Gamification of STEM courses: What Works and How to Do it
Speaker
Professor Ljiljana Brankovic
Institute
Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment, The University of Newcastle, Australia
Time & Place
Thu, 26 Jul 2018 13:00:00 NZST in Jack Erskine 340
Abstract
In this talk we describe the gamification of a theoretical computer science courses we performed since 2014 to date. Such theoretical courses are often thought of by students as necessary “evils” and left for the very end of the degree, without an opportunity to serve their purpose of facilitating a deeper understanding of the study area which leads to improving students’ outcomes in the rest of their degrees. Therefore, the benefit improving student engagement and outcomes in such STEM courses extends to the subsequent courses the students take and thus their overall performance.
Biography
Ljiljana Brankovic is a Professor of Computing in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Newcastle. Her research interests include data security, privacy, algorithms and graph theory. She has a keen interest in novel teaching methods and since 2015 she has been serving as an Assistant Dean (Student Engagement) at the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment at The University of Newcastle.