Turk Students Hear About Classroom of the Future Research
Date Posted: Mon Nov 15 2010
Assistant professor Muhammet Demirbilek shared with his graduate students in Turkey studying educational technology learned how they can integrate games and virtual worlds into the instruction they design thanks to a webinar hosted by CyGaMEs at the Center for Educational Technologies.
The title of the webinar was "Integrating Instructional Games and Simulations for Instruction and Assessment." Dr. Debbie Denise Reese, senior educational researcher at the center, presented Nov. 10 to the 10 graduate students at Suleyman Demirel University in Isparta, Turkey. The webinar came about through Reese's contact with Muhammet Demirbilek, who is also affiliated with the Games, Learning, and Society group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where Reese has presented. Reese used examples from the Selene videogame funded originally by NASA and now the National Science Foundation and MoonWorld, the lunar geology research base funded by NASA in the Second Life virtual world. The title of the webinar was "Integrating Instructional Games and Simulations for Instruction and Assessment."
Both Selene and MoonWorld were created by the Classroom of the Future to study how best to teach NASA science and assess learning in virtual environments. Some of the topics covered in the webinar were
- Introduction to Events of Instruction and how to integrate games and virtual worlds into them.
- Interplay between game genres and learning outcomes.
- Selene and MoonWorld related unit activities.
- Reese's 2006 report, "Foundations of Serious Games Design and Assessment."
- CyGaMEs design, research results, game, student response, and student gameplay.
Here are comments from some of the students who took part in the webinar:
- Seval Gulyagci: "I think the conference was very instructional and amazing. This conference added a lot of different ideas to my opinions."
- Mustafa Oztop: "The videoconference lecture opened new horizons in my mind regarding the point that educational technology reached. I am happy to learn the new technologies that affect the way of teaching and learning. Thanks for the videoconferencing."
- Aysegul Aksoy: "It was very interesting to employ computer games which came from real life in teaching and learning."
- Tuncay Tuncer: "The presentation about CyGaMEs was very impressive. I think that the videoconference was useful."
Muhammet Demirbilek and students.
Students discuss with Reese meeting standards through Selene.
Students await the beginning of the videoconference.
Screen capture of talk: Debbie Denise Reese and Chuck Wood with Reese's telescope.