Hello and welcome to another edition of the TESOL Games and Learning blog! Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of Fulbright foreign language educators about ways to incorporate elements of video game design into their online courses. For this month’s post, I thought I would share a condensed version of that talk.
An effective online course and a video game have much in common. Most important, they are intentionally designed objects. That means the experience of the user, not the content or the objective, is the first concern of the designer, and everything is designed to help the player/learner to understand the environment. To start, let’s take a look at one example of a well-designed game: Super Mario Bros. Continue reading