with the isolated learning situations that online learning can sometimes lead to.
I and my learning partner were technically sitting in different provinces and the idea of connecting to him so far away and working on a project collaboratively was pretty exciting for me. I as an educator and researcher had worked on research projects collaboratively earlier and the experience had always been great.
Unfortunately, I and my learning partner could not collaborate much as in the initial phase of the project, I lost my father and I had to rush back to India and when I came back, he got too busy in his work. But the information we shared in the short conversations we had was very insightful. Both of us loved the idea of working on gamification. He wanted to work on was anything related to online learning. That made me realize the importance we as adult learners and as adult educators are giving to online learning environments.
I think the biggest fear students have about online learning is whether it has the same validity as in class learning and whether the learning outcomes can be the same as in the real classroom learning environment. During my PIDP courses I realized that I had learned more as a self-directed learner in the online learning environment in just a few months, than what I would have done otherwise.
Therefore, I personally believe that online learning if designed rightly can be very powerful and engaging and above all it offers the adult learners the autonomy and flexibility they desire in their learning.
Trends:
What are some trends in your field (related to your topic)? How are you preparing to address these trends?
In 2012 Newzoo reported that the mobile game market had grown up by 33% making it a $9 billon market, and most of the gamers were adults.
Foldit gamers solved the AIDs puzzle that baffled scientists for a decade in three weeks.
DirecTV used gamification to deal with the fear of failure and build trust in its employees. And their model become a high demand model in no time.
Erickson Coaching International, a Vancouver-based adult education centre is putting video game strategies — gamification — to use in teaching adults.
Deloitte witnessed an increase in the use of its Deloitte Leadership Academy (DLA) training program after they used the principles of gamification in it.
The technology research firm Gartner, Inc. predicts gamification will be used in 25 percent of redesigned business processes by 2015, this will grow to more than a $2.8 billion business by 2016, and 70 percent of Global 2000 businesses will be managing at least one “gamified” application or system by 2014.
Gamification is the in thing.
One of the biggest challenges many firms face is being able to engage their employees in productive trainings. I am aspiring to re-launch my teaching career as a corporate trainer in Canada. I plan to teach spiritual principles that help employees balance their lives, stay and happy and motivated.
The principles of gamification match in many ways to the spiritual principles that I plan to train people in. Therefore, gamifying my training sessions would not just help me get a more engaged session but will also help me and my learners experience spirituality through collaboration and achievement.
As I go through texts and materials on the topic I realize how I need to update myself technologically and adapt myself to these principles. As I wrote in the insights section, it is important to understand what is needed and how it can be achieved through gamification. That’s the task I need to take head on, before thinking of integrating games in my lessons.