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Our keynote speaker is Andrew Davies from Virginia Commonwealth University
It’s All Fun and Games til Something Gets Learnt: My Journey into Playful Pedagogy
It’s challenging enough teaching eager, motivated students—but what if you’re asked to introduce your area of expertise to a room full of skeptics? How do you convince apathetic students to care about something they don't see as relevant? Worse yet, how do you do all that through a tiny screen in their bedroom? You trick them, that's how! No, seriously. You make them so engaged in conquering challenges and competing alongside their classmates, that they don’t even realize they’re learning esoteric history and terminology in their PJs. In this presentation, you’ll learn how and why I started my journey into playful pedagogy. Through my mistakes and triumphs, you’ll learn how I layered several games-based teaching tactics onto my college course; turning it into my own version of a multiplayer classroom. Then you’ll see how the forced shift to remote teaching turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Ultimately helping me transform my course from a boring Intro class to an engaging learning experience for even the most reluctant students.Andrew is an adjunct professor in the Communication Arts Department at VCU and catalogs his adventures in pedagogy on the blog TeachingTypography.wordpress.com. He speaks internationally on the various ways he uses playful pedagogy in his classroom. From game-based instruction to improving student engagement with gamification mechanics. His alter-ego leads the creative team at B2e design firm Paragon Design Group where he straddles the worlds of print, web and motion graphics media. He’s won numerous ADDYs, TELLYs and WEBBYs working for clients like American Express, CNN, National Geographic, and WordPress.com.