It is summer time and a therefore a good time to start thinking about how to organize the courses in the coming autumn semester.
One of the goals that I have set for myself in my teacher training is to learn more about pedagogy in the digital environments, and also touch the topic of gaming that is oh so hot in the Finnish education industry at the moment.
The gaming function in education is not there just for fun (even if it is clear that enjoying the learning process improves the results), but in fact it has been proven that
Having heard that our university has an access to Seppo.io I am eager to test it out. Seppo.io provides a platform to teach with a game, "in a fun and easy way", as they advertise. The pros of the tool are the possibility to take the learning out from the classroom to the real world, and encourage students to complete tasks e.g. in a competitive way and by utilizing their mobiles.
I have decided to take Seppo.io onboard for three of my courses in the autumn semester, piloting it with both Finnish and foreign students. To take it further, for one of the courses I am planning to incorporate a real company to act as a client for which the students will complete some tasks through Seppo.io.
This case business is active in travel industry, therefore it well supports the theme of setting out a global scene for our studies in business management. The students will be given the role of an external consultant or a sales manager, and their task is to develop the customer relationships and the sales process for the client company.
Getting started is rather straightforward even for someone who has not used the tool before. I am able to set the theme, locations and different kinds of tasks technically rather hassle-free. However, what requires quite some imagination (=read: time) is to think about the storyline and the rules of the game. In fact in my first attempt, I just decide to stick to very simple rules, giving points by the quality of the submissions (text+video+pictures shared by students) and not based on e.g. their speed.
I have also hard time in figuring out tasks that would all take place outdoors or in real business settings, as my students cannot roam around the actual office premises of the client or take too much of the employees' time during the game. Therefore some of the tasks I develop are based on given readings or video materials that the students need to comment. However I don't see this as a problem, as this helps me as a teacher to guarantee that some theory will be discussed too.
The game in this case does not stand alone, but is an integral part of the teaching at the course. There will be no other assignments to complete, all of them are grouped in this game.
Even if I feel that at this first attempt I am not able to completely utilize the pedagogic potential of Seppo.io, I believe, that already having a story in the form of the game certainly helps the students to understand the bigger picture and the relationships between different decisions. Storytelling itself is a great strategy for both teaching as well as marketing, as stories capture the emotional interest of the listener in a way that normal lectures or slideshows would never have done. This aspect is also important for my students to understand.
Next I will continue testing the tool for another course related to branding, which most likely as a subject is going to be a lot easier to build games on than the one I was working on now. Brands can be monitored and analysed easily all around us, so there will be plenty of sources for inspiration. So the game is on!
One of the goals that I have set for myself in my teacher training is to learn more about pedagogy in the digital environments, and also touch the topic of gaming that is oh so hot in the Finnish education industry at the moment.
The gaming function in education is not there just for fun (even if it is clear that enjoying the learning process improves the results), but in fact it has been proven that
Having heard that our university has an access to Seppo.io I am eager to test it out. Seppo.io provides a platform to teach with a game, "in a fun and easy way", as they advertise. The pros of the tool are the possibility to take the learning out from the classroom to the real world, and encourage students to complete tasks e.g. in a competitive way and by utilizing their mobiles.
I have decided to take Seppo.io onboard for three of my courses in the autumn semester, piloting it with both Finnish and foreign students. To take it further, for one of the courses I am planning to incorporate a real company to act as a client for which the students will complete some tasks through Seppo.io.
This case business is active in travel industry, therefore it well supports the theme of setting out a global scene for our studies in business management. The students will be given the role of an external consultant or a sales manager, and their task is to develop the customer relationships and the sales process for the client company.
Getting started is rather straightforward even for someone who has not used the tool before. I am able to set the theme, locations and different kinds of tasks technically rather hassle-free. However, what requires quite some imagination (=read: time) is to think about the storyline and the rules of the game. In fact in my first attempt, I just decide to stick to very simple rules, giving points by the quality of the submissions (text+video+pictures shared by students) and not based on e.g. their speed.
I have also hard time in figuring out tasks that would all take place outdoors or in real business settings, as my students cannot roam around the actual office premises of the client or take too much of the employees' time during the game. Therefore some of the tasks I develop are based on given readings or video materials that the students need to comment. However I don't see this as a problem, as this helps me as a teacher to guarantee that some theory will be discussed too.
The game in this case does not stand alone, but is an integral part of the teaching at the course. There will be no other assignments to complete, all of them are grouped in this game.
Even if I feel that at this first attempt I am not able to completely utilize the pedagogic potential of Seppo.io, I believe, that already having a story in the form of the game certainly helps the students to understand the bigger picture and the relationships between different decisions. Storytelling itself is a great strategy for both teaching as well as marketing, as stories capture the emotional interest of the listener in a way that normal lectures or slideshows would never have done. This aspect is also important for my students to understand.
Next I will continue testing the tool for another course related to branding, which most likely as a subject is going to be a lot easier to build games on than the one I was working on now. Brands can be monitored and analysed easily all around us, so there will be plenty of sources for inspiration. So the game is on!
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| Creating tasks for students in Seppo.io - this time in Finnish. |
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