I am applying for the HCDE program with the goal of applying human-computer interaction(HCI) knowledge to education. My career aspiration is to design systems and develop methods to augment teaching and learning experience.
Despite many years of enthusiasm with education, it was only recently that I had the aspiration to improve learning. On a rare occasion two years ago, I collapsed after gaming for ten hours straight. The seriousness of the incident, together with my guilt, made me wonder why it happened, and one explanation emerged: gaming is exceedingly more addictive than studying. As a novice game designer, I knew that this addictiveness is not innate, but due to conscious design decisions and techniques. Ultimately, this awareness led me to believe that with the right skills, creating engaging educational experience comparable to games is plausible. However, at that time, I had yet to know what those skills were.
Half a year later, I collaborated with professor Brian King on redesigning and rebuilding the Scanning Mobility CCN Analysis (SMCA) package. The positive feedback from users, plus the increase in productivity of the redesigned
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The course focused on user-centered design and the application of design thinking to real-world problems. There were many components of the course that facilitated my enthusiasm with HCI and design, such as the seven design projects, the bi-weekly video calls with HCI experts, or the final design portfolio. Furthermore, after I learned about user-centered design from the course, I realized that learning experience design is fundamentally user-centered design. After all, students are just a type of users, and learning is just a type of experience. This realization, together with my exposure to HCI, convinced me that having expertise in user-centered design is essential to my aspiration for augmenting the learning
An HBCU is a college/university that embeds the nature of power and black excellence; a place with surroundings that doesn’t force you, but makes you want to push yourself to become a better person inside and out, and throughout the community. Transferring would allow myself to be put in an atmosphere of continuous motivation and growth that I would feed off of my superiors and the people around me.
In high school, I was part of SkillsUSA, a national organization that heavily focused on Career and Technical Education for students in high school and in college. It was my junior year in high school and I had become fascinated with this organization. There are many types of competitions such as cosmetology or architecture and engineering where students can showcase their talents along with what they have learned in school. My range of skills allowed me to compete in different types of computer and leadership competitions. This led me to many different experiences that have greatly influenced my personality and have allowed me to learn that there are many important aspects to have a good character. Having won some competitions and lost others has given me experiences that allowed me to improve myself and to truly understand how some parts of our personality are important.
I am a dedicated, focused student looking to push the boundaries of Engineering Physics with creative out of the box thinking. I have the drive to be successful and positively represent UBC Engineering Physics. I have a passion for physics and math which is why I believe this program is so appealing and a perfect choice. Having already started, run and sold a successful landscaping company, I have experience in entrepreneurship and have determined being an entrepreneur is something I want to pursue in the future. I believe Engineering Physics would give me the opportunity and breadth of knowledge to make my entrepreneurial vision a reality and allow me to find solutions to the issues that will impact the future of humanity. Being on UBC Supermileage
Healthcare administration is a field that is often overlooked, but is essentially the beating heart of any healthcare organization. With more and more hospital, and clinics, and other healthcare organizations popping up everywhere there is a need for people like me to manage the day-to-day operations. I am choosing to apply to this program because I want to study how the U.S. healthcare system operates. I want to learn the essential skills of operating a healthcare facility such as managing a budget, reducing healthcare costs, analyzing the efficiency of an organization and proposing ways to improve it. This program is going to give me the necessary education and skills so I can carry out my goal of being a healthcare administrator.
Sir Ken Robinson states that, “Children are living in the most intensely stimulating period in the history of Earth” (TheRSA). They’re getting distracted by Iphones, television, recreational video games, etc. Which is leading to a possibly rampant misdiagnosis of ADHD in children across America. This is important to gamification because it exemplifies the dissonance that instructors may express towards this idea of bringing play into work. The students are going to require mental stimulation from an alternative source to keep their attention upon their work. Gamification introduces a method in which mental stimulation is a possibility through intractability with the coursework. One way that we saw this was through the implementation of
Children born in today’s times should be thankful for the fact that they are living in an era where they have a multitude of academic opportunities compared to their previous generation. Indeed, there was a time when people would consider only a select few fields as rewarding both professionally and financially. However, the past couple of decades or so have brought about a change in that mentality and now fields like video game design are being considered important. Now people wishing to have a career as a video game designer can not only count it as a viable option but can also explore what this field has to offer through different sources.
Presently, video games aren’t merely toys that negatively influence the youth. They have become an alternative means for people to learn and train for work. Games teach values and essential information, and motivate its players to achieve goals. Soldiers and doctors benefit from video games as well. The collaboration of game developers and educators helps improve the quality of educational games. At present, as technology progresses, one can truly see that video games have become an important factor in learning.
It focuses on understanding the learner and their needs and not just on a problem to fix. When working on a new course the designer has a defined roadmap of where to start and how to go through the process until the end. This is useful for instructional designers because there are no questions about what to do next. Since technology is built into the design, this is a strong format for designing an online course. The learner will have opportunities to participate and use active learning throughout the class as well.
I always thought about playing video games on computers for a while but always was blinded by the media today about how much it costs to build a good one. The truth is, is that it’s the most practical form of entertainment combined with work that you could possibly invest in, in the kind of society we have today. It wasn’t until around a little over a year ago that I built my very first computer; I was so excited about it. The reason I decided to build one was since I had always heard that computers were so expensive but if you built them, then it isn’t so much money. Not only was my computer practical for entertainment but also for school.
The ideal of interactive, highly-engaging training and education is ancient. A Chinese proverb says: "Tell me, and I'll forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I'll understand." However, the gap continues to grow between antiquated, passive training methods and a workforce that lives an ever more interactive, multimedia, user-controlled lifestyle. With game-based learning tools to bridge that gap comes the promise of vastly more productive and engaged students and workers—ones who embrace learning.
Students’ motivation and engagement are huge issues in the educational system because students often perceive education as boring (Lee & Hammer, 2011). In contrast, games can motivate people engage with them, usually without any kind of rewards, only for the sake of fun (Dicheva, Dichev, Agre, & Angelova, 2015).
There are several negative stereotypes associated with video games and those who play them; some of these may often hold true. However, there are plenty of learning opportunities in video games. While the direct purpose of some games is to educate or train, other games that do not directly have this purpose can still become a learning experience for the player. As Ntiedo Etuk, president of the educational video game company Tabula Digital said, “The traditional view of video games has been that they are distractions from the task of learning” (Electronic Education Report 1). Video games are an effective tool for learning and retaining skills both inside and outside the classroom environment. The basic cycle of game play--the introduction to the game, game play, collaboration, improvement of these between each round, and evaluation at the end of the game (Klievink and Janssen 159)--are nearly parallel to the traditional classroom learning cycle of reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, taking a quiz, studying, focusing on items missed on the quiz, and taking a test or exam. Within this cycle, there are many opportunities to develop and perfect both educational, life, and occupational skills.
The concept of “edutainment”- the hybrid of education and entertainment has existed almost as long as video games have. Evidence of this is The Oregon Trail, a game about the colo...
This article discuses the topic of Students using gaming as to escape reality. This article is based on true experiences; it describes the main purpose of video games, advantages and disadvantages of video games. This article is from The Miami Student Newspaper, which is a credible source because, The University of Miami; the oldest university in the United States published it. This article guides a reader to a better understanding of escapism through entertainment (video games), when comparing our World to Brave New World. In our World, for many people, the world of video games is a perfect break from a reality filled with deadlines, stress and responsibilities. Computer and video games are often used to help people focus on something other than life’s daunting problems. For a few fleeting moments, you are put in a place where you can be whoever or whatever you choose, without worrying about how you look or act, and without having to deal with real-life problems. “For Steven Beynon, video games provided relief from very different types of stress while he served in the Army in Afghanistan.” Deynon said. “They (video games) can do things a movie or a book can’t. Games have the advantage of being a social tool, being able to provide an immersive narrative, and demanding more attention than a TV show. In Brave New World, radio and television (TV) worked for Linda the same way as video games did for Alex. When Linda was on her soma holiday, in a bed, the radio and elevation was always on. “ She was on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours , a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautiful inevitable windings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction; wher...
The core courses will help me strengthen my knowledge and competencies needed to design and implement interactive computing systems that benefit humans. The flexibility of the program will allow me choose electives that matches my interest. The elective, Designing User Experiences for Internet-enabled Devices has captivated me the most. I find user interface enhancement, game designing, creating rich multimedia experiences and mobile application development really interesting and I also find the courses related to website development enthralling. I aspire to acquire the ability to understand human psyche and how humans react to new methods of technology. The program will give me platforms to explore these areas of my