The Association for Distributed Learning has just added a component to their community which is devoted to Game-Based Learning. Currently, it is heavy on the Department of Defense’s work with serious gaming but it should have some more “civilian” resources soon. The listing of game web sites is quite comprehensive.

This site is also a great demonstration of the power of Moodle for content management.

Looking at the current prices for the latest Adobe/Macromedia products, I have a hard time selling my colleagues on incorporating media in their classes. Well, thanks to O’Reilly, I now have a list of free and open-source graphic programs to suggest that just about do everything the higher-priced products do. Pair these up with Moodle and you have a cutting-edge Personal Learning Environment.

I’m on the second day of the three-week summer session and one day after that finishes, I start the five-week summer session.  For the three-week, classes last 3 hours while for five-weeks, they last an hour-and-a-half.  For the Fall and Spring semesters, Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes last 50 minutes unless the class is after 12 pm.  Then it’s 1 hour and 15 minutes for a Monday-Wednesday class.  Tuesday-Thursday classes are also 1 hour and 15 minutes while night classes are 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Does any of this make sense?  When I first started teaching, I found it difficult to cram a course design into the varying periods of time that I had to deal with.  As I gained more experience, I realized that the amount of time had no relation to the quality of learning.  And, as I incorporated online course management tools into my classes, the classroom hour is becoming irrelevant.  Learning now seems to occur in twenty-minute bursts throughout the day and now has the following rhythm.  I present for ten minutes and then the students try something from the lesson.  They ask questions which triggers another short presentation and then the students go back and refine their efforts.

Some of the older faculty balk at this but when I ask how they knew that students really learned anything in the old classroom hour of lecturing, they can only point to the tests.  And we know how tests really don’t measure the effectiveness of sitting still for an hour and taking notes.

I don’t know how time relates to learning but I bet there are some fascinating findings.  Time for a literature review.

Taking some time off.  See you on May 14th.