Boise State Mixes Emerging Tech into Education

We play games in every part of life, whether it's racing to unload the dishwasher at home, beating your last time on the track or avoiding cracks in the sidewalk. But we don't play games in school.

"We try to remove those things naturally from education because we don’t think that fun and learning are one and the same,” says Chris Haskell, a special lecturer with the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State.

But they are one and the same, Haskell says. And at Boise State, the Department of Educational Technology teaches the next generation of educators to embrace emerging technologies like quest-based learning, augmented reality and mobile learning.
 

Run like a business

Unlike most university departments, EdTech doesn't receive state or university funding. Instead, it relies on student tuition.

"We have to run like a business, which means we have to be pretty responsive to what students want, and we have to be a good quality program, otherwise we lose students and we lose funding,” said Lisa Dawley, professor and chair of the department.

By running like a business, EdTech can respond quickly to emerging technology. Each semester, the department can add two or three new courses, such as the mobile app development class for educators that starts this summer. 

As part of its mission, the department researches and develops emergent technologies for teaching and learning. And that focus forces it to stay on top of what's new and figure out how to mix it into education.

Through EdTech, students learn about the educational technology field, make connections to others and build an emerging technology network they can rely on once they finish the program.
 

Develop a quest-based learning platform

Last year, Dawley and Haskell developed an online, quest-based platform called 3D GameLab. And that's not how current learning management systems have allowed students to operate.

“What we’re talking about is a completely different shift in that paradigm where you as a learner have some choice," Haskell said. “You can choose your own way through the curriculum. You can choose the activities that you want to participate in and eliminate those that don’t fit into your comfort zone or interest.”

Screenshot of 3D GameLab courtesy of Chris Haskell.

This summer, the platform will launch in closed beta with an online camp for educators. The learning management system will allow students to learn at their own pace, on the quests they want to take, without being penalized for making mistakes. 

For the past few semesters, Haskell has been teaching three classes with the platform. Check out what quest-based learning looks like in an undergraduate pre-service teacher course.

• Choice. From a pool of activities in the game lab system, students choose which quests to complete. And they also choose when to complete them. The only deadline they have is the end of the semester.
   
• Collaboration. If they get stuck on an activity, they can see who else is working on the same quest and collaborate with them.
   
• Standards tracking. The system maps the activities to national and statewide curriculum standards. If a student completes a number of activities on standards one through three, 3D GameLab eventually brings up more activities from the other standards to make sure they hit everything they need to.
   
• Experience points. Students earn experience points by completing quests, either a lot of short quests or a few big quests. Once they reach various point levels, they level up to whatever rank and grade comes next in the game (such as from wizard first class to sorcerer). They're shooting for a set number of experience points to complete the game and finish the course, for example, 1,000.
  
  If they turn in a paper that's not up to snuff, Haskell gives it back to them with his corrections. Until it's right, they continue to work on it, and then they get full credit.
   
• Awards and badges. Throughout the game, students earn awards and badges. to earn badges, they complete a bundle of similar quests, such as a back-to-school brochure, presentation and letter.

On survey responses, students said they liked choosing what quests to do and when to do them. And while they're learning the same skills they were before, they're now allowed to have a say in how they learn it. And they're also learning in a different kind of classroom environment.

Haskell generalized the classroom environments in higher education, “We do a pretty rotten job at the university level of demonstrating a variety of teaching techniques.”

Usually, universities cram students into a lecture hall and have professors lecture them for 16 weeks. After writing a few papers and taking a couple of big tests, they supposedly learned.

But learning happens slowly throughout the semester, Haskell says, and in this undergraduate class, students have time to reflect on what they're learning.

In the fall, a core group of teachers and instructional designers will start creating and participating in quests in 3D GameLab. They'll also invite their students to participate.

Ultimately, the department hopes to make the platform available at no cost for any educator and have thousands of people creating and using quests through Creative Commons licensing.

“It’s kind of a way of deconstructing education and making it available to people in a new way,” Dawley said.
 

Stay on top of emerging tech

Over the last four years, Dawley and Haskell have set up the department's virtual world presence in Second Life. At "EdTech Island," the department has offered more than 15 graduate courses so far, which generated more than $300,000 of tuition.

Along with virtual worlds and quest-based learning, the department is heavily exploring augmented reality and mobile learning. Because mobile devices can go with us everywhere, they'll change the way we interact with our environment, Dawley says. By using augmented reality, our phones can provide information about what's around us.

EdTech has already had one mobile learning class focused on devices, applications and pedagogy. But the class wasn't taught on a computer. It was taught on a cell phone.

Once EdTech realized that students were logging in on their cell phones to access content, the instructor for the mobile learning class decided to teach using a phone and Twitter as a communication channel.

This summer, a new faculty member from South Korea, Young Baek, is setting up a mobile learning games design studio. The studio will allow educators to design games for kids on a mobile platform.

All of these emerging technology pieces — quest-based learning, virtual worlds, augmented reality, mobile learning and game design — overlap, Dawley said. And together, they help EdTech figure out how what's happening in society can translate to education.