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Typo

Overview

In today's business environment, strong verbal and written communication skills are crucial.  Here at Penn State, students have the opportunity to develop both while earning their degree.  To supplement these courses, the EGC is teaming with Profesor Bim Angst from Penn State Schuylkill to develop an engaging alternative to traditional grammar lessons.  In Typo, players must quickly and accurately recognize grammatical errors as an excerpt of text scrolls up the window.  While vying for the university-wide high score, players will progress through multiple levels with spelling and grammatical errors becoming harder to identify.  The ultimate goal of Typo is to help students recognize common errors to dramatically improve the quality of their writing and public speaking skills.

Learning Objectives

  1. Recognize common errors and where they frequently occur
  2. Identify a higher percentage of errors when proofreading
  3. Transfer knowledge learned from Typo to writing

For more details on the project, please see the Typo Game Page on the ETS Media Wiki Site.

Brett Bixler

Thu, 07/23/2009 - 08:57 — Brett Bixler
Website: 
Brett Bixler's e-Portfolio
Portrait: 
bxb11.jpg
Biography: 

Brett Bixler has over 25 years of experience in the instructional design field. He is the Lead Instructional Designer with Education Technology Services, part of Information Technology Services (ITS) at Penn State. In his current position Brett is working with the latest educational technologies and learning theories to produce learner-centered active and collaborative learning environments. Brett works with peers from across Penn State and other universities to discuss common issues and provide advice and guidance on a wide range of issues. He is responsible for a variety of other tasks, including:

  • instructional design;
  • project coordination and management;
  • faculty and staff development;
  • curriculum development;
  • educational technology training and assistance;
  • formative and summative evaluation of projects; and
  • Internet expertise.

Brett is actively investigating the use of games, simulations, and virtual worlds for educational purposes. He is in charge of the Educational Gaming Commons (see http://gaming.psu.edu) to support collaboration and initiatives in these areas throughout Penn State.

Elizabeth J. Pyatt

Thu, 11/05/2009 - 12:03 — Elizabeth Pyatt
Website: 
Elizabeth Pyatt's TLT Blog
Biography: 

Elizabeth has been an instructional designer at Education Technology Services since 2009. Her interest in gaming lies in its ability to simulate real-world challenges/scenarios as well as game play elements.

Typo November 18 (Elizabeth)

Wed, 11/18/2009 - 18:11 — Elizabeth Pyatt

This week we:

  • Discussed final timeline & MOU with instructor.
  • Wrote draft of focus group and survey questions
  • Finalized plans to test and implement version of 1 of Typo before Spring 2010 semester begins.
  • Jason has been intensively programing game this week and reports much progress.

 

Typo November 12 (Elizabeth)

Thu, 11/12/2009 - 17:26 — Elizabeth Pyatt

Bim and Elizabeth met for the first time over the phone (along with Jason). It was decided that Jason and Elizabeth will travel to Schuylkill on Fri Dec 4 to test the game with 2-3 students (to be video taped). This will be followed by a focus group with refreshments.

Jason, Elizabeth and Brad worked on a timeline and assessment plan to cover the end of the project. In terms of assessment, Bim will teach one section with the game and one without as a control. Assessment activities will consist of student survey (post Spring Break), student focus group (also post Spring Break) and comparisons of a proofing exercise and a writing exercise. We will also be able to access reports on student scores from the game system.

The next steps for Elizabeth and Bim are to complete the MOU and begin work on the IRB. Bim will also be working on content for lessons which last throughout the Spring 2010 semester. Jason will be concentrating on finalizing the version I programming by the first week of Spring 2010 semester then the team what modifications, if any, can be added by the end of the Spring semester.

 

Stuart Selber Meeting

Tue, 08/11/2009 - 08:31 — Brett Bixler

The EGC Team met with Stuart Selber, one of the ETS Faculty Fellows, yesterday to show him a very early prototype of a grammar game EGC is developing as part of the 2009 EGC Engagement Initiative.

Stuart had some great feedback for us on the pacing and delivery of the game.

He thinks this game would be best used after an instructor discovers a pattern of errors in an individual or group to provide drill and instruction on correcting those errors.

He also talked about the "heart of pedagogy" as he envisions it at PSU; things like appeals that writers use, evidence, etc. Grammar is part of that, and this game may serve as a template for future development that gets to this core.

Stuart brought up an interesting idea for assessment - How do we test transfer from the game to a student's own writing? We need to think about how we can assess that, for it really gets at the core of the game's success.

Welcome to the 2009 Engagement Initiative Project Portals

Mon, 07/20/2009 - 15:51 — Jason Kaveney

This is a very exciting time for the EGC.  A few months ago, we began engagement initiatives with two Penn State professors to create educational games that will directly impact Penn State students.  We are pleased to finally be able to showcase each of these projects on our website through its own project portal.  As each project develops, more information, including screenshots and developer updates, will be available in its portal.  For more information on the 2009 EGC Engagement Initiatives, please visit http://gaming.psu.edu/projects.

Visitors interested in being notified of project updates or new content are encouraged to subscribe to each project's RSS feed by clicking on the orange RSS icon below.

 

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