Gamification: Star Trek Science

Creating a quest-based, Star Trek themed science class makes a great deal of sense. Star Trek was a science-based show in many ways, and provides a rich background for building stories and quests. Using a pre-existing universe like this one has two distinct advantages. First, there is a geography, a history, and a mythology built in. You don't need to build a world from scratch. Second, depending on the world, the students may already be familiar with the world, which both sparks interest and gives them some pre-existing knowledge to connect to in the quests. Using the QR codes to distribute missions is an interesting use of both the technology and the physical world to engage in the quests. Another tactic that I could see would be to use another social media app, such as Twitter, or the messaging component of an LMS to "push" information and quests out to the students. One thing that I certainly learned from watching this video is that I would not want to load this much background information into a class, as this instructor did. I would make learning about the world and the mechanics of the game universe into introductory quests, which students would need to complete at the beginning of the course, before getting into the content. The early missions on the Prometheus and exploring Second Life serve this function. Part of the benefit of quest-based learning is to get the same information across without having to stand in front of a class and lecture about it. Introductory quests would let the students become engaged with the world immediately, while learning how the rest of the course will work. The first mission that is introduced in the video sounds like a great example of how to tie the content to the world of the game. Rather than learning about volcanic activity and its effect on air quality through lecture or reading, the students will have to learn about the problems being experienced on a distant planet, and investigate ways in which volcanic activity could cause these problems. This is a "real-world" application of the information, which students can make connections to through their quests. By prompting them to work backward from the problem to the cause, the students will be driven by their own curiosity. They may take different paths to the information, but they should all get to the same place.