Interest, Play, and Learner Engagement

Description

Galvin Ngo, Assistant Director of Ateneo SALT Institute interviews Dr. H. Chad Lane and Dr. Jeff Ginger about the intersection of technology, makerspaces, and learner engagement. They talk about video game behavior, entertainment, exploration, playfulness, and how these can be utilized to strengthen learner engagement in formal and informal educational settings.

Dr. Lane is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Informatics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Chad's research focuses on the design, use, and impacts of intelligent technologies for informal learning. He has over 70 publications in a variety of areas, including intelligent tutoring, educational games, immersive technologies, and narrative-based learning environments.

Dr. Ginger is a program coordinator with the Illinois Informatics Institute and adjunct instructor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jeff’s dissertation focused on the investigation of how public libraries foster digital literacies through community engagement, which ultimately led him to his current work as the director of the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab. Here he continues to lend a critical but optimistic perspective to the study and implementation of makerspaces, particularly by tackling some of its most key challenges, such as cultivating and supporting diversity, a prerequisite to innovation, and sustainably establishing capacity-building technology education services in collaboration with underserved communities.

This episode was made possible by the Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences. Pocket Lectures is a show on the Areté Podcasts Network, produced and recorded in Areté, Ateneo De Manila University.