My web-conferences with Ken were an excellent experience, first and foremost cementing for me the notion that other learners (and others interested in Adult Education) are a lot like me.
I was delightedly surprised to find that Ken and I had both chosen the same "top pick" for our research: game-based learning. Despite the difference in our vocation, Ken being from a more formal learning setting and me being from a corporate background, we found not only similar interests but also instant rapport.
What I found even more interesting, is that despite researching the same topic, we followed very different paths of research on the internet, coming up with, between the two of us, a wide variety of articles and websites. In fact, the only identical website was one we used through the link provided for the topic, the Mindshift website.
Our subsequent web-conference after researching our articles and websites was very informative. Ken was a font of information on the role of the teacher in game-based learning projects, citing an article from a study in Sweden. This article, similar in some aspects to the one I discovered about a study done in Hong Kong, identified many struggles faced by teachers when attempting to integrate video games in a classroom setting.
During our web-conference, Ken identified one of the primary struggles teachers face when using video games in the classroom, which is that they are not always comfortable or familiar with video games, and thus are not able to easily facilitate or provide a decent level of expertise for their students. Also identified are the differences between different students in levels of comfort with video games.
The main thing I learned from my web-conference with Ken was the impact of game-based learning on the classroom setting, given his level of familiarity of formal education (as an educator) versus my own. As a developer of content and occasional facilitator in the classroom, when compared to Ken's experience, I do not always think about classroom obstacles first. One potential strength Ken identified, however, is my level of comfort with video games (known as 'gaming literacy'). Compared to the subjects of the study, I would rate my gaming literacy as 'quite high', which, if the trends continue, could be a valuable asset if game-based learning is further integrated into formal education settings.
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