Abstract
It is often a problem that students of the two General Education Foundation (GEF) courses do not have enough class time to learn about the historical and social background of the classic texts that they are required to read. We are proposing to adopt the “commercial-off the shelf (COTS) digital game-based learning (GDBL)” approach of gamification in our teaching as an outside class activity to help solve this problem. We choose to adopt and enhance the acclaimed and award-winning strategy game, Civilization, for this project. Adding this game as an optional outside class activity in GEF has the following advantages:
- Allows students to learn more in their own outside class time.
- Caters for the diversity of students. Some students may be more easily stimulated by games and resulted in reading more, not less, of the classics due to their increased interest of the course materials.
- Helps students to be more engaged and enjoyed the learning process.
- Gains the necessary skills for the 21st century, such as problem-solving skills, initiative in learning and technology literacy, which are deemed the abilities nurtured in a gaming environment.
- Connects students with other participants in the rest of the world at home through the well-established international network of this game.
There are three main tasks:
- Purchase sufficient licenses of the game to allow students studying the two GEF courses to optionally choose to play this game. The licenses are reusable for different students in every semester.
- Further enhance the game with educational content, so that we can have more historically-accurate contents that directly echo with the classics used in GEF.
- Strengthen the teaching-research nexus by conducting rigorous evaluation of the effects and risks of this innovative teaching strategy. This will allow other teachers to learn more about game-based learning with concrete quantitative and qualitative evidence.
Brief write-up
Project objectives
It is often a problem that students of the two General Education Foundation (GEF) courses do not have enough class time to learn about the historical and social background of the classic texts that they are required to read. We are proposing to adopt the “commercial-off the shelf (COTS) digital game-based learning (GDBL)” approach of gamification in our teaching as an outside class activity to help solving this problem. We choose to adopt and enhance the acclaimed and award-winning strategy game, Civilization, for this project.
Activities, process and outcomes
- Purchased sufficient licenses of the game to allow students studying the two GEF courses to optionally choose to play this game. The licenses are reusable for different students in every semester.
- Enhanced the game with educational content, so that we can have more historically-accurate contents that directly echo with the classics used in GEF.
- Allowed students to learn more on their own outside class time.
- Catered for the diversity of students. Some students may be more easily stimulated by games and resulted in reading more, not less, of the classics due to their increased interest of the course materials.
- Helped students to be more engaged and enjoyed the learning process.
- Gained the necessary skills for the 21st century, such as problem-solving skills, initiative in learning and technology literacy, which are deemed the abilities nurtured in a gaming environment.
- Allowed students to be more familiar with the entire history of the world at home.
Deliverables and evaluation
We have enhanced the game Civilization with educational content. The enhancement involves two main parts. One is the development of a game scenario that reflects the historical setting of the world in 1500AD. Another is the development of a technology tree that can simulate the entire scientific history of civilizations.
Evaluation results indicate that students playing the game enjoyed more and perceived more positively of the optional learning method they chose. It also indicates that students playing games performed slightly better in their course grades. The performance is benchmarked with their cGPA, i.e. their average performance in other courses. The cGPA of the two groups were roughly equal. Furthermore, the students did not decrease their effort in traditional learning methods, such as attending lectures and reading texts.
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
We have presented this project in CUHK’s Expo and in an international conference. This surely can benefit other teachers within the university and in the academic community worldwide to learn more about how to implement game-based learning and its effectiveness with concrete quantitative and qualitative evidence.
