Curriculum Champions
One of the first steps when creating a virtual gaming simulation (VGS) is to determine where the virtual simulation will be placed in your program. You need to consider the individual courses, review course content, and identify potential gaps in theory and practice that could be integrated into the VGS. Performing a needs assessment will assist you to answer these questions.
Developing relevant curriculum and advocating for learners’ success is a goal for every educator. By being a curriculum champion, you can achieve these goals.
Curriculum Champions:
- Create a variety of experiential learning and teaching strategies.
- Incorporate new content and current discipline practices pertinent to their curriculum.
- Collaborate with learners and incorporate their voice in the assessment and planning phases.
- Uphold accessibility and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) principles within the curriculum.
- Challenge biases within the curriculum and take actions to bring about systemic change.
- Acknowledge and address areas for improvement and incorporate feedback from everyone involved, including learners.
A curriculum champion has a vision and believes in the potential of making positive change within the educational community. This is your opportunity to become curriculum champions in your community.
When designing a virtual gaming simulation, you need to reflect on where the game will fit within your program. Mapping the program curriculum across courses and years will assist you to understand the flow of the program’s content and identify potential learning gaps to determine the best placement of the virtual simulation. Placement consideration is an important factor in curriculum design to optimize student learning and balance teaching strategies.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you have virtual gaming simulations within your program? If so, how many and where are they placed within your program?
- Which course would benefit from this experiential learning strategy?
- Would the virtual simulation support the course learning outcomes?
- What would be an appropriate number of virtual simulations in one course?
Take into consideration the number of virtual simulations within one course and the timing of learning activities throughout the course. For example, your course could be structured to have one or more virtual simulations scaffolded throughout the semester. The first game could introduce course concepts, and the subsequent games could build on more difficult concepts, encouraging students to critically apply their knowledge to a practice scenario.
As a curriculum champion, you want to perform a needs assessment to identify gaps within the course and explore student perspectives. By collaborating with students, it will provide insight into their experiences and learning needs, which will strengthen the development of the virtual gaming simulation.
For example, the Meal Assistance Virtual Gaming Simulation was created as a result of learning gaps and concerns identified within a Year 1 nursing practice course following the students’ first clinical experience. Through student reflective papers, informal discussions with students, and post-conference discussions with clinical instructors, faculty identified various learning needs regarding meal assistance strategies. During the course program evaluation, the faculty questioned students to gain insight into their perspectives on the perceived gaps and collected information on the students’ learning needs, as well as suggestions to further enhance their meal assistance knowledge and skills. Using a collaborative approach, the student voice was incorporated in the development process of the virtual gaming simulation.
Now that you know which course within your curriculum will host the virtual gaming simulation, you can begin to conceptualize the overall development process.
Educator Tip
“Collaborating with students during the development of the VGS [virtual gaming simulation] is a must as ultimately students are the end users of the VGS. While faculty developers have insight of what needs to be taught through the VGS to fill a curriculum gap, students have insight into what their learning needs are and how they can be best met. Students should be involved from the very beginning stages as their voice is key to a successful VGS. Students suggest, challenge, inform, but most importantly they inspire. Students can take on leadership roles such as co-script development, run student advisory groups for feedback, be involved in publications and presentations at conferences, provide input during selection of actors and act as co-directors during filming, to name a few. The possibilities for collaboration are limitless and the outcomes are mutually beneficial. No VGS should be developed without the student voice, feedback, experiences, and learning needs being taken into consideration. As Amelia Earhart once said, “The most effective way to do it, is to do it” and this quote applies perfectly to considering collaborating with students during the VGS development process.”
~ Dr. Kateryna Metersky, Toronto Metropolitan University
Insights from the Student Team
Be a Changemaker
When embarking on your virtual gaming simulation journey, reflect on the following questions:
- What are you passionate about?
- What strengths and knowledge can you contribute to the team?
- What would you like to learn and what skills would you like to develop?
- What does being a changemaker mean to you?
You can write these answers down and share them with your team. It is important to continue to reflect on your goals throughout the process and continue to communicate your vision with the team.
Attribution
Using Virtual Gaming Simulation: An Educator’s Guide by Margaret Verkuyl, Sandy Goldsworthy, and Lynda Atack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
