Bowen argues that higher education should be the same. And this is something that is interesting for me to consider in my own courses and may explain some of the recent resistance to my courses that a few years ago were well received. I have always provided students with the resources needed to practice the course material. But I have never organized those resources in such a way that there is levelling involved. What I mean by that is that the formative feedback would be better organized in a graduated manner such that each successive problem assigned is a little more difficult to further develop students' knowledge, understanding, and skills. A few years ago students were fine managing that on their own. More recently, however, students seem to want more guidance in terms of which problems to attend to first and which to attempt next and subsequently. Most textbook end-of-chapter problems that I assign do this fine - the first ones are easier than the last ones. But sometimes it would work better if I better-tailored sequencing of those assigned problems to how I specifically teach a course. That is, rather than simply indicating which end of chapter questions to attempt with each course section, it might be better if I were more granular by indicating which questions to attempt after each class and if there are multiple questions available, to indicate in what order the questions should be attempted.
This requires significant planning on the instructors' part.
The really important point is how to make learning into a game - make it fun and interesting. How best to highlight the course material in such a way that students will find the challenges interesting?
Is there a way, for example, to develop an online pH game?
Resources
Bowen, J. A. (2012). Games, customization, and learning. In Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning, Chapter 3. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. p 51-71.
