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Using PowerPoint to Play Educational Games
PowerPoint is a flexible tool which allows for a
variety of classroom applications beyond displaying lecture content.
Many creative instructors leverage PowerPoint's multimedia and hyperlinking
capabilities to create games that they and their students play in class.
Games motivate students, hold their attention, and introduce excitement,
spontaneity, and fun into a class session. They are particularly useful
for review or as a novel way to present course content.
Some PowerPoint games are variations of famous television game shows,
while others are adaptations of board games, sporting events, or familiar
activities. All make use of hyperlinks between slides to simulate the
format and play of the game. Within the context of your class, students
can play these games in teams or individually, depending on the game,
your objectives, and the size of your class. There are scores of examples
of PowerPoint games on the Web, most of which are freely available
for download. Below we highlight examples that are appropriate for
use in higher education, but be aware that these are only a handful
of the many games that can be adapted for display via PowerPoint. Others
can be found through simple internet searches.
Jeopardy
Who Wants to Be A Millionaire
10,000 Pyramid
20 Questions
Jeopardy
This game is a favorite among students. Most of them will be familiar
with its conventions, so introducing it to your class should be relatively
easy. It is also straightforward to author in PowerPoint. Jeopardy
consists of a main slide with a series of hyperlinks to separate slides
that contain questions.
The Jeopardy concept is nicely adaptable to educational ends–lending
itself to multiple disciplines, question types, question difficulties,
and objectives. Jeopardy questions most easily test knowledge and recall,
but they can also be adapted to higher order skills such as application,
analysis, or evaluation. In these cases, students should take time
to reflect and provide short answers to the questions.
On television, Jeopardy is played by individuals who attempt to answer
questions as quickly as possible. This format tends not to work well
in a classroom, however. When responses are given quickly, students
in the audience might not get the benefit of formulating answers for
themselves. In addition, many students will be reluctant to be "put
on the spot" as a lone contestant, and there is a real chance
of embarrassing members of the class.
A format that many instructors find more inclusive and comfortable
is to have groups of students work together as contestant teams. Rather
than having groups chime in as quickly as possible, the instructor
presents the "answer" and gives groups time to discuss their
response (in the form of a question, of course). The instructor then
calls on a group. If their answer is correct, they choose an area of
the board and a new question is posed to the next group. If their answer
is incorrect, the instructor poses the same question to the next group,
and so on. Each group is given an equal number of opportunities to
answer first, and after a predetermined number of rounds, the group
with the highest number of points is the winner. Plan for some kind
of reward for groups that succeed–candy or other prizes keep
students motivated and help to make the game exciting.
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Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
This game is also popular among students. Like Jeopardy, it is well
suited to educational ends and can accommodate a variety of questions
of varying difficulty. The questions are presented to contestants in
multiple choice format, so the game is appropriate for examination
preparation or review.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was played by a single individual working
through a series of fifteen multiple choice questions starting at $100
and roughly doubling until the final $1,000,000 question. Questions
became more difficult the farther one progressed, but contestants had
access to three "lifelines" to help them answer tricky questions.
They could poll the audience for an answer, phone a friend for advice,
or use the "50-50" option in which two incorrect answers
were eliminated. Each lifeline could be used only once, and if a contestant
answered incorrectly, the game was over. After each question was presented,
the contestant was given the option of taking the money earned up to
that point or trying his luck at answering.
For classroom purposes, it's necessary to tweak the rules of the
game a bit. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is best played with teams
of contestants rather than individuals for the same reason that Jeopardy
is: student performance is enhanced in a group while the risk of embarrassment
to individual class members is minimized. Some instructors also prefer
not to give students a chance to "opt out" of a question,
asking them to answer until they either run the table or answer wrong.
One feature of the game show that translates very nicely into the
classroom is the use of life lines. Student groups should be allowed
to poll the audience or use the "50-50" option; if you have
graduate teaching assistants, you may adapt the "phone a friend" option
to "ask a grad student" or you may simply eliminate this
as a choice. In any case, the game is exciting, captures both the groups'
and the audiences' attention, and promotes a collaborative environment
in which students work together to win the big prize. Like other games,
consider bringing something to reward student success.
There are a variety of ways in which PowerPoint can be used to accommodate
this game. The example shows a typical layout, with a question, life
lines at the bottom of the screen, and multiple choice answers each
of which is hyperlinked to a correct or incorrect slide.
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$100,000 Pyramid
This game is a variation of the $100,000 Pyramid game show. It is
best used as a review of declarative knowledge, and some instructors
choose it as preparation for exams. It functions best in two ways:
as a "take home" review where small groups of students work
together, or as an in class exercise where pairs or small groups of
students each have access to a computer terminal. It works less well
in a lecture hall or an environment with only one computer.
The $100,000 Pyramid game show consisted of two parts: the basic
round and the winners' round. To start, two contestants were each paired
with a partner. Each pair chose a category which contained seven answers.
One of the pair would supply verbal clues and the other would attempt
to guess the answer from them. Each pair was given a limited amount
of time to get as many correct answers as possible. The pair with the
most correct answers after the first round was given a chance to work
through a pyramid of six answers in sixty seconds for a chance to win
the big prize.
Either the first round, second round, or both can be used for educational
purposes. The example below shows what a typical first round PowerPoint
slide might look like. Imagine students choose the topic of "literary
terms." By clicking on a hyperlink, one student is shown a screen
that lists seven answers such as "metaphor," "simile," "iambic
pentameter," "quatrain," "sonnet," etc. This
student describes items on the list by giving clues to his partner,
who faces him and away from the screen. The goal is to name as many
items as possible within a set amount of time. Pairs can alternate
working through different topics, or groups of four can play one pair
against another.
If played in groups of four, you may choose to extend the game by
having the group that scores highest in the first round compete in
a $100,000 round. Our second example shows what this slide might look
like. Pairs try to complete an entire pyramid of new, and more challenging,
answers.
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Twenty Questions
This PowerPoint game differs from our other examples in several ways.
First, it is less a game that has clearly defined rules of play, and
more a manner of asking questions and creating an entertaining atmosphere
that gets students actively involved in thinking. It is a very easy
strategy to execute–both in terms of authoring the PowerPoint
slide show and implementing it in class–and it lends itself seamlessly
to many question types and objectives, from asking students to recall
facts, apply information, or analyze and evaluate it. Because the Twenty
Questions strategy is simple, there are a myriad of ways to use it
in classes both large and small. A typical application is noted below,
but be creative and invent new ways for yourself.
In Twenty Questions, the instructor creates a PowerPoint slide with
hyperlinks to separate slides containing questions. The instructor
or a student chooses one of the hyperlinks. The class is given some
quiet time to formulate a response to the question displayed, and the
instructor chooses a volunteer to answer. You'll generally have enthusiastic
volunteers if you give small prizes for correct answers.
You might use this strategy as part of a review session for an examination,
devoting the entire class period to asking questions, or you may use
it as a brief active learning strategy within the context of a lecture.
In this case, you may ask two or three questions at transition points
in the material to test students' comprehension and help them work
with and remember the information before moving on.
Keep in mind, too, that because PowerPoint is a multimedia application,
the questions you author can contain images, animations, audio, or
video. These can be powerful learning tools for students in a variety
of disciplines, and they work well with each of the game examples that
we've showcased.
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