Reese Wins 2015 Outstanding Instructional Design and Development Practice Award
Date Posted: June 11
The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Design and Development division awarded Dr. Debbie Denise Reese its 2015 Outstanding Practice Award for the CyGaMES 8.7 version of Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME. New features within this release provide an Integrated Assessment and Reporting System. The judges reviewed each entry's instructional activities, directions for using the materials, and assessment or evaluation data measuring effectiveness. Judging committee chair Dr. Brenda Bannon described the CyGaMEs Selene project as "innovative" and "truly a comprehensive, cutting edge example of current outstanding practice in the field of educational technology." She described Selene's integrated assessment as providing a "formative assessment visualization dashboard to the player in real-time" and a "unique data collection and reporting approach for learning which distinguished it" from other "outstanding submissions."
Bannon noted "The instructional design is well-grounded in current literature in the field and the effort incorporates an extensive handbook and is now available in the Spanish language." Recognition of the Handbook is especially rewarding because it was designed, written, and maintained by two Wheeling Jesuit University alumni, Matthew Petrole and Faith Rinklin, while they served as CyGaMEs project coordinators under National Science Foundation funding.
Reese she says she provided vision and leadership, but the successful realization of the 8.7 version of Selene--the integrated assessment dashboard, achievements--is due to the quality of the CyGaMEs team. Robert E. Kosko designed and developed all the code, graphic designer Cassandra Lightfritz produced the stunning artwork, Rinklin conducted testing, and Leticia Martin-Hernandez produced the localization Kosko used to produce the Spanish-lanugage version of the Dashboard and achievements. According to Reese, the CyGaMEs Selene dashboard and achievements were designed to inspire a state of wonder that players would connect to the wonders of Earth and space science as they discover and apply fundamental planetary geology concepts. The 20 achievement buttons and descriptions are posted to the CygaMEs Selene website in both English and Spanish .
This is the third AECT award for Reese and CyGaMEs Selene. GyGaMEs also won Outstanding Practice in 2008 for Selene Classic and in 2011 for an earlier release of Selene II.