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When the technology integration coach in my school district handed me a copy of ‘The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game’ by Lee Sheldon, I was enthralled. The book was an easy read— cover to cover in just a few days. Lee Sheldon’s students are learning content through gameplay. College-level coursework with students enrolled in a class devoted to designing video games.
In the book, Lee initiates game play in the syllabus. He analyzes how he made changes to the game through trial and error over the course of many semesters. Most of the ‘gaming’ was fantasy, special terminology used to jazz up regular coursework, with plenty of buy-in from students who were interested in gaming of all kinds, from athletic competition to board games to mobile, PC, and console-based video games.
After reading the book fairly quickly, and taking lots of notes, I developed some ideas for how to transform my own classroom into a gamified space in order to develop cross-curricular learning. I realized that my old game master was onto something brilliant—but it was no easy feat. (As a preface, you can read more about the difference between gamification and game-based learning here.)
