The Games Art Historians Play: Online Game-based Learning in Art History and Museum Contexts

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-games-art-historians-play-online-game-based-learning-in-art-history-and-museum-contexts

game-based learning differs from gamification in several important ways. Sometimes the latter is reduced to bells and whistles such as gold stars and progress bars, but gamification is potentially a much more subtle and powerful teaching strategy.

lizabeth Goins (Rochester Institute of Technology) describes several recent projects including a 3D game based on Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights in her blog, and details as well assignments in which the students create games. Keri Watson (University of Central Florida), teaches with both a RPG (role-playing game) and an ARG (alternative reality game). The RPG is Gretchen Kreahling McKay’s “Modernism versus Traditionalism: Art in Paris, 1888-89,” a Reacting to the Past (see earlier PH coverage) game, targeted for use in first year seminars at small liberal arts colleges. She taught with the game several times while at Ithaca College and reflects on her experience here. Watson’s ARG, “Secret Societies of the Avant-garde,” was createdwith a colleague in digital media as a Unity-based game, and is still in development. (Anastasia Salter wrote about this game in February.) Their prototype was deployed this past spring in an upper level modern art course, the game poses for the students a series of the challenges to research and create online exhibitions. (Those interested in developing an ARG might also want to peruse this interesting recent piece from TechCrunch on historical accuracy in games.)