Testing and Redesigning
"That was kind of easy..."
Testing the game on University Seminar classes and student workers provided us with clues for redesign, both in the logic structure and in the type/difficulty of the questions. Testing showed that students couldn't compete if they were all answering the same questions at the same time. And, as studies predicted, the game format drove students to comment that it would be more fun if it was more difficult - they didn't just want to be shown collections, they wanted interaction and some complexity.
Following UC San Diego's lead, we are using Allen's Successive Approximation Model (SAM) rather than ADDIE to quickly design, develop, and evaluate the game(s) for redesign.
Testing and further studies into gaming and education led us to us to redesign the first University Seminar tour to the new University Seminar game: more "scavenger hunt" style game - using a randomization of questions for individual or team competition; questions that are more challenging or require more investigation; research tasks requiring online and physical resources; video questions for further interactivity. We also hope to encourage more faculty to integrate the game into their course structure and provide students with a long-term reward (in the form of a grade).
Further testing will help us to ensure that the game helps to students to reach the learning objectives for the instruction session.