Discussion: COE 216 | Virtual Workshop | Blurring the lines with Disruptive Learning - MSU's Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse..Can You Survive?d

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2014-09-05T15:03:27-06:00

Friday, September 26: 10:30 - 11:40am

To join Webinar: https://connect.msu.edu/msuzombienation/

Abstract:
Come and explore, discuss, and experience MSU’s AT&T 2013 Award winning “Best Fully Online Course” offered by the School of Social Work, Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Disasters, Catastrophes, and Human Behavior. Be immersed in an experience where the instructor becomes the facilitator of learning, storytelling narration replaces lectures, zombies become the catalyst of teaching, the librarian turns into a zombrarian, and the students become digital storytellers as a way of assessing their own learning. Check us out: zombie.msu.edu

Description:
Across the country, many students in traditional classrooms are present physically -- yet their focus on learning is not within that setting’s walls. Instead, it is mobile phones, tablet technology, and various forms of multimedia that engage today’s students in learning. The educational system continues to focus on the traditional approach despite the opportunities these “disruptions” provide for exploring new ways of learning. Thus the question: What happens when you take a nontraditional approach to learning and fuse in gaming, film, and pop culture all in a fully online course while still meeting academic goals?

Come and explore, discuss, and experience MSU’s AT&T 2013 Award winning “Best Fully Online Course” offered by the School of Social Work, Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Disasters, Catastrophes, and Human Behavior. This innovative course uses current research and science on Catastrophes and Human Behavior together with the idea of a Zombie Apocalypse to learn about the nature, scope, and impact of catastrophic events on individuals, families, societies, civilizations, and the Earth itself. It’s uniqueness lies in students becoming participants within a story, as the instructor becomes the facilitator of learning, storytelling narration replaces lectures, zombies become the catalyst of teaching, and the students emerge as digital storytellers as a way of assessing their own learning.

The desire to create something fun, interesting, yet allowing the students to become aware and in charge of their own learning became the motivational factors of the design team creating this course. We wanted to produce something innovative, a course like none in the world while pushing the walls of how teaching and learning exists today. With our motivations, clear goals and broadly defined rules, it allowed us to create a simulated environment for unplanned or unexpected outcomes where a student's “choices” affects the outcome of the course. The Zombie-themed technology-enriched approach attracted national and international attention in over 100 media outlets around the world in both educational and popular media such as Chronicles in Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed International Business Times - Hong Kong, Time magazine, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien resulting in increased domestic and international student enrollment.

The broad applicability of our approach to immerse students into learning will appeal to academics researchers, serious gamers, and beyond (open thought designers, programmers, nonprofits, government). Our workshop participants will take part in several survival activities and contribute to the on going design of this growing phenomenon of “breaking the barriers” of what learning actual means.

Presented by:

Keesa Johnson Muhammad, Michigan State University Learning Design and Technology, johns253@msu.edu

Chris Irvin, Michigan State University LearnDAT, irvinchr@gmail.com

Glenn Stutzky, Michigan State University School of Social Work, stutzky1@msu.edu