5 Easy Steps to #Gamifying #HigherEd

by Justin Marquis Ph.D.

It’s time to get the party started with gamification in higher education. Maybe it’s the liberating feeling of the summer, or the fact that it is the perfect time for some educators to make improvements to their curriculums. Maybe I’m just sick of waiting for the gamification movement to bloom on its own. Regardless, it is time to take some drastic action in jumpstarting the games-in-learning movement this summer, so here are five easy things that every educator can start doing this fall to usher in a new era of interactive, engaging, and innovative education.

The Importance of Gamification to Higher Education
I have great respect and admiration for old mentor and friend Charles Reigeluth who writes in his new book, Reinventing Schools: It’s Time to Break the Mold, that dramatic change is needed in education. So dramatic in fact, that the only way to achieve it is going to be to blow up the old system and start from scratch. Reigeluth is talking about public K-12 schools, not higher education, but all of the fundamental societal shifts that he cites as reasons for change in K-12 education in the information age also apply to higher ed. They are:

• A move to customization from standardization
• Increased diversity of ideas, information, and perspective rather than uniformity
• An emphasis on collaboration rather than adversarial relationships
• Work characterized by teamwork/shared leadership rather than bureaucracy
• A focus on individual empowerment and accountability rather than centralized control
• A reliance on worker self-direction rather than compliance

Building the Ideal Skill Set for 21st Century Employment

by Justin Marquis Ph.D.

The most famous line from the 1996 Cameron Crowe film Jerry Maguire – “Show me the money!” – becomes a mantra begun by Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and eventually shouted over and over by Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise. The line has become a cultural marker, and would, no doubt have developed into an Internet meme if the movie had been released ten years later. It still, hopefully silently, runs through the minds of every college graduate when interviewing for their first job, “Show me the money!”

Not so fast. Show you the money? First thing’s first. You’d better be able to show prospective employers that you have what it takes to earn that money. We live in a fast-paced, hyper-connected, information and knowledge-based, global economy, where things change minute-to-minute and the skills you need to have change just as fast. More importantly, you need to be able to self-teach new skills and tools on the fly, and maybe even develop your own innovative ways to use new technology as it arrives on the scene. In short, in order to get hired, keep your job, advance in your career, and be shown the money, you are going to need a very specific set of soft skills that you may not be obtaining in your higher education classes. No worries. This post will outline the most essential 21st Century skills you need to have and suggest some ways that you can acquire them.

The Need for 21st Century Skills
The world has changed dramatically, decisively, and permanently and the things that employers are looking for in their ideal employees have changed with it. These changes are necessitated by fundamental societal shifts in the way the world works in the Information Age. The University of Melbourne proposes the following breakdown for considering what the essential competencies are for a student in the Information Age:

• Ways of thinking. Creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and learning
• Ways of working. Communication and collaboration
• Tools for working. Information and communications technology (ICT) and information literacy
• Skills for living in the world. Citizenship, life and career, and personal and social responsibility
  (AT21CS)

All things considered, these changes represent a dramatic shift in the traditional need for specific skills and experiences in new employees. Businesses have learned that they need to be flexible, adaptable, embrace diverse perspectives, and need to have people who are willing and able to incorporate the latest technologies on the fly. All of these factors create a disconnect between university education, which largely does not emphasize these skills and abilities, and the needs of students entering the workplace. Whether you are pursuing a career in retail management, real estate, hospitality management, or fashion this post will help you understand the most fundamental 21st Century skills necessary to be successful in life and your career, and guide you in acquiring them.

21st Century Skills Inventory & How to Get Them
So what exactly are the essential skills for success in the 21st Century? I have compiled the following list from a wide variety of sources such as the ATC21S list of skills, Charles Reigeluth’s book Reinventing Schools, and my own experience as an adult educator and 21st Century cyber worker. Here is a checklist of the key competencies and definitions of each.

__ Systemic Thinking: The Information Age is characterized by increasingly complex interrelationships between the various systems (economic, political, social, technical, educational, etc.) that form the structure of our society. In such a complicated and connected world, it is essential to understand how an action taken within or upon one system will affect the others. Thinking through all of the factors that will affect any decision helps to ensure that the best course of action is taken.

How to get it: Unfortunately, outside of specialized departments in higher education, likeIndiana University’s Instructional Systems Technology Department, there are very few places to gain an explicit knowledge of this field. This page from Pegasus Communications provides a broad overview of the concept, but for a more detailed understanding you are going to have to do some independent reading.  For starters, Bela Banathy is the father of the field, so reading any of his books would be an outstanding place to begin. Alvin Toffler’s Future Shockor The Third Wave will also give you enough insight into systems dynamics to get you started understanding this important but underrepresented field.

Using Technology to Balance Your Education and Life

by Justin Marquis Ph.D.

The world we live in has become increasingly complex. New choices abound for learning and, with traditional college students joined by a flood of veterans, recession-displaced workers, and others seeking answers in a slow job market, higher education still remains one of the most valuable things you can do to help secure a bright future.  For those considering a return to college or even high school seniors on the fence about committing to pursuing a degree, one thing to consider is how you are going to balance that commitment with everything else you need to do in your life.

Weighing Your Commitments
Like many of you, I completed all of my graduate school education after I was married and working full-time. Sometimes this meant putting in well over 40 hours a week in retail management, while easily surpassing that number in class time, studying, and collaborative work with classmates. While I did not have the option of doing much of my coursework online, I did take a couple of classes via the Internet (and taught some as well) and can say that the flexibility that they offered is one significant way that technology can help those trying to juggle multiple commitments and  their education. This post provides several additional ways in which technology can help you balance heavy commitments to work, family, and other activities, with the stress of completing a degree.

The first step in solving any problem is understanding it and gathering enough information to make an informed attempt at a solution. When talking about trying to balance the major commitments in life such as work, family, hobbies, and education, the dispassionate disposition of technology can actually be a great help in taking a more objective look at the factors involved. As the saying goes, the numbers don’t lie.

For starters, you are going to want to create a master schedule of your current life to determine where your education can fit in with your current responsibilities. There are several time tracking options available to let you get a picture of your life. If you are already using something like Google Calendar, you may have much of the data you already need. Simply start using the calendar to keep track of all your daily commitments in one place for at least a week, though a month will give you a better picture. Track every minute of your day starting when you wake up, shower, eat breakfast, how long your drive to work is, the hours that you work, free time during your work day, driving home, cooking dinner, playing with the kids, and of course, any free time you have during all of that. The color coding feature of Google Calendar will allow you to see how your days, weeks, and months are divided up.

For those who want even more data (think charts and graphs), taking advantage of a free trial of a program like OfficeTime or Clockodo can allow minute time tracking and provide you with data presented in tables and graphs that may help you better visualize and quantify your priorities.

Reflections on a Day at the Museum of Play

by Justin Marquis Ph.D.

I recently had the opportunity to spend a day at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. While it was certainly fun and provided a very enjoyable nostalgic trip for me, the museum also proved to be an amazing resource for educators or anyone interested in play, its role in society, and its power as an educational medium. Having spent the day reading the information provided about the science of play and soaking in quotes from prominent educators, psychologists, historians, sociologists, and other great thinkers, I came to the very clear realization that we are educating wrong at the most fundamental level.

Here is some of the most important information I learned at the Museum of Play, my reflections on what each piece means, and why I think it all adds up to the fact that we are doing our children a disservice by not basing our educational systems on play.

The New York Times and Washington Post Are Ignoring Civilians Killed by U.S. Drone Strikes

Graffiti denouncing strikes by US drones in Yemen. 
Khaled Abdullah/REUTERS

Jeff Bachman, American University

The Obama administration has repeatedly claimed its drone strikes are precise and conducted in compliance with international law.

Yet, information provided to online journal The Intercept by an unnamed source paints a different picture.

The Obama administration's drone strikes have also been investigated by multiple UN Special Rapporteurs, including Philip Alston, Ben Emmerson and Christof Heyns. They have been criticized by numerous human rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve. Stanford Law School, NYU School of Law and Columbia Law School have raised ethical and legal questions.

The dichotomy between claims made by the Obama administration and the reports by these well-respected observers should attract scrutiny by the media.

To find out what kind of job the media has been doing reporting this story, I recently completed and published a study of The New York Times' (NYT) and Washington Post's (WP) coverage of US drone strikes between 2009 and 2014.

These papers were chosen as representatives of the "elite press." The NYT calls itself the "paper of record." The WP is considered by some to be the official paper of Washington, DC. I picked this five-year period because of the dramatic increase in drone strikes that occurred since Obama took office.

My conclusion: both papers have substantially underrepresented the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, failed to correct the public record when evidence emerged that their reporting was wrong and ignored th

Pot Use Disorder Is Up In New Users, But Down In Experienced Smokers

OPENRANGESTOCK VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Andrew M. Seaman

(Reuters Health) - As attitudes and laws in the U.S. have become more tolerant of marijuana, the proportion of adults using and abusing the substance at least doubled between 2001 and 2013, according to a new study.

Although marijuana dependence and abuse was found to be on the rise, that is largely due to the overall increase in new users, researchers note, while existing marijuana users experienced a 15 percent decline in pot-related disorders.

About 4 percent of adults between 2001 and 2002 reported having used marijuana in the past year, compared to about 10 percent between 2012 and 2013. Similarly, 1.5 percent had abuse or dependence problems - so-called marijuana use disorder - at the start of the 21st Century, compared to about 3 percent from 2012 to 2013.

"What was quite clear is the prevalence of use among adults had more than doubled," said Deborah Hasin, the study's lead author from Columbia University in New York.

Twenty-three U.S. states allow for medical marijuana use, and four also allow recreational use, the researchers write in JAMA Psychiatry. More Americans also favor marijuana legalization than before, and fewer see the substance as risky.

Yet, the researchers write, little was known about how the prevalence of marijuana use and disorders changed during the first decade of the century.

For the new study, they compared data from face-to-face interviews with over 43,000 U.S. adults between 2001 and 2002 to data from over 36,000 people collected between 2012 and 2013.

They found that reports of having used marijuana in the past year more than doubled between the two time periods with especially large increases among women, blacks, Hispanics, southerners and middle-aged and older people.

The data also included information on whether participants were experiencing abuse or dependence.

Between the two time periods, the researchers found that such disorders were about twice as common during the 2012 and 2013 interviews. About three of every 10 marijuana users - about 7 million Americans - were diagnosed with a marijuana use disorder in the latter survey, they write.

Past studies have tied marijuana use to mental health issues, poor quality of life, use of other drugs and withdrawal after heavy use, they add.

Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics restated their opposition to marijuana legalization based on its well-documented negative effects on the developing brains of children and adolescents, such as impaired memory and problem solving (see Reuters Health story of January 26, 2015 here: http://reut.rs/1GiiDI9).

Richard Sherman Explains A Weekly Contradiction In NFL Player Safety

MADDIE MEYER VIA GETTY IMAGESRichard Sherman looks on during the Seattle Seahawks' game against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on Sept. 20, 2015.

Never one to keep his opinions to himself, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman effectively accused the NFL of prioritizing revenue over players’ rest and recuperation on Wednesday when he was asked how difficult it is to have only the “four-day turnaround” between games necessitated by Thursday Night Football.

"I mean, it's rough," Sherman responded. "It's rough on the body. Any time you play a football game and play another one a few days later, it's going to be tough on the body. But it's just another one of those things. Another one of those simple contradictions of the league, because they care about us."

The half-week between the Seahawks’ Week 6 and 7 contests means that players will have three fewer days than normal to rest and rehab their injuries, with many being thrown back into the fire before their bodies have properly recovered from the previous matchup’s beating.

Sherman is not the first to call the NFL on what SBNation deemed the “hypocritical” nature of Thursday Night Football. In a league whose party line is seemingly we do care about player safety, players from Green Bay to Houston have all pointed out the tension between the NFL’s PR-conscious statements on safety and the grind of suiting up two times in five days. While Packers offensive lineman Josh Sitton said last year that Thursday Night Football is “all about money,” Houston Texan running back Arian Foster announced just weeks later that it puts “every player on the field in danger.”

This is hardly the only time that the discussion at Sherman’s press conference has shifted from strategy to safety, as just two Wednesdays ago, his comments on the NFL’s recommended tackling technique largely undermined the league’s platform on proper head trauma prevention.