Articles on How to use Games to Teach Anything!

• PowerPoint Lecture vs Jeopardy-Style Game
• Using Games to Teach
• Using Game Formats to Teach Anything
• Make a Game to Review a Lecture
• Not a Dynamic Speaker?
• Wow people at Public Events or Trade shows
• Tracking Game Scores Online - A Case Study
  
• Using My Game Show Buzzers

People agree games are a great way to review a topic, but what about using games to teach your core educational principals? Absolutely! Here are some tips to accomplish this.

• Define your objective. Make a list of the key teaching points you want to cover.

• Create questions based on your key points.

• Be creative. Questions do not specifically have to cover a topic, they can be used simply as a stepping stone to what you want to teach.

• Remember, your key objective is to teach a topic, you are using “fun” to help you achieve your primary objective which is educational.

• Use a game that allows the use of summary points that will allow you to review content after each question.

• Slow down the game. Your objective is different than a TV game show. Theirs is to entertain, yours is to educate. On a TV game show in a 30 minute period they may play 3-4 rounds. In the classroom it may take 45 minutes of longer for one game.

• Read each question prior to answering.

• Your main concern should be more on the content delivery than who wins or looses. The game simply is a different medium to deliver your material.

• Games do not always have to be long. A short game of 4-6 questions, can be a great way to review the key points of a talk or use as a warm up for a presentation.
  

There is an old teaching adage, "Tell them what you are going to teach them. Teach them. Then tell them what you taught them." Games are a perfect way to close a presentation and review the points you want them to remember. Both game formats will work, but the My Billionaire Game™ is a perfect tool to help you accomplish this. It allows you the flexibility of using 1-15 questions. We suggest using a minimum of four questions. At the end of the presentation, you can play with one, two or a team of players. How you do this depends on how much time you have left, but to keep the game short you want to keep your set up time short. Choosing “volunteer(s)” even before giving your presentation may be wise.

Your next step will be to open the game and play. Single player mode may also be used. In this scenario, the class as a whole is the single player.

Note: Creating a hyperlink from PowerPoint to the Quiz.exe (MQS) or Play.exe (MBG) file in the folder where your game is will make opening the game more fluid. The game will just pop up and start.

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Have you ever been asked to put together a presentation with little more than a moment’s notice? Or worse yet, you need to develop your presentation quickly and you know the topic is so boring that watching paint dry sounds more exciting? Game formats can help teach or review any topic, but they can also rescue a presenter from “death by PowerPoint”. If done right, many of the suggestions we have provided for you on this website will make your presentations both more effective and entertaining than just using PowerPoint alone.

Remember the game is your outline and your structure to cover your key teaching points. The game will help you keep and maintain your audience’s attention thereby increasing their absorption of the material.

After you have delivered your introductory and opening statements, level-set your audience with some basic information about the key points. You want everyone on the same page of knowledge before you begin asking questions. They should have enough general knowledge to answer a majority of the questions with some percent of accuracy; otherwise they will be made to feel incompetent and may “shut down” during the rest of your presentation.

The next step is to take your key points and use them to create categories in a Jeopardy style game. With My Quiz Show® (Jeopardy® style game) you can create three to five categories with up to five questions in each category. Questions can be formatted as either true/false, multiple choice or open-ended to create dialog among your audience. Images and audio files can be added to the questions to reach the different learning styles of your attendees.

Do you have an existing presentation that could use a lift?

Leverage the good content you’ve already developed in your PowerPoint slides. My Quiz Show® allows you to attach PowerPoint slides to a question to reinforce or expand on your key points.

A game format, as we discussed in “Using Games to Teach”, is a terrific presentation technique to capture your audience’s attention and hold it right through to the end.

The graphics, sound effects and the change of pace from your lecture to interactive discussion all combine to heighten your audience’s attention level. Using a game format ensures everybody comes out a winner. It enhances your skills as a presenter and helps your audience retain information longer after the presentation ends.

Wow people at public events or trade shows

Doing a trade show or special event where you need to educate people on your message or product? Try using games. The key to using games is keeping it short. My Quiz Show™ starts at 10 questions. The My Billionaire Game allows you to make games with 5-8 questions thus making games quicker. Some additional suggestions:

• Make multiple games. You may want to create a variety of games based on the message you want to deliver.
• Use summary points. Unless you are doing this purely for entertainment, use the summary option in the game builder so you can review after each question. Remember to keep your points short and to the point.

Games are a fun way for people to test their knowledge and they tend to gather a crowd. You want to make sure you have enough games to play, because people may stay and watch multiple games. The use of the help lines really works to engage a group. This is a great way to have fun and get your message to your audience.

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Tracking Game Scores Online- A Case Study

The case study below was created for a public safety department that is required to review a particular subject annually. In the past, they have used the classroom version of My Quiz Show, but this year they wanted to try the online version using My Quiz Show LMS. This was their first experience with an in-house Learning Management System (LMS). The primary goal in using the LMS was to have a simple way to track game results.

Simplicity
Simplicity was the key objective in building this game. No complicated instructions or things to learn were required in order to play the game. People were simply able to open the game and begin play. Because this was the first time they had used something like this, it was important for them to be able to print a certificate of completion as proof of having completed the game. In the end, it was agreed this game was both easy to play and easy to submit scores.

The final result was people loved it! On average, the LMS game version took about 15 minutes to complete versus the 1.5 hours it took in the classroom. They liked this game format so much they plan to expand it to other topics.

The Set Up
In this case, an actual LMS was not needed, and they did not require the SCORM 1.2 package. Instead, they used the C3 Visuals LMS. (See the image below to see the settings they selected.) In the game settings three boxes were checked: 1) Play in one-player mode. This set the game for a single player. 2) Try again pop up after wrong answer. This format gave the user a second chance to review and correct their answer. 3) Make summary mandatory. In this format, a review or get additional information request was required regardless if the right or wrong answer was given.

Online Example
If you would like to play a shorter version of the game they used, go click on the "PLAY NOW" button. When completed, you may submit your score by placing your email address in the appropriate box along with your name. You will receive an email reply with the results and so will Joe Smith, the game manager. A certificate of your completion can be printed. Joe Smith will also have access to an administrative site so he can check your results. This game example allows for scores to be recorded and in the administration area it will even identify what was answered incorrectly.

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