Reflecting on Individual Progress

 Reflect on what you have learned through this training experience about designing games for learning.

• What was most insightful?

• Understanding that all games can be tweaked to become educational games is a game changer for the education field. 

• What do you still want to know about?

• A class using Construct only to really develop a game would be beneficial. That way I can take the assignment to the end, and be able to apply to my own classroom setting.  

• What did you like about learning the ins and outs of design? What did you dislike?

• I love the idea of learning through a game, especially since I am already a teacher. I know the struggle of sometimes making a topic fun to learn. Just like most, I am a creature of habit so learning several different platforms to create different learning games was a bit overwhelming at times. With that being said though, it was extremely applicable for future use. 

• Reflect on your skills building.

• Were you successful in acquiring attributes throughout the training?

• I was able to acquire trainee, player, blogger, bronze, deviser, constructivist, and referee. I was able to claim most of the attributes, the ones that I did not get were gold that were available on some levels.  

• Discuss which skills you claimed during your time and how they helped you as you worked through each level.

• Which skills were the most helpful? Which were not?

• The referee badge that I earned after completing the practice of writing recipes for instructions was extremely helpful! You do not realize how much goes into writing instructions until you practice and then do it for your own game. The skill of balancing achievements I felt was the least useful. I could see how this could be useful for some, and maybe it was just the point in the semester where a lot was already going on so it felt like it wasn’t as meaningful.

• How do you see yourself using your new skills beyond this training (even if it isn't for designing games)?

• I definitely intend to create more board games for my classes, so these skills will come in great use! I have created a simple paper/board game in the past for learning but now I will be able to take it to the next level. 

• Describe how (if at all) your view toward games for learning and subsequently gamification (where we use game elements of noneducational games for educational purposes) may have changed.

• The game elements themselves were something I had no previous knowledge in, so learning and understanding those helped my view on non educational games. You can take almost any game and change it so that it can become educational or plug in those elements into educational games. 

• Finally, what would be your definition of a serious game now that you have gone through this training?

• Honestly, I am not sure there are any games out there that can’t be tweaked to be educational so my answer would be that all games can be serious games.