Published Work: “Gamification in a Social Learning Environment”

“Gamification in a Social Learning Environment”

Published in Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology Volume 10, 2013,

Co-Author with David Giannetto and Joseph Chao

Download (click here for PDF)

Gamification has gained traction in recent years as an effective way of engaging users to perform actions in contexts that would otherwise be considered tedious and undesirable. Education is an area in which user engagement could have the greatest impact on success, with some advantages for students being improved grades or better comprehension. The authors of this paper have designed and implemented a three part system for gamifying a social learning environment designed for use in higher educ ation lecture classrooms. Our goal in doing so is to foster greater user engagement from the students using the system and thereby promote an environment better suited for active learning.

Twitter for Students

I was thinking about compiling a list of possible use case scenarios for Twitter in education and found some great links that already do that:

• Twitter: 25 Twitter Tips for College Students
• Ways to use Twitter in Academia

There’s one top tip I couldn’t agree with more:

Track a professional: If you’re interested in pursuing a particular career and want to learn more about a certain leader in that field, you can “follow” a professional’s tweets.

For lists of the Tweeters I follow in specific fields, visit:

http://twitter.com/#!/anthonyfontana/lists

I am always willing to find new folks to follow in each of those fields as well. So send any suggestions to @anthonyfontana or comment below.

Transform our Universities to meet new challenges

In his inaugural speech, President Barack Obama states:

We will… wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost… transform our schools, colleges and Universities to meet the demands of the new age.