Director of the Learning Games Lab Dr. Barbara Chamberlin was featured on the Professor Game podcast, talking about NMSU Innovative Media Research & Extension’s work creating educational games.
Rob Alvarez Bucholska of IE University (International University, Spain) is “Professor Game,” a podcast personality who interviews successful practitioners of games-based solutions, gamification and game thinking. On April 4th, Rob featured Chamberlin in episode 231: “Barbara Chamberlin Gets People Thinking About Games and Education.”
As Rob and Barb discuss in the podcast episode, our studio is unusual in being situated at a land-grant university and in being part of the Cooperative Extension Service. Our primary goal is to develop educational media based on research, and we function as a non-profit educational design studio as well as a university department. As a result, we create educational games, apps, websites, and videos on a wide variety of topics. (See our featured products at innovativemedia.nmsu.edu, or click on side links for older products). Our most popular games focus on food safety, public health, or STEM education, for example, the Math Snacks suite. We also create games and simulations about financial literacy (https://apps.nmsu.edu/livingdebt.html, agricultural science (Science of Agriculture), nutrition (MyPlate My Day), patient care, and workplace safety. We create innovative modules for web, mobile, VR, and are currently working on a visitor experience for White Sands National Park.
In recent years our scholarly work has focused on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion and accessibility, including developing guiding principles for both accessibility and representation, and sharing how we got there as a studio. We also run summer Think Tanks that support youth in developing skills for reviewing, designing, and pitching games. Learn more about how our program supports and encourages kids as game developers.
Our team enjoyed hearing Rob Alvarez Bucholska’s questions and discussions about our process, and we’re pleased to add the Professor Game podcast to our listening list. One aspect of the Professor Game podcast we especially enjoy is that he asks guests to suggest media they enjoy. Here are the books and games recommended by Dr. Chamberlin:
Recommended books
The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell
Research for Designers by Gjoko Muratovski
Favorite game: Wordle
We highly recommend Professor Game and his podcast. Give it a listen!
Professor Game
Learning Games Lab/Department of Innovative Media, Research & Extension
About Barbara Chamberlin Barbara Chamberlin directs research and development at the Learning Games Lab here in the Department of Innovative Media, Research & Extension at New Mexico State University. She first started developing educational games in the early 1990s. Armed with a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in educational technology, she founded the Learning Games Lab in 2003 to pursue ways research could inform the design of educational games. Under her leadership, our team creates research-based educational media such as games, apps, animations, videos, interactive programs and virtual reality experiences, for a wide range of audiences and content.
About Rob Alvarez Bucholska Rob is an international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He is the host of Professor Game podcast, works of B2B Product at Ironhack and teaches at IE Business School, ranked #1 and #2 by the Financial Times (among others) for its Global MBA over the past five years, as well as other international institutions. At Ironhack he leads the process for creating and adapting educational products for the needs of other organizations that range from companies to other educational institutions. As an adjunct professor at IE University, he focuses both on Gamification and Operations topics.
Written by Amy Smith Muise, Program Manager, Learning Games Lab, Department of Innovative Media, Research & Extension