Got Game?

At the Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience, I was excited to attend a session with Loriann Irving, of Kutztown University. Loriann has built a creative portfolio of exercises for use in her first-year seminar course that she changes up to appeal to the different learning styles of students in her first-year seminar. Thinking along the lines of Scene It or Cranium, games with a variety of tasks, you have many options for interactive learning in your next course.

Sharing Props: Seek a volunteer from the class and invite them to reach into a pre-assembled basket of "props" and select an item. Gather your props ahead of time, looking for random items that could have potential beyond their intended use. Examples could be a chip clip, kitchen sponge, nametag lanyard, pocket pencil protector, mousepad...you get the idea, whatever may be around your home or office. Ask the student volunteer to share uses for the selected item. Following the prop suggestions, discuss with students that different uses for the props allow us to see things through different lenses. Just as perception of material in a class can differ from student to student, we learn and visualize in contrasting methods. This is a great introduction to learning styles and useful for students early in the transition to college.

Can You Hear Me Now: For a lesson that appeals to auditory learners, identify 4-5 audio clips from inspirational speeches or movies and play them for the class. Loriann shared clips from a Martin Luther King speech, Mr. Holland's Opus, and The Pursuit of Happyness in her presentation.  Following each clip, ask students to individually identify who was speaking and how it could be motivational or inspirational for them in their quest for a college degree. As you ask students to share their responses, link to educational goals and aspirations and what students hope to achieve.

Visualize This: Any PowerPoint presentation is helpful for vision-based learners, but making it interactive is the challenge. Loriann uiltized basic Photoshop techniques to distort common images related to the first college year. Creating distorted filter overlays that are slowly peeled back to reveal an alarm clock, student planner, wall calendar, and student ID card can be fun ways to introduce time management and responsibility. 

Can't Touch This: Using Scrabble tiles or paper letter squares to create word scrambles is a tactile game for engaging students in group problem solving. Distribute letter tiles that create words related to the first-year of college. Examples would be "dreams', "calendar", "organize", "grade point", "homework". Invite groups to share the importance of their word when the letters are unscrambled.

Interactive learning in the first-year seminar keeps students engaged and builds community. Another fun Loriann Irving classroom idea can be found here. 

What's your game?

Comments

[symonds]

Very nice.

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