Horticultural Jeopardy: Motivation through Gamification

 By Dr. Ben Casteel -- 

“Do It Well.  Make It Fun.” were the words etched into our January in-service schedule at Virginia Highlands Community College where I teach Horticulture & Agriculture courses.  Local author Ron Culberson was sharing his philosophy (and book title) on how to achieve excellence in the workplace through entertaining motivational mechanisms.  I couldn’t help but to ponder how I might make some of the more banal moments in my classroom more enjoyable for students.  Later that evening, while having a throwback family dinner in front of the television set, the epiphany occurred.  We would often play along with Jeopardy over dinner—and in that very moment—I realized this could be a way I could make exam review time more fun and engaging for my students.

That Spring, I trialed using a Powerpoint template of the Jeopardy game show as our midterm and final exam review.  It was a smashing success for the outgoing extroverted students—and they were the clear winners of the game, but the students who really needed the review were not very active.  As is the case with most innovations in education, we often need to run through several trial iterations, gain feedback, and improve.  Through this process, I found that I needed to incentivize student participation in the game, and fortunately, I had the perfect vehicle for doing so. 

When I started working as the Greenhouse Manager at Virginia Highlands Community College, I was tasked with bringing back plant sales to our campus community.  I thought that this task fit perfectly with the objectives of the Greenhouse Management course that I was teaching as an adjunct.  To me, this was part of that “Do It Well. Make It Fun.” paradigm.  Students were able to see the process of growing plants in the greenhouse from seed to sale.  But, is experiential education always fun?  After our first run of Horticultural Jeopardy, I found that I needed to “do it better, and make it more fun,” and decided to incentivize students in this motivational tool.  We were able to use some of the funds from our plant sales to purchase “prizes” (that in reality were tools students would use in the industry).

The “prize table” has now become a permanent fixture in all of the courses I teach and has certainly aided with retention and participation.  I found the best practice for my students was to provide multiple opportunities to earn points other than the game show review; also, offering several opportunities for cashing in on the prizes improved participation.  As part of the Plan-Do-Study-Act problem solving model, I am currently trialing the integration of badging along with gamification, so students are aware from day one of each “tier” of prizes.  For example, a student earning 100 or more extra credit points would then automatically earn the badge that qualifies them for a particular group of prizes.  Naturally, the value of the prize increases for each tier; thus it incentivizes students to go above and beyond the minimum requirements of the course.  Onward and upward!

For more information about the Horticulture Program at Virginia Highlands community college or adding JeoParody to your curriculum,  you can reach me via email at bcasteel1 at  vhcc.edu. 

Acknowledgments

Culberson, R. P. (2012). Do it well: Make it fun.  Greenleaf Book Group Press. https://ron-culberson.square.site/product/-do-it-well-make-it-fun-book-/7?cs=true&cst=custom    

Fewings, N. (2021). Win prizes sign on Promenade Pier. Unsplash.com.  https://unsplash.com/photos/0sG1ewV5MWY

Schaeffer, Z. (2020). Person holding green plant on black plastic pot. Unsplash.com.  https://unsplash.com/photos/H0iAXFekiWo

Youth Downloads. (n.d.). Jeoparody. https://www.youthdownloads.com/games/jeopardy-powerpoint-template/   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Agriculture Peer Group Formation at the Virginia Community College System

Image
by Adam O'Neal -- Based on input from a cohort of agriculture faculty from around Virginia, an Agriculture and Food Systems Peer Group has been constituted by the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to serve the needs of agriculture program faculty around the Commonwealth of Virginia. Peer groups have existed for other disciplines for some time, but none for this area of study until now. From the shared experiences of the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) cohort members and other agriculture faculty, we understand that collaboration at professional levels has proven challenging. This peer group promises potential benefits to agriculture faculty in unraveling professional challenges and related classroom and teaching concerns. Agriculture is the largest private industry in Virginia, with over 43,000 farms contributing to $82.3B a year in economic impact (Virginia Farm Bureau, n.d.). Though a number of Virginia Community College System ( V
Read more

Integrating Employability Skills in a Traditional Ag Classroom through Learning Badges

Image
by Dr. Mallory White -- To weave workforce readiness skills into a traditional agriculture classroom can be a little challenging. My first-year animal science class tackled four of the twelve AWT4CL employability learning/digital badges. This blog discusses how we did it, challenges and possible lessons for the instructor and the student, and overall perception of the digital badges.  How We Did It   First, I set aside one lab period to discuss the project and complete many of the in-class activities. This required me to combine two traditionally separate, short labs into one to free up a week, but I was determined to make room for important employability content . The activities from each digital badge created by the badge authors are short and effective, but I wanted the students to do more in order to earn a badge. As an instructor, it can be difficult to come up with new, creative activities in the limited time we have. As I was rushing to come up with additional activities and
Read more

Gamification or “Jobification” – Applying Game Design Approaches as a Bridge to Workforce Skills

Image
  by Celeste Carmichael -- Gamification is a known program design approach used to provide motivation for students and participants to complete tasks - offering visual, virtual, and sometimes tangible rewards and validation of learning. In recent years, and particularly with the broader adoption of e-learning and hybrid work in higher education, experimentation and documentation of gamification as a part of classroom pedagogy has grown .  Beyond content transfer, can this same strategy be used to connect relevant past experiences for students to current classroom learning? Some faculty from the Virginia Community College System involved in the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) are applying these approaches to help students to bridge informal and formal learning experiences, connecting the dots on experiences that can translate to valuable workforce attributes. The AWT4CL cohort members have noted that digital badges used in this way can help studen
Read more