569 shares SHARE TWEET SMS SEND EMAIL Eric Klopfer, director of MIT’s Education Arcade, will host the new series of MOOCs on ed tech and gaming(Photo: MIT) The place where the video game was invented more than 50 years ago now wants to teach teachers, entrepreneurs and students how to design games for the learning — and it is hoping that the end result will be a new kind of tech tool for the classroom. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week began a free series of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, beginning with one on the design and development of educational technology. The second course, which begins Oct. 22, focuses on game design. Two upcoming courses will focus on educational games and implementing ed tech. MIT’s teacher education program already focuses on games, among other tools — it developed a middle-school math game, Lure of the Labyrinth, that has a cult following among teachers, and it is piloting a math and science multiplayer online role-playing game.The new courses are being offered through a department called the Education Arcade. But the new courses aim to help students both inside and outside of MIT produce saleable products. The final project for the first course will be a Kickstarter-like pitch for a new game-based educational technology. “There has to be a real need,” said Eric Klopfer, director of the Education Arcade, who will host the courses. “What we’d like to get out of it is some great, interesting ideas that maybe some people move forward with.” Unlike most MOOCs, Klopfer said, the four courses won’t simply feature videotaped lectures and computer-graded problem sets. Most of the work will be group-based and the instructional material will consist primarily of interviews with experts in the field. “We know that the stuff that has caught on most with MOOCs are things that can be assessed through automated testing,” said Scot Osterweil, the Education Arcade’s creative director. “We know we’re not the only ones tryingto think about more project-based MOOCs, but we also know that it hasn’t advanced very far.” , , , 569 shares SHARE TWEET SMS SEND EMAIL Related Stories Comments