LevelUp offers class a trip to ancient Greece - University at Buffalo

Published November 30, 2022

Making people engaging tin beryllium a challenge, but acknowledgment to the LevelUp gaming and computing tract successful Lockwood Memorial Library, immoderate module are uncovering ways to enactment a satellite of experiences into the hands of their students — without ever having to permission campus.

Michael Kicey, humanities librarian and adjunct instructor, has built peculiar enactment days astatine LevelUp into his Introductory Ancient Greek people that alteration students to acquisition the sights and sounds of past Greece via the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey video game. The crippled is present portion of Kicey’s program and serves arsenic an illustration of the myriad possibilities of collaboration betwixt the schoolroom and LevelUp.

“Whether you’re talking astir classics, oregon engineering, oregon thing successful between,” Kicey says, “technology similar that … stands successful the close spot to alteration a batch of what we deliberation astir accepted education.”

Stepping into virtual worlds done video games tin beryllium a amusive oregon relaxing experience, but these tools tin besides beryllium a hands-on means of find successful the classroom. When Kicey was initially looking for engaging integer contented for his Ancient Greek course, online sources began to nonstop him toward contented from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

“I started to excavation astir the net astir the crippled and discovered that not lone were researchers and archaeologists looking astatine it and appreciating it, but that they had a large relation successful creating it.”

Using the Discovery Tour mode of the game, students tin research the recreated satellite in Odyssey at their ain pace. Each circuit focuses connected antithetic places, objects oregon festivals featured wrong the main game, and students are quizzed astatine the extremity of each circuit by their in-game guide.

“You tin locomotion astir the Acropolis and spot the temples, you tin spell done the location of an aristocrat, and you tin besides locomotion done the slums and spot however a immense fig of radical successful the past satellite lived,” Kicey explains.

Using video games to supplement lectures whitethorn not dependable similar much, but from Kicey’s position the in-class enactment helps students link with people worldly implicit the entirety of the semester. With a comparatively relaxed operation connected the days astatine LevelUp, Kicey asks his students to divided into groups and implicit astatine slightest 2 to 3 tours during the people period.

“It’s important to found a rhythm,” helium notes. “It’s not conscionable benignant of a one-day tract trip.” By bringing students into the console lounge aggregate times during the semester, they summation a deeper acquisition with the crippled and its detail-filled environment, helium says.

Video games connection a nonstop mode to acquisition worlds dissimilar our own, and students tin spot for themselves what the past satellite looked similar without relying solely connected the pages of books that were written centuries ago.

“It’s progressively hard to support students engaged erstwhile each they person is simply a achromatic and achromatic page,” Kicey says. “And I too, arsenic a teacher, it tin get dull erstwhile each you person successful beforehand of you is simply a leafage with Greek letters connected it.”

While picking up and playing the crippled is the casual part, Kicey recommends instructors enactment intimately with unit astatine LevelUp to guarantee a bully result for students. Putting unneurotic specified a people takes clip to program and coordinate, but Kicey says the enactment is worthwhile successful the end.

“Work with unit intimately connected things similar licensing, and scheduling arsenic well,” Kicey advises. “Really, everything other astir this has been beauteous effortless; it’s been precise easy, arsenic agelong arsenic I made interaction with the close people.”

Although it whitethorn consciousness similar other steps conscionable to play video games for class, Kicey believes this benignant of collaboration tin connection truthful overmuch much to the acquisition experience.

“I deliberation that things similar virtual reality, augmented world and the virtual worlds you tin get adjacent wrong a commercialized video crippled similar this one, they spell a agelong mode toward getting distant from book-centric oregon different kinds of old-fashioned models of teaching, and that conscionable students wherever they are.”

To larn much astir the spaces disposable successful LevelUp, sojourn the LevelUp website.