Join us on Friday, January 24, from 1–3 PM in the Faculty Hub Multipurpose Room to play a variety of video games and engage in conversations about their potential to enhance learning, engagement, and creativity in the classroom. Building on last fall’s panel discussion on gaming in higher education, this hands-on event offers a fun and experiential opportunity for faculty and staff to explore how video games can inspire innovative teaching practices.

This informal and interactive event encourages participants to reflect on their gaming experiences, discuss how games can inform their pedagogy, and share ideas for integrating gaming into teaching.

Play and discuss how games like Assassin's Creed Origins can serve as a tool to help to teach students about the ancient world.

Articles

• Undergraduate Teaching and Assassin's Creed: Discussing Archaeology with Digital Games (Peer Reviewed)
• Assassin’s Creed Origins - Near Eastern Archaeology. (Peer Reviewed)
• History, design and archaeology : the reception of Julius Caesar and the representation of gender and agency in Assassin’s Creed Origins (Peer Reviewed)
• New Perspectives on Old Pasts? Diversity in Popular Digital Games with Historical Settings (Peer Reviewed)
• Black Egyptians and White Greeks?: Historical Speculation and Racecraft in the Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Origins (Peer Reviewed)

Play and learn about how games are a unique medium for expressing points of view. Are games works of art? Available games to try are Journey, Flower, The Witness, Inside, and Gone Home.

Articles

• Procedural (E)motion: Journey as Emerging Pilgrimage (Peer Reviewed)
• Video Gaming Faith: Playing Out Theologies of Religions (Peer Reviewed)
• Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago: The Art of Video Games (Book Chapter)
• Straightening Up the Archive: Queer Historiography, Queer Play, and the Archival Politics of Gone Home (Peer Reviewed)
• Straight Paths Through Queer Walking Simulators: Wandering on Rails and Speedrunning in Gone Home (Peer Reviewed)
• Video game structural layers for narrative design and articulation (Peer Reviewed)

Games can also be used for language acquisition. Games on display include the following:

• Jeopardy
• Second Life
• Stalker, Metro, and Escape from Tarkov
• Sims
• Confluence of board games and digital adaptions
• custom games with Twine

Articles

• LEVEL UP!: Japanese Second Language Acquisition in the Classroom Through Video Games (Dissertation)
• Brave New Digital Classroom : Technology and Foreign Language Learning (book)
• Video games and second language acquisition: The effect of interactivity with a rhythm video game on second language vocabulary recall, cognitive load, and telepresence (Dissertation)
• Video-game based instruction for vocabulary acquisition with English language learners (Peer Reviewed)
• Enhancing Student Learning and Engagement With Interactive Fiction Using Twine (Peer Reviewed)

Virtual Reality is a new frontier for gaming that is actively developing. It has the potential for us to teach topics using 3D models at scale, viewing events from a first-person perspective, and manipulating objects in space. Our setup will be equipped with the following:

• Human Anatomy VR
• Walking Dead Saints and Sinners
• Resident Evil 4
• Arizona Sunshine 2
• The Thrill of the Fight
• National Geographic Explorer VR
• Gravity Lab
• Practice Language VR
• Human Anatomy Puzzle
• Programmer VR

Articles

• An application of virtual reality in education: Can this technology enhance the quality of students' learning experience? (Peer Reviewed)
• Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in Special Education. (Book)
• Transforming Education with Virtual Reality. (Book)
• Virtual Reality: Immersive and Situated Art Education With 360-Degree Cameras, and Augmented and Virtual Reality Technology ( Peer Reviewed)

Learn how video games utilize sound and music to augment gameplay, tell stories, and communicate mood. Games on display will be Gris and Final Fantasy VI.

Articles

• The visual and narrative rhetoric of mental health in Gris (Peer Reviewed)
• Gris, Grief and the Heroine’s Journey (Peer Reviewed)
• A Watercolor that can be Played: Gris and the Appeal of Handmade Indie Games (Book Chapter)
• Gris mirrors the stages of grief through art, sound and design (website)
• Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination (Book)
• Bodies in Play: Representation of Disability in 8- and 16-Bit Video Game Soundscapes (Dissertation)
• Operatic Conventions and Expectations in Final Fantasy VI (Book Chapter)
• Final Fantasy IV – VI Pixel Remaster: A Unified Style for Classic Gaming (website)