No More Chocolate-Covered Broccoli: Designing Better Games for Better Learning

Games can make learning more engaging, but adding points, prizes, or competition does not automatically make an activity better. In this hands-on workshop, we move beyond chocolate-covered broccoli to explore how Universal Design for Learning, the Science of Learning, and serious play can help you design games that are both ridiculously fun and instructionally sound. After experiencing several approaches firsthand, you will learn to evaluate classroom games for more than engagement alone, identifying design choices that support retrieval, feedback, learner variability, collaboration, and meaningful thinking. Then you will use a practical design process to build or upgrade a game for your own classroom. Come ready to play, build, and test, and leave with adaptable structures, ready-to-use examples, and a stronger framework for deciding when play genuinely improves learning and when it is just chocolate-covered broccoli. All workshops are BYOD and require All Access or Session + Registration to attend.