Connections Seminar: Why gamified learning and using games to teach are not the same thing

Most mobile games are a bit of a paradox: They attempt to hoard your time in hopes that you will spend money to progress through the game more quickly, so you can ultimately save time. This is the same feeling one gets when playing most 'educational' games as they focus on external rewards (e.g., points, badges) to teach a concept, rather than harnessing the fun inherent in learning a new topic. In this seminar, Mike will demonstrate some examples of how he's trying to improve educational games by allowing students to have fun by exploring concepts through hypothesis testing, thereby focusing on internal motivation. He'll also discuss how there is no magic bullet in game design and how every concept needs to be taught differently within a game, just like when teaching concepts in class.

Mike Kasumovic is a lecturer and DECRA research fellow based in the Ecology and Evolution Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. His research focuses on the evolution of sexual behaviour and specifically the different ways that males and females go about maximizing their reproductive success. Although much of this research concentrates on invertebrates, he also has strong interests in human social behaviour, particularly in the context of modern technology, such as the internet and video games.

Please register here for this seminar.