A teaching activity designed to give just-in-time knowledge can keep learning relevant to a problem being tackled and the sandbox in the early stages of learning can give students the confidence to experiment…and that is essentially the type of learning games provide.
Hence, I like to introduce students to a topic via a game. Often I assign these as home ‘fun tasks’ and find that the self-learning involved is very effective.
Some games used are:
- Cybersecurity Labs: a game that excellently covers cybersecurity from a technical point of view.
- code.org: activities that are ideal for introducing problem-solving and programming
- Circuit Scramble: a smartphone app ideal for introducing Logic Circuits
Getting Feedback
I generally ask students to send me a screenshot of their progress in the game after a certain deadline and then give feedback on the basis of the level they’ve reached.
Moving Forward
I would like to add to my arsenal of such games to help teach more topics.
More importantly, I would like to create more of a ‘conversation’ round the game progress, we could have an online discussion based on target questions about the game. Participation in this discussion could be against points e.g. on Save Silicon Valley.
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