This semester is turning out to be one that is quite busy.  It was a good idea to not teach a graduate this semester so I can focus on my dissertation proposal, however (like that irresistible desert at the end of the meal) various collaborative projects have come in to fill the "void" left in my schedule from not teaching (the one that is supposed to be going into dissertation prep), and these projects have me thinking.

First is the aspect of Hybrid Presence.  Suzan and I coined this term to describe something between Teaching Presence and Learner Presence for the most recent Networked learning conference.  We are currently working more on this topic for an upcoming book chapter.

Second is gamification.  A term that has come in and out of my list of curiosities that I want to play around more with.  I've done some work on this for school, and for professional organization presentations, but nothing big in terms of an article (in my ALECS proposal it was only part of the ingredients).

Finally, since I am not teaching next spring (how much do you want to bet that other papers will fill in the void, LOL), I've been thinking about the summer I usually teach in the summers.    I facilitated the transition from "Introduction to Instructional Design" to "Foundations in Instructional Design and Learning Technology" - a small word change, but the connotations of such a change were profound for the course.  Rebecca H and I have taught variations of the course, as well as variations of INSDSG684. For the past 4 years I've wanted to gamify the learning experience, which I have partly done through badging, although that seems to not have caught on that greatly.  As an opt-in experience it varies a lot. This leaves me pondering: is it wise to move from the gamification end of the spectrum to full-on gaming in an introductory course?  If yes, how do you do it?  The boardgame metaphor appeals to me, but there are other metaphors that do as well!

On another strand, there are students in the MEd program that I teach in that are close to graduation and that I've had in my class at some point or another.  Now that they are a little further in the program I'd like to invite them back, for credit, to be part of the introductory course.  But not as teaching assistants.  I think that's a waste of their time and money. Rather, I want them to be mentors who are developing what Suzan and I term a Hybrid Presence.  I'll be be around to mentor the mentors (while working on my own Hybrid Presence) but I want to tease out how that would work as a for-credit course.  Since I only really teach two courses per year (limitations of employment), my current puzzle to solve is this: I want to combine the transformgameation† of the introductory course with this mentorship model I want to develop. This way I am working on a gamefied design that's (maybe) more interesting, and it won't bore the mentees since will be part of something new.

What do you think of this idea?



NOTES:
† word I invented, transform + game = transformgameation, tell it to your friends, let's have it catch on.