Online education's success hinges greatly on the implementation of a robust social presence, akin to a perfect "no skip" music album, fostering an interactive and connected learning community. These 12 strategies--being authentic, recognizing students as ...

Gamification has been dismissed by some as a passing fad and buzzword in education; however, if approached as part of mindful course design, gamification can enhance student learning and engagement. This article introduces a gamified redesign of a ...

Gamification, the application of game elements in non-game contexts, is being embraced in higher education, particularly in online classrooms, to foster engagement, participation, and satisfaction. As a quick and effective way to gamify, digital badges ...

This article provides a summary and review of "Make It Meaningful: Taking Learning Design from Instructional to Transformational" by Dr. Clark Quinn. The book consists of a section on principles and a section on practices for designing learning ...

The immersive and engaging nature of video games has been a promising and effective environment for learning. This study first introduces a motivational learning framework for game-based learning, then takes a recent popular video game, Animal Crossing ...

Gamification has significant advantages for incentivizing learning and professional training as a complement to traditional learning management systems. This article highlights how the Deloitte Leadership Academy introduced game mechanics into its ...

Alicia Sanchez is a regular fixture at conferences where she presents highlights and key findings on current research related to gaming and online learning. Collected in this overview are six studies that address the characteristics of and impact of ...

In this article, Karl Kapp questions the effectiveness of games in changing leaner behaviors and attitudes. More precisely, does playing a prosocial game result in a person exhibiting prosocial behavior outside of the game environment? And what does ...

Is gamification just another empty buzzword, or can the principles that game designers employ to engage players really be applied to the design of eLearning software? What exactly is gamification? And, can the theories of gamification be applied to a ...

An alternate reality game (ARG) is sometimes called a pervasive game or transmedia storytelling. Regardless of what you call it at its core is a game driven by a story with players performing activities that mirror real life, making ARGs a perfect fit ...

Presented is a recap of LEEF 2011, themed Change the Game: How games, simulations, and virtual worlds change the nature of learning and work. The conference is centered on how learning and entertainment technologies redefine the learning experience.

Presented herein is a simple and pragmatic framework for primarily analyzing and evaluating the design quality of a learning game. The framework focuses on the characteristics of learning games compared to computer games, in general, to find the key ...

The BODYexplorer project is an in-development video game for educational purposes that helps teach disadvantaged citizens about lifestyle diseases, such as obesity, and how to cure and treat them.

People write memos, create project plans, issue report upon report, but no one can keep up. Document management systems have been created in an attempt to handle all this traffic, but eventually these systems are overwhelmed with documents, and finding ...

In Part II of this three-part series, Susan Landay explores the range of games and "interactivities" that can easily be created and posted for online learning reinforcement; selection criteria for the various offerings; plus some features and benefits ...

The first part of this three-part series focuses on authoring and course development tools and techniques for integrating e-learning. In Part II, Susan Landay explores games and interactivity solutions for e-learning. Part III looks at tools used for ...

Telling stories by building comic strips is a way to strengthen struggling students' emerging English-language skills and make the difficult job of language learning a much more enjoyable experience. Comic strips are a perfect vehicle for learning a ...

Three studies in higher education look at whether serious games (or video games whose primary purpose is something other than entertainment, such as military training, education, physical therapy) really do change learning outcomes.

The Complete Guide to Simulations & Serious Games is described as an "encyclopedic overview and complete lexicon for those who care about the next generation of educational media." This book differs from Learning by Doing in that it doesn't seek to ...

Marjee Chmiel is the director of digital media for National Geographic's The JASON Project where she designs and produces a variety of video games and other interactive online applications that support The Jason Project's award winning online science ...