Dennis Charsky Makes Two Presentations at AECT International Convention

Mary L Kish, 10/25/2007  ·  0 comments

Assistant Professor Dennis Charsky presenting at 2007 AECT convention.

Dennis Charsky, assistant professor of communication management and design in the Department of Strategic Communication, recently attended the international convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology in Anaheim, California, and made two presentations: "Mini-games for E-Learning" and "Activities for Integrating Video Games into Classrooms."

According to Charsky, "Advergames are becoming a common practice on many organization's websites. Yet, advergames are not in alignment with many instructional endeavors."

In his presentation about the use of mini-games for e-learning, Charsky noted that Aldrich (2005) has called mini-games the "mosquitoes of the educational simulations ecosystem" and argues they may have a big impact on education. If mini-games are to have a significant impact, they need to be examined for their potential effect on learning.

Charsky concluded that in order for advergames to be incorporated into mini-games for e-learning, they must be short in duration, easy and fast to download, easy to play, and exciting yet challenging.

In his "Activities for Integrating Video Games into Classrooms" presentation, Charsky spoke about creating game-based learning environments or experiences using games such as SimCity, Age of Empires, ZooTycoon, and Railroad Tycoon. He noted that using off-the-shelf games is becoming an increasingly tenable, valuable, and popular instructional method. To help educators integrate these types of games, he developed three types of activities that correlate to research on how learning occurs within game-based learning environments.