Games for Engagement

Presenter:

Juno McClure, Assistant Professor, Humanities, Hostos Community College

Abstract:

For educators, it’s important to stay afloat with new ideas for increasing engagement in the classroom.  This is especially relevant for those teaching in higher educational settings, given the large degree of flexibility needed to incorporate unconventional strategies.  Often times, the best inspiration for novel games and interactions to use in the classroom comes from other educators.  This presentation hopes to inspire the audience to reflect and create their own activities and/or employ the ones discussed modified to fit their own content.  This short presentation serves to inform and inspire educators by detailing some successful interactive activities that have been used to increase engagement in one faculty member’s undergraduate design courses.  Employing novel and impromptu activities with unexpected interactions keeps students and instructors highly engaged, allowing for a more dynamic classroom environment.  Participants will learn what worked, what didn’t work and the unexpected benefits of using these various strategies for engagement in one’s classroom.  This presentation should serve to inspire the audience to consider how they might use experiential learning with an  improvisational style to better engage audiences both inside and outside of the college classroom.  The presenter will share how the following games were integrated in his courses: “Game Idea Gambling,” “Code Challenges,” and “Greenlight.”