{silence}
[ Elizabeth ]: Um,
are you in Adobe Connect now? [ Audience ]: Yes! [Elizabeth]: Okay, you should be fine.
[ Audience ]: So, I can hang up the phone?
[ Elizabeth ]: No, you should keep the phone on.
[ Mary ]: I think she wanted to know if she
could get audio. [ Elizabeth ]: Audio, yeah, you can try it,
but if that doesn't...I think people have been able to
but I won't guarantee that it will work.
[ Audience ]: Maybe will we try that again and see it will work. If not,
we'll use the phone. [ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, sorry, we used to be able
to do both.
I'll pass out the sign up sheet again.
Okay, now that we're starting to [ inaudible ], I'm gonna
go back to the word game for a few more minutes.
{silence}
So, again, I'll just take a few more
minutes. The idea is, sort of, this is how I would try to start a class
is with a puzzle. So, this is our word puzzle
and I'm hoping...I can tell a few of you are participating.
Because you're challenging me on rules.
[ Audience ]: We're just trying to figure out the rules so we can bend them.
[ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, exactly!
[ Mary ]: Or we can protest them. [Elizabeth]: Yeah!
I know one previous presenter pointed out that
her philosophy was the game master always overrides anything.
Like, I'm like the Supreme Court.
I only started with
two grids on it. Yeah, I think I put it on.
[ idle chatter ]
[ Elizabeth ]: Alright, so I'm gonna
switch out of this screen.
I would recommend you write down any words you found, because we're gonna
talk about what you did find.
{silence}
Alright, so,
welcome to Gamification and Word
Puzzles. What I want you to do is
if you're on the phone
and have access to the chatroom, put the words you found into the chatroom.
{silence}
Everyone here, write them down.
[ laughter ]
It will not effect your final grade.
You will get points for participating.
{silence}
It's about trying and not doing. It's like reverse Jedi.
{silence}
[ Elizabeth ]: Okay, about
thirty more seconds.
{silence}
[ Elizabeth ]: So,
which you'll see some things in the chatroom.
Okay, five, four,
three, two,
one, alright.
So, I'm gonna talk about...let's see
what showed up in the chatroom and we can...
okay, so, we have cell, nosy, jeer,
oh, with a J. That's always impressive.
And
alright...near, eke,
son, gutsy,
and mere.
Alright, they're actually
answered one of the questions I was gonna have for you.
In this room did anyone find anything else?
Mercy!
Mess, keg, very important.
[ inaudible ]
[ laughter ]
[ inaudible ]
[ laughter ]
Alright, I think we also found out that our list together
is much longer than what individual is.
If we had to save the human species with this, maybe we should all do it together.
Okay, so,
{silence}
actually here is some of what I found.
Meme, hame, merc,
noss.
And then I listed out, because I always find like a foreign word,
or a proper word. So, I listed them but didn't count them.
And
of course of I'm not sure...I'm probably gonna go back but...
so one of the questions I have, and we can put this
in the chatroom for answers. So, what trick,
if any, did people use to find longer words?
{silence}
[ Audience ]: I looked for consonant clusters.
[ Elizabeth ]: Like what kind? [Audience]: Like, CL or CR
or LY.
[ Audience ]: I tended to pick a letter and then circle it and look around.
[ Elizabeth ]: Anything else?
{silence}
Well, what I try and do is
sort of, [ inaudible ]. I have a word I try and see if I can extend on
either end and I also look for
favorite consonant clusters, like, if I see if
there's an S around, because that will extend a lot of words. But also things like...if I see
ING I can see if I can attach anything to it.
Things like that. [ Audience ]: I look for vowels too.
[ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, always important.
So, this sort of class, I would be talking about things like word
endings and fun
[ inaudible ], which is which sounds can you put together in English and which ones you can't.
So, I never...I don't usually, if I see something like
K,
P or something like that, I tend to
think it's not as likely you're gonna have a word in there whereas
like S L, I think I might have words.
Okay, so, slang or jargon,
I think a few of us use that.
And actually I was
kind of glad Linda...naughty words.
Like would it occur to you to try and see...and I've seen
some pretty kind of interesting words get accepted.
Just say, not in this puzzle but other puzzles.
So, what might a reason
you might
avoid slang or jargon or quote, naughty words,
if that's your inclination? [ Audience ]: If I was playing with my mom.
[ Elizabeth ]: That's a good reason.
So, your audience is important.
Any other factors you
might? Well, I kind
of did a...my first question was it gonna be accepted?
So, there are things that are words but
the game might not accept it because the game relies on whatever dictionary it has.
So, that would get into basically how do
you construct a dictionary? Which is an important part of socio
linguistics. There's really...if you've taken any
linguistics you know that there's really no dictionary not even the
unabridged ones can contain every word you use.
So, like
in Boston milkshakes are frappes. I'm not sure I'd
find frappe in the dictionary even though it's a word.
[ inaudible statement ]
And they have it constructed so you
can't use any racial epitaphs.
[ laughter ]
[ Elizabeth ]: I had not...so, those are not the naughty words I tried.
[ laughter ]
Taboos are kind of interesting.
Yeah, and then I remember mom...
this is back in the 60's when they were playing Scrabble and they had fight on whether karma
would count or not.
I think, today, people would count it.
But back in the 60's in was considered
foreign.
So, those are the kinds of things where I'm hoping, like, if you do a puzzle
that you might start thinking about.
Any other comments? I didn't see any comments on the chatroom.
I have a problem seeing the chatroom,
which is unfortunate. Just to let you know,
so, I decided that our ruling dictionary,
if we were gonna be a serious tournament, would be the Oxford
English Dictionary, which is a lot. So, there are actually words...
I did not know hame was word.
So, this is part of me cheating. Because I was sitting at my desk and I had the OED
and I put it in and it turns out it's some kind of...it's part of a device
to link two horses together.
[ Audience ]: What's merc? [Elizabeth]: Short for mercenary.
There is another meaning for it and now I can't remember
what it is, to be honest. [ Audience ]: What's noss? [Elizabeth]: Noss is part of your nose.
I think it's the tip.
So, that was like this looks it could be a word.
[ laughter ]
[ Audience ]: Just like you said, it works as far as English sound system.
[ Elizabeth ]: And the other one that surprised me
was S.O.S was in the OED.
Oh, I guess I can take it.
[ inaudible ]
Yeah, so, you know,
when you talk about word games you also have to have this discussion on
what are you gonna consider. And I know that I played Scrabble
and they had words like ave, which I consider foreign in there.
So, you have to really know that dictionary back and forth.
[ Audience ]: So, the way you have this game set up, you wouldn't have counted Sox or Rex
or Gus or any of those? [ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, most of them don't usually count
proper nouns. Although, you could
change the rules. They are words. [ Audience ]: So, do you think it's best to
have rules or just leave the rules out there and then discuss it?
[ Elizabeth ]: I think, if I were running
in this class, I would not mention the rules.
But I think there are cultural assumptions. Like, most word games don't count proper nouns.
Most word games
don't count and then talk about well, did you think about
this or did you find them and reject them?
[ Audience ]: I saw Sony, but I rejected it.
[ Audience ]: I think most, at least in Scrabble, is to keep people
from cheating [ inaudible ].
[ laughter ]
[ Elizabeth ]: If you did let in foreign words,
today it's easier, because you can probably just look it up on Google and see if it really shows up
anywhere. But not somewhere I wouldn't want to try.
[ Audience ]: So, is this a game that you would do
once and done or is this something that you might repeat every once in awhile
with a class? [ Elizabeth ]: It depends on what...this one I might...now that
I'm hearing the discussions I might repeat it. Like, I might repeat it once to talk about
the sound system and another time to talk about the dictionary
formation or something like that. So, there are few I might
kind of...or least the images of the game are kind of brought back up.
[ Audience ]: So as a way to access what they got, what they're learning, how they're
developing over time? [ Elizabeth ]: Actually I think...
well, we're starting to get into the presentation, but this is sort of kind of to warm
people up. So, nope, no problem.
Yeah, the idea is to kind of get you thinking about
things in a different way. Because there are a lot of linguistics
is like folk linguistics meaning we have certain assumptions of
how language works but when you scientifically
study things, it's not how you think it works. So, that's part
of our...when you're doing a linguistics class, especially
socio linguistics, which is...kind of
it's where sociology and linguistics interact.
And so, for example, a lot of people
assume, and this is just like every culture, well, number one they
assume playing is degraded language in that
you know, even back in the Roman empire they were complaining that people
weren't speaking Latin as good as they used to.
But really it's not that the language is
degrading it's just changing. And so things
it's true that some things sort of get lost but then other things
come up. So, kind of just to sort of
changing but the way we interpret it as it's
all going down hill. And if you're not...if you don't speak...whatever the educated
form is, so if you speak African-American
vernacular English or Appalachian English or
[ inaudible ] or whatever often time you're seen as
stupid or
not thinking as coherently as
you could be. And that, again, is not necessarily the case, it's just
the grammar is different. Some of the styles are different.
And this came up, a lot of people when they're
talking about the Travon Martin case, a lot of people were wondering if the fact
that his friend was not using standard English
impacted the jury, and it probably did, but how much, you know.
And that's always an interesting discussion because then
she kind was saying things where I was sort of thinking, well,
I really wish she hadn't said that.
So, that's the kind of things you get into. So, you know, as you're seeing
we have these goals like talking about how different dialects form different
jargons? How do you view language in context?
So, a formal presentation versus
actually playing the game and eating pizza and switching back.
Linguistic reality versus social reality. So, when we talk about
English dialects we assume that everyone can sort of more or less
understand each other. So, Americans understand someone from Australia
or Britain or
most other places. But in China, when they talk about dialects,
they literally, they are so far apart that linguists actually
say they're really languages and they don't necessarily understand each other.
But still, if you ask someone from Shanghai
do you speak Chinese? They'll say, of course we do.
But the kind of Chinese you speak at home is different from
what we were taught in school. So, you have to kind of talk about that.
And multi-lingual policies.
And the covert goals
is
can we help. Sort of like, if you know about Sam Richards Sociology class relating
your life experience to, in his case, sociological
principles. In my case, socio linguistic principles. So, you know,
when you hear an African
American sport celebrity speaking, what assumptions are you making?
And it may vary. You know, some...not all
African-Americans speak the same. So, you might get different
reactions depending on which speech style is being used.
How do you, you know,
understand people from other backgrounds? Because Central Pennsylvania,
it is what it is.
And how do you approach non-English
text with less fear and more curiosity
and puzzlement? Or not puzzlement,
analysis, maybe. So, I recently figured out
at the Indian restaurant, after how many years, that murg, M U R G, is chicken.
It's like, oh yeah, all the chicken dishes have
murg in their title, it might be chicken.
And then discussing hot topics.
Whenever you talk about race, you're gonna have a hot topic. So, that's my little
game icon. Which I have to figure out a good use for.
Just the hot topic bomb.
So, kind of to get around it and also
because socio linguistics...well, first I want
to talk about gaming versus gamification. I think a lot of
people here know. But the idea is there's gaming, which is you use
games or gamelike objects like puzzles of simulations within
a course to get a certain learning objective. But there's also gamification
which is used to take traditional elements into a course and sort of
put them into a gamelike system like you can earn
points and achieve levels instead of just completing assignments or
you might earn additional rewards for going through
things other than just getting your grade. And some courses have
leader boards and you know, we've also been talking about badges recently and what
that might mean.
So, the next time I...the last time I got to teach I thought I'll maybe see if I
can try some of these. So, one of these I did was participation points,
which is rewarding students for different types of participation.
So, all of you would have gotten points, especially if you contributed words.
[ Audience ]: So, how did you find collecting that data?
[ Elizabeth ]: I actually had an assistant for that.
That's going to go in the next slide. And then the puzzle was extra.
[ Audience ]: Sorry! [Elizabeth]: It's okay!
You're participating.
And then the puzzle du jour, which you just saw.
So, the participation points was, you know, traditionally
I just said, alright, participation was worth ten percent of the grade. It was like, well,
if you showed up and you talked a lot you got equal part of it.
And you know, if you were one of those students who only showed up half of the time you got half
the points. But there's really nothing quantified about what you could
or couldn't do. So, I started adding these things like
if you turned your homework on time you got a point. If you showed up to class, you
got a point, hey. If you actually talked in class,
you got more points. And bringing
non English examples was more. And writing an extra blog post
is more and writing a comment was worth points.
[ Mary ]: I assume it has to be relevant to the text?
[ Elizabeth ]: No, there's a lot of leeway. [Audience]: So, is the idea here,
Elizabeth, that they had to do all
of these things to get that ten percent or did you just give them some choice in terms of how?
[ Elizabeth ]: I sort of gave them choice and then the next thing was levels. So, basically it was,
depending on your level, I think, if you got to ninety-six points
you got your full ten percent.
[ Audience ]: How did you come up with that number? [Elizabeth]: I ended up,
it was interesting, I kind of had it too low and I had to bump it up in spring break.
So, it was based on kind of if you just turned your homework in
on time and you participated in class you got a certain number of points
per week and then we added them up like with thirteen
weeks worth was sort of where you would end up. And then
I also...they asked me, well, if I got ninety-five points does that mean you don't
get the full ten percent? I said, well, you know, there's wiggle room.
But this would guarantee.
[ Audience ]: It's like you earn your way toward this rather than I just set up assignments
and if you keep them you're good. It's more like you can
contribute in different ways to earn in this category of things.
[ Elizabeth ]: Right! And then...so, if you got to
twenty-four points you could skip an extra class without me hassling you about it.
You got to forty-eight points, normally
if you were late you lost three points, but I would forgive one of your late assignments.
Seventy-two, I would then take your lowest homework and
add three points. Or it should have probably been second lowest homework.
You also got to drop a homework.
So, there were a few tweaks I needed to make. One forty-four was, you know, normally
you could drop your lowest homework, if you got to one forty-four you could drop your lowest two.
[ inaudible question ]
[ Elizabeth ]: They had to redeem points. So, yeah, they would.
And what I had said was, you should wait till the end of the semester
and redeem then. Figure out which one you really wanted
to do.
[ Audience ]: How did you keep track of it? Did you have like a spreadsheet? [Elizabeth]: Yeah,
actually I had a spreadsheet. And that turned out...actually
I talked about what worked. One was that I actually took attendance,
which I normally, I sort of, had to informally take attendance but
I actually tracked you was there, who wasn't there.
And I tried to give an update every week of how many
points they got.
And I think some of the people they were like, alright, I wanted to make sure
that you counted my attendance. So, it did work there.
I surveyed the students to see what they're reaction was. I would say
they were sort of intrigued. So, they did feel like it encouraged
them to speak. And they were sort of saying, well, it encouraged me
to attend and definitely encouraged me to submit the homework on time.
They definitely wanted to regain points.
And they seemed to like them. They didn't want it without the points.
They wanted to keep the points.
What needed tweaking, I feel like I needed
a bigger variety of qualifying actions. Like, I would have...
I didn't count participating in the morning puzzle per se.
But I think I would now. Like, you know, try and give answer
as opposed to just sitting there.
Like I said, I had to adjust the point value which was
not popular, but you don't want to let your students get the full credit
for spring break. Then they'll stop coming.
And then there is some discussion about rewards. Now,
the top reward request was to skip a class.
[ Mary ]: So, they don't actually still want to come to class.
[ Elizabeth ]: I've been kind of...
I've been looking for alternatives to that one because it's sort of...
You know, it could be that maybe
we can make it that if enough students get
to a certain percentage, then we can cancel class.
But it would have to like, you know, if seventy-five percent of the students.
[ Audience ]: Yeah, but they should want to go there enough that canceling class
shouldn't be. [ Elizabeth ]: It should be a punishment.
[ Audience ]: And that kind of gets to the point of gamification
and one of the issues that people have with it.
And so it's kind of
like, okay, well, I can get this, this, and this if I do it. And that's why I'm gonna
do it. Rather than, I'm really interested in, you know, what's going on
the learning that I'm doing. Hey, I'm paying for this. So, like, you know what I mean?
I just wonder if anybody else has qualms with this?
[ Audience ]: Well, I mean they're still driven by how many points did I get on this paper.
[ Elizabeth ]: I think, and other people could have a different philosophy, my
philosophy has been I can try and tease
intrinsic motivation. So, I can try and make my classes more
you know, relevant. Make my presentations
more effective. You know, introduce more active learning
and quirkiness. But you know,
I've also, you know, if a student doesn't want to be in phonetics
class, they're just taking because they have to and they really hate it, there's not much I
can do. [ Audience ]: So, I like the idea of the point system,
it might just be the ability to skip class probably isn't a good reward
to put in there. It might under mind. [ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, I wouldn't
do it for individuals. I might think about it for the whole class.
[ Audience ]: What was your view as the instructor?
You've been teaching for awhile, right? And putting these rewards out there. Did you feel like
people were elevating their level of participation in this course
and class even if there was some opt out rewards or do you feel like
they just sort min/max and do as little as they could? [ Elizabeth ]: Well, I think you have
to structure your rewards for what counts.
You know, you want higher quality things to count more.
And I think, which is my next problem, is
the shy student paradox which is...there is this
I think a lot of students perceive that the quickest way to get rewards
is to talk in class, which is...and I definitely encouraged it.
But there are just students they're thinking about it and they
turn in really good homework assignments and they just hate talking.
And in one case there was one student who just hated the whole thing.
But I think he wanted...he was
someone who was into linguistics with the computational stuff.
And the socio linguistics stuff, I think, was stuff he wasn't interested in.
So, he just stopped coming to class. After awhile I just stopped giving
him...telling him what his points were.
He was completely not having any, but then there were other
students who are interested but they just aren't...they're just really
very shy.
very shy. [ Mary ]: Could that sometimes be a cultural thing?
[ inaudible ]
[ Elizabeth ]: I think sometimes it's gender too.
A lot of American women I see this pattern.
And I've seen it do...
there's one guy who was pretty bright but kind
his persona was sort of the frat boy persona.
When I could get him to give answers he would give
interesting answers. So, then I'm sort of thinking
I need to find more ways that they can participate
online. I think there also people who just like,
and I'm one of these, I prefer writing sometimes because I can actually think and edit
myself and if I speak spontaneously I don't always make sense.
So, I was thinking, you know,
I did give reward points for extra
blog entries and a few people took it but not as many as I could have.
Sharing best answers, so, we had weekly blog assignments.
And they were altogether. So, you know, maybe doing
the voting thing. And you would get points for voting. And you get
additional points for winning.
So, for example, you know, one of the assignments I always
do is how do you...if you discover your fudge is missing from the communal
refrigerator, how do you approach
finding out who the culprit is? What would be the best solution? So, you can
do points for that.
[ Audience ]: How can I clarify the blog is from everybody? Like, it wasn't
an individual persons blog, it was the class blog?
Essentially posting kind of a homework answer and sometimes responding to the proposed question.
[ Elizabeth ]: So, yeah, I have blog assignments
I would propose a question like, you know, your fudge is missing, what do you do?
And then students would submit comments as their answers.
[ Audience ]: So, what was the best one?
[ Elizabeth ]: Well, you usually get varied answers. Sometimes
and I...this time I asked them to do two scenarios. So, if it
was like their roommate they might just go for the direct
who took my fudge? And then if it was
not appropriate you might say...I think the best one
I heard was they might talk really long about, oh,
this fudge was made by my grandmother and it reminds me of home
and she sent it all the way from Indiana.
And she can't make it as much as she used to.
And it went on and on and on.
I'm so sad now.
[ laughter ]
I think that was one of my favorites, I have to confess.
But there have been a number of.
[ Audience ]: You had them accumulating points,
I was wondering if there are any thoughts on starting with like a hundred
or a thousand or whatever and then going backwards? [ Elizabeth ]: I think in this case
I wouldn't want to go backwards.
[ Audience ]: Subtracting points is kind of punishing. So, that
might turn students off. [ Elizabeth ]: I think
in terms of the whole like you have a
thousand points for the course and then you lose them,
I haven't
tried that. I've heard pluses and minuses on that one.
[ Audience ]: When I was a classroom teacher I did
participation points a couple of years. And I had stopped doing it because
I found myself so sucked into that
that I felt like I couldn't even do the rest of it, you know what I mean.
That's one of the reasons why I was mentioning of asking about how you
kept track of it. It seems like
this is a pretty manual process. If there was a system
that could automatically pick up a lot of this, it would free you up
to teach and then be more useful for someone like me.
Because I was seriously I can't do this anymore. [ Elizabeth ]: Well, some it, like, you can track
blogs...like you can track who turns in homework. Something that you can do
automatically. And if you have Clickers you might be able to do other things like
if they answer so many Clicker questions that would add to points.
I just...my class is never really big enough that
I can get a good Clicker set up.
[inaudible question] [Elizabeth]: It's like usually
twelve to fourteen. So, that's the other
reason I can...so, I can actually...
if I had a hundred and fifty...
yeah, I would
definitely had to rethink.
Plus, you know, Clickers
like I would probably reformulate some of my...what I'm gonna show as puzzles
as Clicker questions and then if you do so many
Clicker questions. [ Audience ]: But you still had to do a
translation of the points into your gradebook, right?
[Elizabeth]: Yeah! [Audience]: So, that was still...even though it might pick up some of the data,
you still had to manually interpret that. [ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, I just ended up...I just
created a second spreadsheet and just threw in points. And I did find
that I had to make sure I did it pretty soon after the class ended
So, one of the things
was, you know, having...
but at that size, I could sort of remember who did what.
And I did kind of get a little sloppy
after awhile, I have to confess. So, like if I couldn't remember if they were there or not
I would give it to them. [ Audience ]: But it does seem...I mean it's interesting because
it seems like the way that you had given points really had
we were just talking about participation, but to me, that's partly about
either an in class dynamic or
kind of intellectual contribution on a blog that can then be rolled
back into class and have a discussion. To me, homework can
be kind of individual or separate or
coming to class is important. But like, even though
they did excellent homework and some people just don't like to talk. I think that
issue of...I mean most of our students are pretty good about written homework because they know
that sort of leaves a trace and is very measurable and that you
have a book where you check that off. Whereas, again, the in class participation
is a fraught issue because it's much harder to quantify.
Especially if you have a larger class. So, I was wondering
about, you know, would it be possible to not collapse those categories.
You know, and I mean, like to have...you know, to say
what you consider participation. Because student homework may or may not be participatory effort.
You know what I mean? Like, if the homework is on a blog and then the whole class can see it,
then that to me is a form of community engagement that constitutes participation in the class.
But if it's paper that just comes to me. [ Elizabeth ]: Well, that's why I gave
it a relatively low point. But it's sort of also
to me was a sign that you were engaged enough to keep up with it.
I think was sort of my thinking on that. And the blog assignment, so,
again, so, the homework, some of it was individual
and some of it was a communal blog.
So, like if it was something where everyone could have
the same range of answers that was individual. But if it was
a lot of people could come up with different answers, that tended to be a blog.
[ Audience ]: That's one of the ways I forced my
students to talk is either by leveraging their homework answers
if I see them. And I'm like, you gotta tell us about what you wrote, because it's good.
And I know it. And I know you've already articulated it. Because I
seen it. You know, and I'm gonna make you say it essentially in class.
Or by making actually some of the homework
meet a participation in a sense of you're computationally
having to bring in an angle computationally with the pieces of the homework.
[ inaudible ]
Yeah, I don't like to have a student
who basically is physically present but essentially a non-entity
because they
set up a blockade and then it's in material.
[ Audience ]: I was wondering, like, this thing you set up was very
teacher directed, is there a way that you could come
in with a template and then have students give their
perspective on what is valuable and what is not valuable?
[ Elizabeth ]: I think
I did try...and I asked them in a survey what they thought were
you know, what rewards they wanted and how they wanted points.
I think what I, you know, might make sense is
to kind of run it through
the first few weeks and then sort of have a discussion on what
working and not working. Probably a more communal discussion
could make sense.
But I think the other thing about it, they kind of
like I said, it's sort of...when I just sort of did traditional
ten percent, it's like, well, just talk in class or do whatever. And I think this sort of
is an opportunity to say exactly what I'm looking for.
[ Audience ]: Yeah, I mean the first thing that comes to mind for me
if they're involved in setting this up, then you also get to see what they're goals are
in taking the course, you know. Which I think might
help to inform you in how to present the material or how
to hook them. You know what I mean? But I've never done it that way.
[ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, it's something to more think about.
[ Audience ]: Did you find that they were just chasing points or were they actually doing constructive
comments? What did you think? [ Elizabeth ]: I think what
I was trying to do was construct it so even if they were chasing points it was actually
constructive.
So, yes, actually most of the comments they gave were
pretty constructive. [ Audience ]: And I could also
see something like...and I know there have been a lot of comments about
gamification systems and
that will
overlay on top
I think you know, speaking of student engagement and involvement
having a system like that allows them to become a part
of the assessment. So, if they feel
that somebody put a blog that was really good and they get
to assess it, you know, then it becomes more like a community of,
you know, that are involved in that whole system.
[ Elizabeth ]: And I think I would definitely have...I think the voting for the blog sort of would
contribute to that.
I did kind of want to go through a few puzzles to sort of
you sort of already saw what...the idea was
just to kind of wake up your brain.
And I wanted to distinguish what was puzzles versus just practice,
because I also used to just, you know, run a lot of practice
activities in class. So, what I was trying to do
was add a few more entertaining, basically. So, trying to look for cool
graphics and videos or some quirkiness
in general. So, like the Real Housewives in New Jersey have come up from time
to time. And it's also
I find like the puzzles are sometimes an interesting way of introducing trivia because if you
can figure it out you kind of, at least I tend to remember it.
And then they were lower stakes so they
didn't necessarily show up as homework exercises.
So, just an addition to
what you saw earlier. So, this is one I used where the idea
was to figure out which languages are here. This is from London.
And actually the one...if anyone knows
this last one in the Arabic script. I'm pretty sure it's not Arabic.
But if they happen to know what it really is.
So, anyone...some of them
should be, hopefully, familiar.
[Audience]: English! [Elizabeth]: We have English, yeah.
Thank goodness. [ Audience ]: Hindi, is Hindi up there? [Elizabeth]: Yeah, Hindi is up there.
Yes!
What was that? [Audience]: German! [Elizabeth]: German, yep!
Italian, Spanish! [ Audience ]: There must be French there.
[ Elizabeth ]: You know, I'm not sure there is.
Oh, yeah, the second one.
[ inaudible ]
I think I have to look...
[ Audience ]: One of those is probably Hindi right?
Yeah, the third one is Hindi. This is Chinese.
This is Punjabi.
No, this is Slovak
and Turkish.
So, I can't actually pronounce it, but I know what the writing
system looks like. This is French.
German, Italian, Spanish,
Dutch. This is Welsh.
Which I wasn't expecting anyone to get. And this one surprise me,
Albanian. I'm wondering...[ Audience ]: What was the bottom one on the right?
[ Elizabeth ]: I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's not Arabic because they've got too many vowel letters
on there. It could be my guesses are Persian,
or Urdu.
[ Audience ]: That's cool.
[ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, I don't know how I could
write it.
Oh, yeah!
[ laughter ]
[ inaudible ]
{silence}
[ Elizabeth ]: So, and I sort of did a similar one. We won't go through this. Except this one is in
LA and so it has like Vietnamese and
Tagalog. And then it's got, I think,
two types of Chinese and I think that's India again.
And a really funky form of Korean.
[Audience]: Top right is Japanese. [Elizabeth]: Oh, okay, yeah.
But the fonts they were using were strange.
And then this is the New York version.
And just a reminder that we have lots of languages
you have to kind of do that
there is...linguists don't want to admit it, but there is a bureaucratic
cost to that.
And another one.
So,
obviously English has the most
pages, but any guesses on what
language number two is?
Any other guesses?
[ Audience ]: I'd say it's Aztec, right?
[ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, that's not number two.
[Audience]: Chinese? [Elizabeth]: No, any other
guesses?
{silence}
[ Elizabeth ]: I'm not trying to
get a better evaluate. That's a good guess. That's a good guess.
Actually, surprisingly, I think it's Dutch.
So, and it's not numbers of speakers,
it's who kind of culturally invested
The other interesting thing I found out was English has the largest number of editors
by far and like when you get down into like Dutch it's like twenty or fifty
editors. So, it's like there's this qadry
of people.
And there are like over five hundred languages in there.
And this is
so this is
anyone want to guess what...and I'm gonna say
just try and imagine the speaker has a Jamaican accent.
[Audience]: What are we guessing? [Elizabeth]: So, actually I'll give you a hint.
It's just the Jamaican New Testament.
So, the second line.
And that Jesus bawls. So, what would they
English. What's baal, how would you spell it in standard English?
Yeah!
It's saying Jesus bawled.
And the second one is an Old Testament book.
Yeah, it's the book of Ruth.
{silence}
[ Elizabeth ]: Nobody force me abandon you.
[ Audience ]: If I can just say it out loud it works better.
[ inaudible ]
[ Audience ]: Anyway you live.
[ inaudible ]
{silence}
[ Elizabeth ]: So, I think, yeah,
I can sort of see. The idea, actually,
and I just wanted to point out that not all Jamaicans speak like this.
So, there are actually, if you talk about it,
this is sort of kind the most distant from standard English and
some and the Jamaican...there's been a movement in Jamaica
basically to standardize this,
particularly far form from standard English. Because
so many people speak it that it impacts their education. So, if
you speak a language that's really far from English,
when you go to school, you're basically having to almost learn a second language.
Not everyone, even in Jamaica, not everyone
recognizes this as a serious linguistic issue. So, a lot of people
even in Jamaican sort of, kind of giggled when they heard
they were translating the Bible into this particular
language and it's because partly it has things like Jesus bawled.
But you know, it's, you know, given enough time
you know, this could actually be considered
you know, elevated classical Jamaican or something like
that. We're not there yet, but
this has been an interesting attempt where they're standardizing a creole
which creole have really bad reputations.
Everyone thinks they're sloppy and no good.
And only illiterate people speak them. But in reality
they are full languages and there is a lot of cultural
contributions just not the same way that
happens in standard English. And then
we also get into discussions on, you know, is this a separate language?
Is it, you know, how comprehensible
is it? You know, if we changed the spelling, would that make a difference?
Probably it would make some difference but then it would be so far from what
it is venetically. [ Audience ]: Who would the scholars of the language be, right?
[ Elizabeth ]: And that sort of again, is normally
what happened. Is there are people who grew up in Jamaica
who got linguistic degrees or in some cases people
who were interested in the situation and want to contribute
and that can be political too. So, like,
native American reservations, a lot of white people are involved
in that. And sometimes they screwed some things up culturally.
{silence}
So, that's sort of that exercise.
And students really
responded to this better, which kind of surprised me, because they did sort of...you were a lot
more active than most of my students are.
I have to kind of work on that. But they definitely agreed that it helped them understand
concepts and they were fun. And they would prefer that
there be puzzles in the class and they would like even more.
Which I would agree with. [ Audience ]: So, then you think about the link between
memory and learning and the fun aspect.
[ Elizabeth ]: Yeah!
Yeah, they're more fun. And also just
you know, it's one thing to kind of
hand out a passage but to actually work through it.
[ Audience ]: So, what do you think it was? It seems overall these scores are little bit
higher than the game scores overall. What do you think differentiated
them, the puzzles versus the initial?
[ Elizabeth ]: Oh, the participation points?
Well, I think, participation points, I think, sort of what they're saying is sometimes
it's just an overlay. So, basically you're doing the same thing
you would do but, you know, you're getting tracked for it.
So, it's a little more fun but, you know,
it's still, you know, you're still having to show up for class,
which they didn't want to do. Whereas this, I think, really does...it is
a little more intrinsically fun. So, you know, you're looking at pictures and you're trying
to, you know, looking at weird scripts or you're trying
to read something in another language.
So, I think
it's more interesting...I tried to make it kind of
relevant to both what's going on in the class and sometimes what's going on now.
{silence}
But also, I think, I'm finding it's a good way
to like, they're kind of walking into certain skills that are important.
{silence}
[ Audience ]: How much time did it take you to prepare all this type of material in addition to teaching
a lecture?
[ Elizabeth ]: I would say, you know, it was...I would have to think about it. It would be
another hour, but I think once...it's something like once you do it,
the first semester, you probably have a good bank. And finding
I really appreciated what it did for me as an instructor, because now I'm sort of
thinking, alright, how can I,
whereas before I think I was so used to...I would just lecture about it. Now,
I'm much more, no matter what I'm doing, I'm more likely, alright, let's
start this out as a puzzle and have people sort of talk about it.
[ Audience ]: I'm kind of thinking about that question,
what do you replace? You know what I mean?
Because you have more interaction and it seems like a better activity
for learning for everyone. You know what I mean? Versus a lecture
where you're just pretty much regurgitating information.
[ Elizabeth ]: I think, to me,
you are losing lecture time but I think, I found
that you gain, some of what I would have done in lecture, we kind of had already talked about
in the puzzle. So, I would just say, alright, well, we
talked about it in the puzzle. So, you know, before I might say, alright,
well, London, you know, they have to have a sign with all these different languages
Well, you've already seen the sign with all these crazy languages
on there. So, that giving them a real
connection to what the situation is without me just throwing a bunch
of random statistics out. So, I can just say, and then in London, you
have like all these people.
So, I think,
I think you end up gaining more and it's sort of, I think, hard
because I was very much, you know, traditional lecture
type mode. But I am realizing that
even though it looks like you're losing time you're actually gaining
especially in the higher order things,
that you really want them to gain, I don't really need them to know that how many
languages are in London. I need them to understand that there are
amazing number of languages floating around in these major cities and
what it means partly from
the policy.
Tweaking, you also, I find like
in the beginning my puzzles tended to be a little too hard.
So, like, this sign puzzle
they wouldn't know, but maybe after awhile would be like
this one is from a Southeast Asian and they
had a war there in the 60's or something like that.
The idea was that. And I think we're
just about out of time. But is there
am I innovating or skinning and hopefully I'm innovating a little bit.
[ Audience ]: Yeah, you were talking about
starting the class with maybe...
that's a good thing, but maybe thinking about it in terms of
moving it around.
So, if there's a natural point where you would talk about England instead of
lecturing about it, stick the puzzles there. Introduce that topic.
[ Elizabeth ]: I think that's sort of the idea. I think i started doing that. It wasn't just
one puzzle per day it would be like more
but the one in the day was sort of keystone one.
[ Audience ]: You could even start the class on the most incredible blog
that any student had for the week. And then that engages
them and gives them the feel of, okay, this is my class.
You know what I mean? That it's still a cushion.
Maybe a light cushion, but you're still.
[ Elizabeth ]: Yeah, that's another way.
[ inaudible ]
[ laughter ]
[ Audience ]: And also in terms of instructional time
my students, if a group of them is investing
an hour and a half in a rotating fashion versus me an hour and a half every time.
[ inaudible ]
modeling a couple of these things and then maybe picking some people and saying, I want you
to base the game off the readings that we have for next Thursday.
[ Elizabeth ]: Yeah!
I mean the other thing I was doing was giving them
sort of scavenger hunt quests. Like, you know, find the
pick a language and find someone who's
doing disco music in that language on You Tube, and someone doing
like traditional music. And that might be
something where you could have...that might be where you have
one guy managed to find
Gallish in heavy metal.
Like, I don't know how authentic that is.
But yeah, that's interesting.
{silence}
[ laughter ]
It's universal.
Yeah, any other thoughts? I think I have
some really comments, which is definitely one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it.
[ Audience ]: Thanks so much for doing it.
[ Elizabeth ]: And just to add October 2nd,
if you've been keeping up with the STEM badges.
Kyle Peck will have an update and he's now their do it yourself badges.
[ Audience]: So, that's the next talk? [Elizabeth]: Yeah!
[ Audience ]: Brownbag lunch!
[ Elizabeth ]: And there's leftover pizza and Pepsi.
Alright, well, thank you! [ Audience ]: Thank you!
And thank you
across the great divide there.
Yeah, I didn't see anything in the chat.
So, but if you have any questions, please send them to
gaming@psu.edu.
[ idle chatter ]
