Valencia Community College: United States History to 1877 - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 175

Case History 4

Valencia Community
College: United States
History to 1877

Carl E. Creasman Jr.

Professor of History

Chair of History Program, East Campus

Valencia Community College

Mixed results can be as instructive as outright success and failure. I include this
case history as a demonstration of that. The observations by students are
informative. The questions Professor Creasman raises about class design and
how to measure success when comparing a classroom with elements designed as
a game with a traditional classroom format are enlightening.

There was a small, but measurable increase in student learning as measured by
classroom assessment techniques. And possibly the most heartening result is
that Professor Creasman is determined to build on what he has learned and try
again (see Figure CH4.1).

I have been playing games since the mid-1970s when, as a pre-teen, my father
taught me to play chess. As my love for history grew, I drifted to historical re-
creations of actual events from the U.S. Civil War and World War II. When
personal computers emerged in the late 70s, my best friend (and most avid

gaming partner) and I broke new ground with gaming and the computer.

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