My "Aha" moment

It was enlightening to research Gamification and Digital Game Based Learning in the PIDP 3100 Foundations of Adult Education course.

My learning partner and I had a wonderful discussion about the implications of these trends, and out of all the new things we learned, the point that caused me to reflect the most was “Teachers can play a vital role in ensuring that students adequately reflect on the problems or conflicts that arose during the game/learning activity. Games are good at interactivity but bad at reflection…what the learner needs most is FEEDBACK, game or no game.”

We, as teachers, will need to help students understand how the concepts of the game relate to them, their lives, and their jobs. This could be accomplished through providing opportunities for reflection following the game. This reflective time would help to meet the various learning needs of both introverts and extroverts. Specific open ended questions could be asked such as “Knowing what you now know about chemistry, how do you think this could relate directly to performing a facial on a client?” or “How do you feel about the concepts we learned in today’s game?”.

Opening up a great dialogue among the learners would allow me an opportunity to fill in the gaps where information was perhaps unclear, or I could also add to what their feedback was, or ask further probing questions in order to stimulate their further critical thinking skills.

Reflection is still a very important and critical component of learning, whether you teach in a traditional 'book and pen' sort of way, or if you have 'gamified' your entire classroom.