Workshop 8

Title: Conspiracy Code: A Digital Game Based American History Course

Workshop Description:

Abstract

Florida Virtual School is pioneering interactive online education with the development of a game based course designed to teach a full course in high school American History. Through a live demonstration, we will share the instructional design and gaming methods which allow students to master course content while engaged in game play.

Why the Topic is Important:

Conspiracy Code is the next generation of online education. This course makes new strides in keeping students engaged with content and provides constant and immediate feedback on performance. Results from student focus groups have shown that students are more interested in completing American History in this game format than a traditional course. Important Facts about Conspiracy Code:

• A full credit of high school American History
• Aligned to Florida and national standards
• Integrated, easy-to-use teacher interface
• Discussion based assessments are embedded through the course. Each mission within the game has a culminating written assessment project.

Content of Presentation

The presenter will show a live demonstration of a digital game based course developed to teach an entire high school American History course. The presenter will demonstrate how the instructional design concepts and educational content were embedded into game play. A look at the teacher monitoring tools and reports will illustrate the teacher’s facilitator role within the game and will illustrate how teacher-graded game-themed assignments help students reach upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. We will also discuss how Caine and Caine’s Brain Based Learning principles were analyzed and used in the creation of the game, and how student focus testing was conducted to support the application of these principles in the game world. The presenter will discuss the pioneering nature of this development in that it has the potential to create more engagement and student interest leading to a decrease in course completion time. The selection and use of partners for game development and the subsequent methods for maturing the instructional design/game development relationship will also be discussed. The methods for using these partnerships to cohesively create sound educational content, instructional design, and game play opportunities will be shared with the audience. The presenter will show a live demonstration of a digital game based course in a workshop setting with the opportunity to receive immediate feedback from presenter.

Presenter: Jeramy Gatza

Jeramy Gatza gained his bachelors in Social Science Education from the University of Central Florida, and his masters in Educational Leadership from Nova Southeastern University. He has been in education for 10 years as a history teacher, administrator, and curriculum writer. As lead subject matter expert during the development of the Conspiracy Code game Gatza was in charge of the development of the scope and sequence of the material, writing of the assessments, and the instructional design of the gaming interface. Gatza is now a Curriculum Innovation Specialist in the Curriculum Research and Discovery Department at Florida Virtual School.