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| Looking for inspiration in setting up your next course? Look to the gaming industry. Game design and teaching are basically the same thing: you’re trying to take someone who doesn’t know much and level them up to total mastery without making them rage-quit or fall asleep. A good course scaffolds a syllabus the exact same way a developer builds a tutorial level—starting with simple low-stakes practice, cranking up the difficulty as you go, and throwing in a boss fight/exam to test everything you’ve learned so far. Many have a mechanic to slow down and try an easy mode for a while until everything starts to make sense. If your child is playing a game and you say “Zone of Proximal Development, nice,” you can start up a whole new conversation. The point is the game industry has been quietly becoming master teachers under our nose this whole time. So if you’re hitting a sticking point with course development, maybe throw on some Mario Bros. and let the idea come to you. |