I had a great conversation about #fun in #education with my new community here on #Mastodon. What struck me, however, was the difference in the attitudes of educators based on the age of their students. Who (wrongly) decided that #highered students don't need fun in their education?
@edmunds_t @edutooters @academicchatter It's particularly strange to see that attitude (that there is an upper age cut off for learning through fun) when so much of workplace learning is now gameified. I wonder whether, in part, it is because making a subject fun *and* educational (rather than simply conveying information) requires a greater mastery of the subject-matter?
@TechLitig8or @edmunds_t @edutooters @academicchatter Gamifying is a lot of work and not always necessary.
@edmunds_t @AlliFlowers @edutooters @academicchatter No doubt - I suppose I was wondering whether the resistance to #fun in #education that was being described comes from a perception that it is disorderly, and perhaps therefore harder to encode and replicate? And that a more rigorous/technical approach to incorporating fun into the learning might overcome that barrier?
@TechLitig8or @edmunds_t @AlliFlowers @edutooters @academicchatter for me, this is perpetuated by the "good student/bad student" myth and the tendency for HE teachers/academics to identify with the "good" category. "Good students are like me and so will learn like me. My teaching is good if the good one's react well. The others are unreachable. Not my fault". There's mabs a bit of passing on/validating trauma in there too...
@TechLitig8or @edmunds_t @AlliFlowers @edutooters @academicchatter I think perhaps the terms "gamification" and "gameify" are also a barrier to those who (perhaps understandably) feel compelled to defend the seriousness of their disciplines in an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism. The merits of such approaches aren't necessarily well served by terms that also finds a home in marketing techniques within the experience economy.
@petrrpeasey @TechLitig8or @edmunds_t @edutooters @academicchatter Are we not invested enough in differentiated instruction (even at the tertiary level) to not buy into that at this time?
@AlliFlowers @TechLitig8or @edmunds_t @edutooters @academicchatter I'd love if that was consistently the case but I'm not sure it is @AlliFlowers . In the UK context at least, massification and resourcing adds genuine pressures on realising differentiation. In other instances, these same issues provide an excuse to redeploy a generalised approach - especially where tech or asynchronous provisions may help.
@petrrpeasey @TechLitig8or @edmunds_t @edutooters @academicchatter Can you speak more to massification and resourcing? I’m unfamiliar with those terms.
@AlliFlowers @TechLitig8or @edmunds_t @edutooters @academicchatter I wish I hadn't used the term 'resourcing'. I mean staff - humans who shouldn't be called resources even as a shorthand. Massification is an economic/marketing term used largely by luxury brands who want to reach a wider (mass) market. It is used in the cont. of UK HE as it underwent something similar in the 90/00s as a result of changes in government policy.
@AlliFlowers @TechLitig8or @edutooters @academicchatter
There is a big difference between gamifying and game-based learning. A lot of discussion goes on about the relative benefits and drawbacks of each.