ALAO 2006: The Laptop Dinner: UC’s Libraies’ Online Gaming Tutorial
Olga Hart, Ted Baldwin, Debbie Tenofsky, Stephena Harmony, and Heather Maloney from the University of Cincinnati shared their experience developing an online game [PowerPoint slides] during the Instruction Interest Group breakout session. I was very interested to see how far they had gotten in the development of their game. I had dinner with Olga and some other Ohio librarians at LOEX in May. Olga had described their library faculty learning community focused on using games as pedagogy during dinner.
The UC team has spent over 200 hours developing their game. Unfortunately we were not able to see a live demo during the session. However, they did show us some screen captures (see the PowerPoint slides). Their game is focused on teaching plagiarism. It is remnicent of the Sims, but requires the students to make choices to move the game forward.
The tools they used to create the game include: Flash for the framework, Poser for animation, and Mimic for audio synch. They recommended that game development requires a lot of time, project management, and resources. Additional best practices and lessons learned can be found in their slides.
Their session handout (not included in the PowerPoint slides) includes the following "sources of inspiration":
Tutorials
- Bruin Success with Less Stress (UCLA)
- The Plagiarism Court: You be the Judge (Fairfield University)
- TILT (University of Texas)
- You Quote it, You Note It! (Acadia University)
Books
- Learning by doing: a comprehensive guide to simulations, computer games, and pedagogy in e-learning and other education experiences by Clark Aldrich.
- The study of games by Elliot Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith.
- The art of game characters by Leo Hartas.
- Rules of play: game design fundamentals by Kate Salen and Eric Zimmerman.
Article
- Squire, K. & Steinkueler, C. (April 15, 2005). Meet the gamers: they research, teach, learn, and collaborage. So far without libraries. Library Journal.
