Takeaways and Growth

Insights

This semester has been an interesting ‘peek-behind-the-curtain’ experience into game design. I had no idea how much work goes into the creation of a game, much less how large a part of the process design is! Further, good game design is sneaky. There is a tremendous amount of effort that goes into the seamless blending of learning objectives and fun. Zoombinis (TERC, Inc., 2015) was a great game to start with, and a tough act to follow. It was also insightful to see how well other classes in the ISLT program dovetailed into this course: Front-End analysis, Instructional Systems Design, Usability and Rapid Development were particularly helpful in setting the stage for this course. (Which is the goal, of course, but it’s gratifying to find it true in actuality, and not just on paper.)